In 1996 a Baylor University survey named Barbara Brown
Taylor one of the 12 most effective preachers in the English-speaking world -
the only woman alongside Billy Graham, Fred craddock and John Stott.
(from Time, 6-page article, April 28, 2014, pp. 26-31).
(from Time, 6-page article, April 28, 2014, pp. 26-31).
Excellent sermon - at Riverside Church - Jul 16,
2013 .
~~
Ten greatest preachers of the Twentieth Century -http://www.jmm.org.au/articles/8527.htm
(James Stewart heads the list, followed by Billy
Graham)...
~~
I got a phone call a couple of hours ago...
Female voice: Is that the Baptist?
Moi: Well, I'm a Baptist, sometimes...
FV: I'm Sister **** from the Psych Ward of the ****
Hospital, and we have someone who'd like a visit from a Baptist... His name is
Bill ****
Moi: OK, I'll be there in an hour.
~~~
Arrived at the Hospital's IPU just as they were
serving dinner, so I joined Bill and his friend Bob while they enjoyed a pretty
good meal. Bill's a butcher, but wants to teach food management rather than cut
up meat all day; and Bob's a builder. Between mouthfulls they told me about
their work, eg. I learned the technical definition of 'lock-up stage' when
building a house etc. They were each quite open about their mental health
situation - one admitted himself before the CAT team got to him ('they got my
medication wrong'); the other: 'I'm bi-polar and I got far too high...'
After dinner Bill and I adjourned to a private room
for a chat and a prayer. He wanted to be 'blessed by a priest' because it was
Sunday, and he'd missed church...
All in a day's work (names etc. have been changed).
I just prayed for those two young blokes again...
Being a pastor is a great privilege...
I forgot to mention: why did this Catholic want a
Baptist? 'Cos his church was named 'Parish of St. John the Baptist' and
the nurse must have heard 'Baptist' when he asked for a priest... Couple of
confused people there...
~~
~~
| |||
|
~~
[John, aged 22]: 'I am doing a course with Professor David Tacey, at
Latrobe University, Melbourne, on the topic of Spirituality Studies.
I'm one of those young Australians the prof writes about in his books.
I believe I am a spiritual person, but I don't like the idea of
church. Religion for me is something that is routine, regulated,
conventional... it does nothing for me.
I've been 'to church' and it was all dead, and boring. Some of the
words and ideas in the hymns and sermons were antiquated and not
relevant to me.
I was confirmed in the Anglican church as a young teenager, but
gradually drifted away, especially as the church I was associated with
seemed to be a social club for oldies, with a bit of religious ritual
for an hour a week to provide the context for their getting together
to drink tea and swap stories.
I'd like spirituality to be relevant to where I am. The Anglican
Bishop John Shelby Spong wrote a book about all this - 'Christianity
must change or die' - and I am inclined to agree with him. He's very
critical of religions which are fundamentalist and/or dictatorial,
imposing a culture of conformity and compliance, linked with threats
of hellfire and damnation.'
~~
PREACHING
[John, aged 22]: 'I am doing a course with Professor David Tacey, at
Latrobe University, Melbourne, on the topic of Spirituality Studies.
I'm one of those young Australians the prof writes about in his books.
I believe I am a spiritual person, but I don't like the idea of
church. Religion for me is something that is routine, regulated,
conventional... it does nothing for me.
I've been 'to church' and it was all dead, and boring. Some of the
words and ideas in the hymns and sermons were antiquated and not
relevant to me.
I was confirmed in the Anglican church as a young teenager, but
gradually drifted away, especially as the church I was associated with
seemed to be a social club for oldies, with a bit of religious ritual
for an hour a week to provide the context for their getting together
to drink tea and swap stories.
I'd like spirituality to be relevant to where I am. The Anglican
Bishop John Shelby Spong wrote a book about all this - 'Christianity
must change or die' - and I am inclined to agree with him. He's very
critical of religions which are fundamentalist and/or dictatorial,
imposing a culture of conformity and compliance, linked with threats
of hellfire and damnation.'
~~
PREACHING
Christianity is par
excellence the religion of the Word. When we speak, we disclose ourselves: so
does God. God has spoken in various ways – nature, history, conscience,
prophets and ultimately in his Son (Hebrews 1:1,2). Jesus Christ IS God’s word
to us. God also speaks through the written word, the Bible. And the word of the
Lord comes to us in the living voice of the church as it proclaims, preaches
and teaches. ‘Going to worship’ is more than ‘going to preaching’. The question
we Protestants hear from someone who missed church was, ‘What did the preacher
say?’
