Posted by Jim Henderson on: 02.22.2006 /
I am espeically interested in hearing from Pastors - buy as always, anyone can play
Comment from Park Community Church Post
“I have had to endure church sermons for 43 years. Your comments are spot on. (I even have had to give them - I cringe in rememberance) I currently regard the the sermon as similar to the neighbour’s dog barking - slightly annoying but with effort you can tune it out. I now bring a book and my journal and read. Why?
You are now talking about the elephant in the room - I suspect if people are honest they would tell their pastor something similar to what you just wrote: but we don’t because “liking sermons” is seen to be spiritual. And, many Christians are committing “bibliolotry” - they worship the book above who the book points to. I bet more people spend more time listening to the weekly sermon than doing the great commandment.
I continally ask myself your questions? “Who is the audience here?” and “Why is this auduence so stupid that they need to be talked down to and protected from real scholarship & questions?”
In what other form than church would we accept a one-way transaction of 40- 60mins duration, prepared by someone(generally)with less education than an elementary school teacher?
I believe that you have attended mostly big churches that can hire better-trained, seasoned, acknowledged “better” preachers. (Maybe the top 10% of the group) Think of all the people sitting listening every sunday to the “bottom half” of that group grinding their way through Galatians…(most of us) and you can see why the NFL and Nascar are gaining audience share.
And, I’m a guy that loves church.
Comment by: Siamang
1I just think there’s more Churches than there are good public speakers to head them.
I live a stones-throw from Hollywood, where everyone is expected to have taken an acting class at some point.
Here, we’re used to every individual, from a theme-park tour guide to a docent in a museum to be able to really hold your attention with their voice and manner. And the spiel is expected to be professional.
Boy was I surprised when travelling to Virginia I took a tour of a limestone caverns. The tour guides were the worst public speakers I had ever seen! They were local high-school students, and they were AWFUL. Comically awful. I actually videotaped THEM to show my friends back home. It was like a comic version of Hell, trapped a quarter-mile underground in an echoing cavern with the most high-pitched nasal-voiced speaker in the state of Virginia!
Comment by: Jim Henderson
2How do we fix this “lack of talent”?
Are we supposed to even try?
Are better public speakers (aka preachers) what Jesus needs more of to make church more compelling?
What does this tell us about the possible need for a paradigm shift for the church?
Are we called to provide a “good show” with all the standard accoutrements including polished public speakers?
Is this shortage of “good preachers” the protestant equivalent of the catholics lack of priests (due to what many think of as unrealistic standards or expectations?
Comment by: Pat
3I love the questions you’re asking here, Jim.
I wonder whether today’s preachers recall Paul telling the church in Corinth that they didn’t come to faith through wonderfully prepared, logical thought flow, but through practical experience of the power of God.
(Speaking as somebody who also preaches, frequently I forget this part)
I also wonder if the model of the lecture format can give way to something more fluid in the realization that different perspectives, or dialog, can help people internalize the message as well.
Comment by: Dean
4The fix is found in one word: “Relationships”. I’m not concerned about the “eloquence” of the people who care about me.
I don’t believe that public speaking is a thing of the past. It needs to constantly refined and that is no easy thing. However, followers of Jesus do need to think through what it means to be the church. I am quite convinced it has much less to do with a Sunday morning “service” (that word betrays us) than with being Jesus followers among our neighbors and co-workers.
Comment by: Jim Henderson
5Dean and Pat
What are the practical implications of your ideas?
What are the alternatives?
What would we gain and what would we give up?
Comment by: Darcy
6I started this thread and I suppose that I should add some suggestions as well as criticism. I am looking for something more transactional in nature than a one - sided monologue that we have with our current Sunday Preaching model. I agree with Siamang from Hollywood that there is a real absence of talent to pull this model off. I would suggest that it is nearly impossible to do this. A good engaging public speaker is a 1:1000 person. Sure one could improve through Toast Masters, but what is the point? There still is a horrfying lack of 1hour content. AND, with our current Christian publishing industry, the best and brightest are only a URL/FedEx away - how can the “average pastor” complete with Jim ;-). Not really the case in the Golden age of preaching (think circuit riding preachers in the Appalasians (SP?)and you have the approx era). And, as a former teacher, I know that only a bare 5 - 10% of ANY audience is an aural learner and I ask myself, who are we serving here?? This is why the Catholic and Orthodox church worked up a litergy that could plug-in any servant that could read a coherant order of service and serve the elements. They realized a long time ago that a priest was more than the quality of his sermons (homilies).
I love my current pastor - he is a great husband and dad, a compassionate friend, a good counsellor, and a truly horrible speaker.
I would love to see a leader ask questions that were not rhetorical or leading, then wait for answers. Not feal obliged to give answers, or unified theories of life. love, intelligent design, political direction, and all else that gets served up Sunday am.
I was thinking of the Jerusalem Council and the phrase “it seemed reasonable to us and to the Holy Spirit [Acts 15:28] and how verse 12 & 22 have the “whole church” involved in this decision. For a short season in Toronto I lead the worship part of a service that asked questions and listened to the answers. It was breath-taking, dangerous and exhiliating. It died when a couple of elders came during a rather frank (although modest) discussion on human sexuality and honoring God with our bodies. Sad really. I guess I am saying scrap the sermon and begin a dialogue with your faith community. If nothing else, no one, except maybe the Apostle Paul should preach over 20 mins. Use the extra time to dialoge, tell faith stories of the community, read long sections of scripture without commentary . . . church history is full of other options.
