Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Why did the sermon fail?

Apparently D. Broughton Knox used to start his review of any student sermon at Moore College with that question, ‘why did the sermon fail?’. It could be apocryphal, but if it is true, it is a good question, pastorally shattering I suspect in that classic Sydney Anglican way, but a good question.

At a basic level it seems to me there are two types of biblical preachers, firstly, those who stand behind the text and try to back light the Word of God, as to draw attention to the riches it has to say, and ensure that the text is the authority for the preacher and the people. Secondly, those who stand just in front of the text, most of what they say is good and biblical and useful, even if not always directly related to the text they are apparently preaching on, but at the end you walk away feeling they come across as the authority, not the Bible.

The Bible is far more complex and subtle than any one person can truly convey. If we stand in front of the text ultimately it will be our theological system (with a mixture of our Gospel wisdom and hobby horses thrown in) that will set the tone for our preaching and teaching.

IF someone seems to preaching the same sermon every week (even you may feel like you do?) then it’s probably because they aren’t really working hard at sitting under the authority of that particular text of scripture, instead it becomes a launching pad for saying much of the same stuff week in week out.

Unfortunately, the guys in front of the text tend to have BIG personalities that are appealing to listen to, and the guys behind the text tend to stand too far back and think that they don’t need to be appealing at all, instead it is ALL about the word.

As wiser men than me have said, ‘Biblical Truth through personality’.
Which side of the horse do you naturally fall off, and what do you need to do about it?

And another thing…
Stott points out (rightly I think) that the culture of the Bible is on one side of a canyon, and our culture is on the other side of the canyon. The preacher is responsible for ensuring they are able to move the sermon from a sound foundation upon the Bible and span the gap, so it lands concretely and meaningfully into our world today.

I think in our circles we are way too comfortable in the world of the Bible and as long as we have explained it “faithfully” we feel (and are often encouraged by others) we have done enough.

To revisit the first quote, I suspect that the sermon fails if this is all we do. It may be true, but does it really equip our people to know how to live truly in all of their lives?

If after 4 years of college I am still trying to work hard as to how to integrate my Christian faith, with all of my life as I live in a complex world that confronts me with a myriad of issues and opinions that are so opposed to God. How can we expect someone to do that in 10min on the train in the morning before work, if we are unwilling to help them think about it through our preaching on the Sunday?

I suspect we need to change.

Firstly, verbal exegesis is not preaching. It is “faithful”, and it is descriptive but it is rarely instructive, and almost never inspiring – it is almost invariably a little dull and more like a lecture. (and I am pretty certain most people in the congregation DO NOT CARE what the 3 uses of the genitive are, and what a bunch of borderline pagan’s who happen to have PHD’s thought about it!).

Do we need to know those things – yes! We should know them well enough to be confident as to their relevance to our hearers and able to leave them as ‘working’ in behind the sermon. IF we have to we need to convey their meaning to the congregation in a way that makes sense, and in a way that helps them to see why it is important to them and their Christian lives living in this world.

For example, how many Christian people do you know that work in the medical field? – personally a truck load. When is the last time you heard anyone preach from the nature of humanity to the theological implications for our view of human life? It isn’t about giving them rules for living, but about helping them to build a theological framework (including a healthy dash of Gospel wisdom) so they are able to make good decisions in the concrete realities of the life they are called to live. If we don’t equip them have we really served them as their teachers? And are we just setting them up to live a divided life (or even worse seriously doubt their faith because the Bible is consistently treated as irrelevant and simplistic in a complex world), where their Christian faith doesn’t actually have anything concrete to say on their lives, like whether they should assist in an abortion because they are on a surgical rotation or be part of stem cell research because they are trained in genetics (and these are the easy decisions!).


Preaching it seems to me is theological speech that is soundly grounded in scripture. Theology is the framework through which we are able to view the world and ourselves, to enable us to live the ethical Christian life – the life of worship.

Our preaching needs to be consciously and soundly theological, that we would not just describe the Bible, but illuminate it, instruct and inspire from it (all humanly speaking of course).

Our ethical framework and our Christian world view are our direct point of contact with life, and these are founded upon our theological framework. If we want people to live a life of worship, we need to consciously help them develop their theological understanding so they can begin to engage with this world in a God pleasing way.

Preaching is much more than verbal exegesis – and there is more to say about it!

I can Feel a XXXX coming on!

When will Australian’s stop and (to use a Roy and HG-ism), go into the house of Mirrors and take a good hard look at themselves?

Alcohol is not our friend, never has been, I suspect it never will be. Alcho-Pop tax attempts prove the reality we know it is bad (at least for our youth) but we are unwilling to say out loud that something societal and profound needs to change. The tax on the lollie-water really sends a message of, ‘do as I say, and not as I do…’

I Like a beer, especially recently, after hours of painting a house on a 40 degree day, but the latest NRL “off field incident”, is really a reflection of our wider societies approach to what alcohol is for ----- excess.

Rob Clarkson (no relation to Jeremy!), was a mostly un-noticed indie muso when I was at uni (the first time!) and he hit on something when he re-worked Blaise Pascal’s observation of Man’s God-shaped hole, Clarkson sang,
‘There is a hole in my heart where you used to be,
I’m going to fill it with another type of hole
- - called alco-hol’.

Alcohol is our societies self-medication against life!