Preaching is not done
well in many churches. Homilies in many ‘liturgical’ churches are polite
sermonic essays which won’t offend – or change – anybody. Well-educated
preachers in some mainline churches fill their sermons with theological
abstractions. Pentecostal preaching is often a loud reiteration of exhortations
lacking theological substance. And other churches which may have better
preaching often don’t know how to be ‘lost in wonder, love and praise’ in their
worship.
Good preaching on its
own will not fill churches anymore, but bad preaching will empty them. The
preacher stands between heaven and earth, speaking for God to us, and
strengthening our faith, hope and love. Good preaching is inspired and
inspiring, bringing the Bible to life, and life to the Bible: it is rooted in
the biblical text but relevant to our needs. It is interesting, warm,
‘confessional’ (the preacher is a sinner needing grace too), dialogical and
interactive. Preaching, according to Phillips Brooks’ famous dictum is
‘communicating truth through personality’. The best preachers are ‘bilingual’,
understanding the terminology of theology, but also communicating plainly in
the language of the people.
May I suggest three
essential characteristics of authentic preaching:
1. GOOD PREACHING IS
DRAMATIC
‘Baby Boomers’ – those
born after World War II, between 1946 and 1964 – are the first adults to be
raised on the mass media. Television, radio, rock music and computers have
shaped the way they view reality. Yet George Gallup’s research says 99% of
young Americans are ‘religious’ in some sense, and 40 per cent say they’re
‘born again’. But they don’t feel at home in the traditional church; it’s
boring, quite frankly. They don’t like rigid structures, old-fashioned music,
or the church’s conservative politics. One 33 year old pastor of a large church
in Colorado said: ‘The church is the last standing barrier between our
generation and Jesus.’
So preaching to
baby-boomers and young people will have to be relevant and interesting – and
dramatic. Study Tony Campolo’s ‘sermons’ for an example of superb communication
to these groups.
One way to reach these
generations is through stories. Parables, stories, are good preaching in any
culture and to any age-group. They appeal to the imagination. More than half of
the Bible – both Old and New Testaments – is narrative. Stories communicate
images and pictures, to which hearers then attach their own feelings, emotions
and experiences. Stories open windows to life. They help us get in touch with
hope, compassion, love, the triumph of good over evil, light over darkness.
Try something
different sometimes. How about a sermon preached from behind the congregation,
or from the middle of a row, or with a child in your arms?
If preaching about the
prodigal son, maybe interview the various people in the prodigal’s family
(including a neighbour and the family’s pastor!). I heard of one re-enactment
of this story which ended with the elder brother hitting his father: quite
unforgettable! But don’t be ‘gimmicky’ for its own sake: always explain the
reason for changes. Does the sermon always have to come ‘after half-time’? Can
it be broken up sometimes, and interspersed with other worship-activities to
reinforce the main points made?
2. GOOD PREACHING IS
DIDACTIC
That is, it must have
a teaching component. But good preaching is not simply imparting information.
It aims at ‘transformation’.
How do we mature in
our faith and life? How do we develop a sensitive Christian conscience, a
strong desire to live obediently to the word of God, a love for Bible study and
prayer, a dedicated commitment to ministries of evangelism, mercy and justice?
A discussion of teaching must work backwards from these questions.
When asked ‘What or
who were the formative influences in your life?’ most people name a parent or
teacher. ‘I teach’ says US professor of the year 1983, Peter Beidler, ‘because
I see people grow and change in front of my eyes. Being a teacher is being
present at the creation, when the clay begins to breathe. Nothing is more
exciting than being nearby when the breathing begins… I teach because, being
around people who are beginning to breathe, I occasionally find myself catching
my breath with them.’
Paul and Barnabas
majored on teaching (Acts 11:26). The church at Antioch had a list of their
teachers (Acts 13:1: does yours?). The religion of Israel was a teaching
religion (see eg Exodus 18:20, Deuteronomy 6:1): the law of Moses was first a
lesson, then a command. Jesus was a rabbi, a teacher (eg Mark 1:38), and
commanded his followers to go into the world and teach all nations (Matthew
28:19-20). The early Christian churches took seriously the function of teaching
(Acts 13:1, 1 Corinthians 12:28, Ephesians 4:11, 2 Timothy 1:11).
The purpose of
Timothy’s teaching, Paul says, is to ‘arouse the love that comes from a pure
heart, a clear conscience, and a genuine faith’ (1 Timothy 1:5). ‘Bible
teaching’ is therefore much more than a ‘jug to mug’ approach: it’s meant to
produce better-behaved rather than merely better-informed Christians. Christian
leaders should be able, or apt to teach (1 Timothy 3:2).
