Pagan Christianity: The Sermon
By Fred | Tuesday, July 6, 2010
The tradition that Viola and Barna attack next is the Sunday morning “sermon.” I have my own issues with it. I remember taking a Homiletics class in Bible college (i.e., the “art of preaching”). At one point I asked the teacher why we “preach in church.” I asked me what I meant. I said, “The Bible says to preach ‘the Gospel’ but our churches are filled with Christians who presumably already know ‘the Gospel.’ So why do we preach in church when the people who need to hear the Gospel are not in church?” He had taught the class for years and he had no answer to the question.
Pagan Christianity points out that if you “[r]emove the sermon and you have eliminated the most important source of spiritual nourishment for countless numbers of believers (so it is thought)” (p.86). This may truly be the case, but I don’t believe it is the way it “should be” nor do I believe that most of the people who are “preaching” on a Sunday morning desire this to be the case. Most Sunday morning “preachers” would strive to see their listeners grow in maturity, which would require them to put their dependence on the Holy Spirit through prayer, Bible reading/study/meditation, etc., rather than on their weekly dose of spirituality through a sermon.
Viola and Barna introduce the popular defense of preaching: that it is found throughout the Bible. But they are right in saying that biblical preaching is nothing like what we experience in a typical church on a typical Sunday morning. Preaching in the Bible, they say, included active participation (including common interruptions by the audience), involved extemporaneous preaching without notes (although this is a guess; there’s no way they could know that), and preaching was not regular. Much of this is based on the synagogue in which the typical participant was a Jew very familiar with scripture. The participants faced one another in a circle and the experience was very participatory. Certainly, this was a cultural mechanism.
Today, for bad or for good, we live in a “post-Christian” culture—both informed by and reacting against biblical (and not so biblical) Christianity. We certainly are not people steeped in biblical knowledge. Some people that attend our church are hearing real biblical teaching for the first time. They’re certainly not ready for circular interaction (especially given our culture’s penchant for a “spiritual smorgasbord,” being informed spiritually by anything and everything from the Bible to televangelists to Oprah Winfrey to Ravi Shankar, etc.). Again, we strongly endorse a participatory environment to address biblical teaching in a home group. Viola and Barna would say that is the only way.
Further, they say that the sermon is actually harmful to the Church. It elevates the preacher to performer and the people to spectators (p. 97). This is an appropriate criticism, I believe, but at the same time, there is a strong cultural equivalent in a classroom or a university lecture hall. When a whole bunch of people knows next to nothing, how are they to learn most effectively? For many people, it works very well to learn in this style.
Second, they say the sermon “stalemates spiritual growth” by encouraging passivity (p. 97). Again, this could be an adequate criticism if absorption of knowledge is the only goal of the sermon rather than a response of action. I don’t know too many pastors who would agree with the point of a sermon to educate but not motivate.
Third, they say the sermon “preserves the unbiblical clergy mentality…creat[ing] an excessive and pathological dependence on the clergy” (p. 98). Here, I agree wholeheartedly. There are too many Christians that would listen to a sermon rather than the Holy Spirit.
Fourth, the sermon “de-skills” Christians because “the contemporary sermon preached every week has little power to equip God’s people for spiritual service and functioning” (p. 98). A valid criticism, if the sermon is all that churches are depending on. But it’s not. This is another straw-man argument.
Fifth, “today’s sermon is often impractical. Countless preachers speak as experts on that which they have never experienced” (p. 99). The criticism is that the sermon is a message based in abstraction rather than practical reality. That seems to be a criticism based on no evidence. How could they possibly know that? Hearsay? Personal experience (in the majority of churches in North America)?
On one hand, I wonder about the tenuous arguments against preaching. On another, I completely agree with Viola and Barna. The Sunday message should not be the focal point of meeting weekly. Corporate worship should be. And yet, it serves a valuable function in “getting the big picture across”—it’s an effective way to teach (rather than “preach”) a lot to a lot of people in a relatively short time. Is there more? Yes. A small group is a great place to chew on that information, digest it, and begin to put it into practice.
Category: Stuff