Speakers predict sermons will change in next wave of postmodern worship

From Associated Baptist Press:

Contemplation and meditation may invade the sermon. “I’m convinced that sermons need intentional silences in them,” said Hulitt Gloer, professor of preaching and Christian Scripture at Baylor’s Truett Seminary. “I need to invite people not just to listen to what I say but to what God is saying. It’s a radical idea to listen more than we speak so [the congregants] will know they are to be actively engaged.” If the emergent-church model is accepted, preaching will shift from the linear style to the storyteller — like Jesus, who spoke in parables… The perception of pastors also will change as the role shifts from being a spiritual example to a fellow traveler. “I think of it as all of us going into a cave together and sharing what we’ve discovered with our pickaxes,” said Julie Pennington-Russell, pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Waco. “It’s not like where you tie a Scripture to a chair and beat it with a rubber hose for 20 minutes to see what you can get out of it.” The foundation of community also allows the pastor to speak the uncomfortable prophetic word…. Absolute honesty also makes people more willing to hear the hard things,” Seay argued. “We do a disservice to the gospel when we make the people in the Bible out to be better than they were and we pretend to be better than we are,” he explained.