BLOG 9/23/15. I WONDER, … IS IT TIME TO RETHINK PREACHING AND SERMONS?

I spent this morning in my favorite coffee shop. Here were the present generation of Information Age adults all equipped with their laptops and cell phones, plugged into the world, to their workplace, to the resources of a nearby university, as well as chat rooms, and all the rest.

Yes, and here we are with the recent phenomenon of MOOCs (Massive Open On-line Courses) offered by major universities, and here we are with asynchronous resources so that you can plug into a lecture, stop and go for pizza, take a nap, then pick it up right where you left off.

… And then, here we are with a form of preaching and sermons that are probably one of the least effective forms of communicating information (as also with any lecture). Such preaching may well satisfy the preacher, and may be what he/she learned to do in theological school, but is it the most effective way to communicate the message of Christ, and to form disciples? In the seats of even the most innovative church plants sit those same folk with their cell phones and with the apps that can give them access to the most profound sources of Biblical understanding. The answer to the question is that when one is in dialogue with the ones to whom one is seeking to communicate, then that communication takes on a whole different flavor.

So I’m just raising a question here. In Biblical times every believer was to be so equipped with the knowledge of Jesus and his teachings (of the whole of scriptures) that they were able to communicate it to others. So, in a real sense, every believer was a ‘preacher’ and the word of Christ went everywhere. There were those especially gifted in the knowledge, but the ‘on the ground’ preaching took place in the lives of the ordinary believers where they operated—even in prisons (often) or in difficult places. It was a long time before someone decided that an academic degree in theology qualified a person to be a preacher. Part of the genius of the Wesleyan movement was the semi-literate circuit riders who usually were out of the ranks and who went about and were effective because they spoke the language of the people. This grassroots preaching is very obvious in the majority world today where the Christian faith is growing most rapidly.

For myself, I have never been given the luxury of being isolated from those who have been brutally honest in keeping me in communication. For example, when I was in theological school, I was just back from a year of special study in Philadelphia when I was asked onto a church staff to implement a ministry to the students of nearby Georgia Tech (and a neighboring women’s college). In Philadelphia I had taken a graduate level course in the theology of the Westminster Confession of Faith, so I thought I would enlighten these ‘poor benighted’ collegians with this information. After about the second Sunday, and when I was feeling full of myself for how outstanding I had been, . . . three of these ‘Rambling Wrecks’ from Georgia Tech cornered me, and with a grin said: “Bob, We don’t know what in the hell you’re talking about!” So there. I’ve never lacked such friends since then.

From that time on, for whatever reason, I have always had those close friends, who were insistent in keeping me honest and not at all intimidated by me, who probed me with questions, who pressed me on the meaning of Biblical passages for their very real and existential incarnations. For a season I even had ten of my close friends who insisted on Bible study with me, and with whom I agreed only if they would work on my sermon text with me, which they did. It was incredible. Were I starting over, were I 27 years old rather than 87, I would give some fresh thought on the place of preaching in our communities of faith with the resources of this information age, and how to dynamically engage every believer in the process, maybe a whole alternative conception of preaching. To be continued . . .