One way to preach?

Scott Williams has an interesting post on preaching:

roll the tape forward to 2008. my eldest son is in preaching class at the local bible college and is getting killed because he does not use the expository/exegetical model…he is frustrated and does not understand that there is only one safe way to speak now within the christian world – never mind that pretty much all the greatest speakers in history did not speak this way…

he is confused because Jesus spoke narratively and topically. he has grown up in a secular world of sound bytes and mtv. he finds sermons like those from saddleback and others nauseatingly boring and irrelevant.

the funny this is, though, when he speaks to his culture the audience, if you can call it that, is enthralled. they get what he is talking WITH them about. they respond. for some reason they do not want a 40+ minute expose on the finer points of scripture. they are hungry for truth but not bound by tradition.

how do i tell nate he is wrong?

Scott’s always interesting and provocative.

There are two topics intertwined here:

Content – Should the content of a sermon be Scriptural or non-Scriptural? I think we know the answer. I don’t care what form your preaching takes. If you aren’t standing out of the way, allowing Scripture to speak, you’re not a preacher. Your sermon carries the same weight as the words of Dr. Phil.

Form – Is there a right sermon form? Here’s where Scott is exactly right. There is no such thing as a right sermon form. Haddon Robinson says, “Instead of thinking about form, think about taking a biblical truth and communicating it to people so they can use it…I’ll do anything that I think helps get the truth across.” Scott is right to challenge monolithic preaching.

The problem is that people often conflate these two issues. They think scriptural = traditional and boring, and unstructured/narrative = unscriptural.

Bill Kinnon has more thoughts on this.