Slouching to Bethlehem
March 12, 2010
Derek's comments on a certain kind of Reformed preaching are spot on. If the game is simply to get from Text A to Bethlehem, what do you do with a book like Judges? Preach 200 sermons which essentially say `This judge failed; but, surprise surprise, there is a judge who didn't fail; let's talk about him, shall we?' ? This scarcely does justice to the richness of the text or produces the kind of preaching that equips the people of God to be the people of God. Nor is it immediately obvious how one would distinguish lecturing from preaching, other than the former involves a lectern, the latter a puplit. The accent is indeed on gnosis and the transmission of information. The game is to impart an insight, to exemplify a method; confronting people with God and salvation is surely more than that. We must, in our preaching, do justice to the richness of biblical examples of preaching -- in both Testaments -- and not force our sermons to conform to some kind of Procustean Bed based on a useful and important insight into scripture which we have chosen to make an exhaustive account of the whole.
And John is just as surely right about congregational attitudes to sermons. Those church members accustomed to a diet of lectures or entertainment pretending to be preaching will surely come to judge sermons by the criteria which apply to those genres. How many of us, I wonder, when we hear what we think is a bad sermon first ask ourselves if the problem is with how we listened rather than with the man who spoke?
And John is just as surely right about congregational attitudes to sermons. Those church members accustomed to a diet of lectures or entertainment pretending to be preaching will surely come to judge sermons by the criteria which apply to those genres. How many of us, I wonder, when we hear what we think is a bad sermon first ask ourselves if the problem is with how we listened rather than with the man who spoke?
