Wednesday
Sep212005
Can anyone tell me what preaching is for?
Wednesday, September 21, 2005 at 5:15PM
Kester Brewin asks this question. Doug Pagitt asks similar questions in his latest book Preaching Re-imagined. I wrestled with this question before enrolling in the preaching D.Min. program a couple of years ago. Not a bad question, but I think there is a good answer. A lot of times when people ask this question, they are taking issue with the form that sermons take. The thing is, there is no such thing as a right sermon form. You can do away with three-point sermon outlines and twenty-minute lectures if you find a better form. There is room for creativity and two-way communication in preaching, and almost anything else you can think of. The other issue that comes up is the authority of the one preaching. What right does he or she have to get up there and lecture? This is something I question a lot as I prepare. I am not the sort of person who craves being in front of a crowd. Every week, I have to remind myself that there is power in the Word and not in me, and that my job is to let that Word speak and get out of the way. That is the job of any preacher. The way we're wired, somebody has to take the lead to make this happen. It can be a different person every week if you'd like. Even in a group of two people, someone usually takes a lead. It doesn't have to be a power thing if they see themselves as a facilitator. So it's not the form and it's not the preacher that are the issues to me. You can change both of these and it's fine by me. What's at the core of preaching is something far more important. When we come together in whatever we call church, whether it be in a home or a cathedral, we need to hear God's Word. How it happens is much less important to me than making sure it happens. At one time the sermon was not as important as the Scripture reading. It was more of a response to the Scripture reading, unlike today in which the Scripture reading is seen as a preliminary. If you ask me what preaching is for, I would answer that it's about God's people listening to his Word and responding to it. As for the form or who preaches, those are far less important to me. One last question remains: whether preaching works. I think it does, but I've experienced some good preaching. I have a feeling if we discover some forms that really work, stop the lectures, decentralize the preacher, and let the Word speak for itself in creative ways, we will see that it works much better than we thought it could. But I have to pick up Pagitt's book to wrestle with this question further.
Reader Comments (7)
Darryl, you probably heard this, "preaching is truth through personality" I believe that is so true. Over the last 4 years I've listened to a lot of preaching. I can't get enough of good preaching. I believe and have seen how the most effective preachers are the ones that have their own passionate walk with God. You can tell the difference because when they get up to preach their own experience with God comes through loud and clear, then as they go through the Word they can bring with it such real life application. I love that and so often it corroborates my own walk with God and I am so thankful. But it always starts with their own walk with God.
interesting post and comment. thanks for making me think. next pray. then with God's wisdom change :) be blessed :)
If, as we say it does, the Mass is the manifestation of Jesus himself, body, blood soul and divinity then the "service" is the apex of the experience, not the reading. In this very important way not all expressions of "church" are the same. Many, like house church or for that matter most Protestant expressions are well intended and devout human expressions of faith but they do not make manifest, nor do the claim to, the living power of God through the Holy Spirit. What good preaching can and must do is prepare the faithful for life outside the church. A life in a culture that is at best dismissive of Christ and at it's worst wholly in opposition. The sermon/homily is an important lifeline that when rightly expressed guides the believer through and around the temptations and ungodliness of the week ahead. Prayer and conviction are the homilists only neccessary tools. God will effect the rest. If the preacher does not believe that his message is the word of God made manifest for him to share with the community, it would be better if he remained silent.
The question is never "does it work?". The question is "is this a biblical practise?" "Preach the Word" is a commandment to us whose livelihood is the ministry of the Gospel (II Timothy 4:2). If it doesn't "work" then given that it is a God ordained thing to do we cannot fault the act of preaching. The life of the preacher, the work he has put into it, the prayer behind it, the worldliness of the listeners (although preaching is one of the solutions for that) and more may be reasons for its failure. God save us from the pragmatism that measures obedience to the commands of God by its congruence with our perceptions of success.
Ken: I'll give you three quarters of an amen! I agree with you overall, especially that the pragmatic questions aren't usually the ones that need asking. But there is a place for looking at the fruit that's produced by our preaching and to ask some tough questions. I think your conclusion is bang on: there are other reasons, besides the act of preaching, to be faulted. Can't wait to read Pagitt's book.
Three quarters of an "amen" !! That's about seventh eighths more than I am used to!!! I agree with you that we are to be constantly examining the fruit of our work and making sure that any fruitlessness is not our fault. Anyone who is not willing to ask, first of all, when things are going awry, "Is it me?" is not fit for the ministry - any ministry. Sorry if I gave the opposite impresssion. What I was trying to get at, which you have already affirmed, is that we don't dump a God ordained, commanded work, just because it is not reaping the fruit that we think it should. It would be like forsaking communion altogether because some non believers take part in it. The problem is not the Lord's Supper, it is the observer of it.
You've got an unqualified amen there!