Darcy in Vancouver
Comment by: Ir
7Hi Darcy,
I’ve been very interested to read your comments about preaching.
I love my current pastor - he is a great husband and dad, a compassionate friend, a good counsellor, and a truly horrible speaker.
The big churches I’ve been in have pastors who do preach well, but the trade-off is that there’s no way the preaching pastor can have time to be a compassionate friend and good counselor to more than a fraction of the congregation. So, preaching in a big church is extremely one-way in that respect.
I would love to see a leader ask questions that were not rhetorical or leading, then wait for answers. Not feal obliged to give answers, or unified theories of life. love, intelligent design, political direction, and all else that gets served up Sunday am.
I think that would be neat, too. Although, would that be do-able in a church where thousands of people attend the Sunday morning service? (And if not, does this mean large churches are not ideal?) To be fair, large churches generally have Adult Education classes which are much more question-and-answer and church attenders are invited to those classes. On the other hand, the preaching pastor is probably too busy to teach the classes most of the time; other pastors/leaders teach them. So those won’t satisfy people who want to direct their comments to the preaching pastor in particular
For a short season in Toronto I lead the worship part of a service that asked questions and listened to the answers. It was breath-taking, dangerous and exhiliating.
Wow — I’m sure it was! It sounds fun and exciting.
It died when a couple of elders came during a rather frank (although modest) discussion on human sexuality and honoring God with our bodies.
Yikes.
It’s a shame it had to end completely rather than negotiating a compromise where some limits were placed on what could be discussed, but the discussion time was allowed to continue. But perhaps in your view having any limits would have negated the benefits of it.
Sad really. I guess I am saying scrap the sermon and begin a dialogue with your faith community.
I like the idea of dialogue. I also see the value in giving people with more knowledge/experience the opportunity to teach others. I see no reason why that could not be done in an interactive format. I do find that dialog where everyone has pretty much the same opinion and level of knowledge is as boring as a boring sermon :)
I expect it’s hard to sit through a boring sermon and not think “if only we could go back to the question-and-answer format” — since you enjoyed that so much.
Comment by: Darcy
8Hi Ir:
I guess my bias is towards a smaller church model. I met a guy at Jim’s “Off the Map” event in Seattle in Nov. who said until he had started a church plant he had never attended a church smaller than 10,000! I told him I had never even seen pictures of a church over 5000.
My experience is that most churches are about 100 - 200 people. I would suspect that programming for such large churches starts looking like a conference? Certainly at that level of resourcing, a mega church could hire “fantastic” speakers and offer something extraordinary?? eg. “….next Super Sunday, Mitch Albom goes toe-to-toe with Break Points Chuck Colson…”
I suspect that the leaders of the remaining 95% of churches are burdened with the expectation of coming up with a great sermon every sunday, spending inordinate amounts of time in their studies looking for ideas and painstakingly rehersing their delivery. “….hmmm, need a good joke for my second point that relates to circumcision …” Pretty unrealistic IMO.
I’d rather spend my communities time better.
Darcy
Comment by: Ir
9Darcy, your reasons for preferring smaller churches make sense to me. on the other hand, there are some things I appreciate about large churches. I can visit without everyone in the church knowing I’m a visitor — so it’s less intimidating. Also, the greater number of people and greater diversity in a large church means a) I’m more likely to find someone else there as weird as me b) I’m more likely to find a ministry which can use gifts as weird as mine c) I’m more likely to find a support group (or be able to help start one) for needs as weird as mine, because I’m probably not the only one with those needs in the church.
But — perhaps a small church can overcome not having the above if it is a place of grace, acceptance and hope.
As for the burden of sermon preparation - I think it must be much less in liturgical churches; their sermon (in my experience) is much shorter than the 40-60 minutes you mentioned.
Comment by: Dean
10After reading some of these responses, I guess I have to re-look at my last answer. Relationships cannot carry a bad sermon.
I don’t really have answers to your questions, Jim, but I’m in process of seeking them. Most of the journey is in the seeking, I guess.
Here is where I believe the central problem lies: Pastors have come to mistrust the fact that people in their congregations will find the answers in their search (left to themselves); therefore, they believe that they have to be the ones who present all of the answers in a sermon, rather than asking more questions. A sermon does not have to be gift wrapped nicely with a ribbon and bow on top - given to the people as the leave the building. What if we preached sermons that simply left more questions hanging in the air. Questions leave people hungry. Questions encourage people to “eat for themselves” rather than sit “spoon-fed” in a seat.
What I am not saying: A pastor should not present what he/she has come to believe as truth (Scripture). Point to the answers that you have discovered in your journey. It’s your story of how God has intersected with your life and made himself real to you.
What I am saying: There were questions that he/she sought answers to that led him/her to believe Scripture holds the truth. How about helping people to go on a journey that asks those same questions? Do we trust that God will do the work?
In a very real way, I feel like Jim is preaching one of the best sermons I have ever heard right here on this blog. I can’t get the questions out of my head.