But what do you expect, we were founded by a boat load of British convicts with nothing to do and only rum to drink in the same 40 degree heat!! 200 years later – to quote Page and Plant it seems, ‘the song remains the same’.

Will we ever find a respected leader in this country to help us face some of the harsh realities of our use of Alcohol?
They say the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem!

The NRL Vs The NBA

When it is all said and done, Australian's don't do (or like) big and flashy!

We like things to be done well, informally and simply, and done with self-deprecating humour wherever possible.

The NBA is full of big flashy individuals, the 'team' are the other guys who make up the five to fill out the numbers (google Luc Longley if you are not sure what I mean!).The NBA is massive, in a massive country and supported by enormous and impressive management structures and big $$$. It is a game built around the impressive individual.

The NRL is a small but well loved competition, which absolutely needs it's brilliant individuals, but is all about the team. Each member of the team needs to be able to hold their place in the line, and everyone else has to be able to trust them to do it. The competition is loved despite the monkeys who run it (google Dennis Fitzgerald if you are not sure what I mean!).

Australian's are team players and that is when we are at our best (and what we often do better than other nationalities), even our individuals like the swimmers see themselves as part of a team that is bigger than the individual. We love to work in teams - and we don't do BIG management well - we just never have had to with our small population, and really aren't all that interested in the formal and analytical nature of running something BIG. We are at heart informal people.

Do we chop down the succesful individual? - yep
Is this good? mostly not (and definitely not all the time)

But what I am getting at is, we like teams, we work best in teams and not as individuals, so why are we persisting with putting our best out on their own, and not actively and intentionally directing them into teams and building that way??

Another reason to put the 1 parish 1 rector system out to pasture I suspect..

Off to School we go!

I am trying to read a bit where I can about the form (rather than theology explicitly - although the two are always related) of 'doing church' from the current movers and shakers. However, There are some profound and even foundational cultural differences (which I want to note down in a latter post) between the US and here.

When it is all said and done, my "current" suspicion is that they are much better, and more intentional in understanding where their people are at. I can't imagine even approaching the idea of 'redemption groups' at most churches I have been at. Maybe we don't think we can share the gospel with "really" sinful people, ie. those who are not essentially middle-class with the same morality? Maybe we don't think we have "really" sinful people still at church!

Having said that I think these are my impressions of top tips for the moment (humanly and pragmatically speaking):

1. great gospel preaching that is explicitly Bible based and aimed at the real places of life
2. good mature christian leadership
3. comfortable and inviting environment
4. do music as well as you can for the place you are at
5. welcoming culture that invites it's friends and hooks people into itself and particularly small Bible based groups
6. create a community that actually seeks to live out the lifestyle and encourage each other on.. (including allowing real people struggling with sin to find real help)
7. Use technology creatively and well
8. be prepared to wipe everything Churchy that is naff

The whole thing is really about Church without the embarrassment???

When it is all said and done, I keep thinking practically they do attractional church plain and simple (even if they call it missional because they focus strongly on who they are talking to), but are unprepared to compromise the gospel, but most other things they do whatever they can to make the gospel appealing.

Church is what we do, why don't we do it for all who need it, instead of endless effort with intermediate evangelistic events that can often be well attended, but are incredibly difficult to transfer people across from to something totally different which is the church we do week to week?????

Hey now you're an allstar!!

People here are going a little nuts about the whole church planting thing....http://www.sydneyanglicans.net/insight/letter_from_seattle

But there is no doubting some of these churches in the US are going pretty amazingly, but then you meet the main guys and you realize they are certainly not average, in lots of ways http://theresurgence.com/interview-with-matt-chandler-video

So - what gives? Same Gospel very different results around here??

They obviously do heaps of things well, but Ultimately it is a little hard to get away from the fact that they all seem to be built around BIG Personalities. Their preaching is Theologically orthodox, (if at times surrounded by what seems to me to be a lot of humour laden padding), but there is definitely a positive response to it!

There is no way I could sit in church and look at a screen preach - but then maybe the outsider or new christian would be fine with that?? (and maybe midweek meetings would be a good way of using that kind of secondary teaching approach?)

I can't imagine hiring a guy to "pastor" a congregation and tell him his 3 years of college means he gets to set up the data projector!! (and get me a coffee while you're at it damn it!!)

Driscoll starts his from scratch which means you get to set the culture, Chandler (as he explains in the interview linked above) took over 160 and grew it to 6000... I cannot even truthfully comprehend that... much less how you even begin to go about it...

But then I still have a hard time comprehending from some of our older members the reality of the Billy Graham appeals 50 years ago (143,000 at the SCG), http://www.abc.net.au/compass/s2484481.htm, he makes these guys (respectfully) look like rank amateurs!!

So same Gospel today, "that Christ died for our sins in our place and because of that all who believe that He is the saving Lord, will inherit eternal life - so be reconciled to God!" produces one of two things - sight or blindness...

Can any church do things better, to help demonstrate and not hinder the proclamation of the Gospel - absolutely (some need to do more than others)... but maybe Al Stewart is right, the ground here looks pretty hard at the moment (which is what sewing seed is like generally in Australia!), which Piper might agree with in his comment about the hearts of men growing cold.....

Maybe we saw the season of harvest in Sydney in '59, and now we are into a season of hard plowing and sewing and all the unglamourous stuff!!