If you could choose
one verb to describe what the pastor/s do in your church, would it be
‘teaching’? In churches battling to survive, the leaders spend their time
‘oiling the church’s machinery’ or ‘keeping the people happy’ through routine
visitation (so-called ‘maintenance’ ministries). But where the
‘pastor-teachers’ (Ephesians 4:11) take their teaching role seriously, they use
many means to encourage their people to mature in the faith, serve others, and
become ‘reproducers’. Pastoring and teaching go together: we don’t teach
theory, we teach persons. The best teachers love those they instruct, model
what they teach (‘truthing it in love’ as Paul puts it in Ephesians 4:15), are
enthusiastic, hard-working and systematic in their preparation, and always
assume their students will teach others (2 Timothy 2:2).
Preaching without
teaching can be propaganda: by-passing people’s minds to get them to make a
commitment they don’t fully understand. And teaching without persuasion can be
dry, sterile dogma.
The teaching process
will be ‘dialogical’, as John R W Stott put it (pp 60ff). It will be inductive
and deductive, propositional and relational, doctrinal and life-centred, from
the pulpit, in classes, in small groups, and one-to-one. Every church ought to
have a bookstall (positioned where people will fall over it!); and an audio and
video cassette library. Perhaps small-group studies can be related to the whole
church’s theme for the week, where the sermon is followed up by discussion.
(That’s better than the reverse order: experience shows too many will come with
their exegetical – and critical – minds made up to truly hear the voice of the
Lord in the preaching).
When we hear the
Scripture read we are listening to the voice of the living God. We don’t listen
to the Bible reading simply to learn something interesting. Our silent prayer
is always ‘Beyond the sacred page I seek you, Lord. My Spirit yearns for you, O
Living Word.’ The Bible readings should be somewhere near the preaching, to
make clear the connection. I like the discipline of the lectionary; it ensures
our readings and preaching range over the whole Bible. But don’t follow it
slavishly: in biblically literate congregations there is merit in preaching
consecutively through various books of the Bible, with rotating themes from Old
Testament, Gospel, and Epistle, interspersed with ‘special days’ (Trinity
Sunday, Pentecost, Advent, Christmas, Easter etc). The reading of scripture
should be done well. In some churches the Bible reading is as exciting as if
someone read a telephone directory! Train your readers. Introduce the reading
with a sentence or two describing its background. Use drama, dance, mime, and
audio-visuals to assist in ‘sitting where the readers first sat’. God wants his
word understood; the scriptures were written in the common languages of their
day, so use a translation closest to the language we speak (eg. the New Revised
Standard Version). After Scripture is read, be silent to listen with the heart.
3. GOOD PREACHING IS
PROPHETIC
This is hardest for
pastors. This week I have been re-reading Reinhold Niebuhr’s ‘Leaves from the
Notebooks of a Tamed Cynic’. If ever there was a twentieth century prophet par
excellence it was Niebuhr. About prophets he writes that they’re likely to be
itinerants (‘we preachers are afraid to tell the truth because we are
economically dependent upon the people of the church’ p.74). And ‘the church
does not seem to realize how unethical a conventionally respectable life may
be’ (p.118). So it’s easier for pastors to preach about charity than justice.
But it’s difficult for a pastor to be prophetic without being cynical (‘I don’t
want anyone to be more cynical than I am’ p.158). If you have to choose between
bitterness and blandness, choose the former; but ‘speaking the truth in love’
is always our aim…
To understand all
this, let’s take a short excursion into the sociology of institutions. Max
Weber used the term ‘prophetic’ in opposition to the terms ‘tradition’ and
‘institution’. All institutions, said sociologist Robert Merton, are inherently
degenerative. In the church, only prophets can really ‘see’ it – which is why
they’re sometimes called ‘seers’. Over time, a representative institution will
see people inhabit, roughly one of four stances if they have to face
institutional change. On the left, radicals want to change everything (they’re
mostly driven by anger). On the right, traditionalists want to change nothing
(they’re driven by fear). Next to the radicals, progressives want to change
some things, and to the right of them are conservatives, who are prepared to change
very little. Now if you’re going to lead this motley group, you have to be
somewhere in the middle: if you’re too radical the
traditionalists/conservatives (who have the power mostly) will throw you out.
But if you’re not ‘with it’, you’ll be left behind in an irrelevant backwater.
So pastors, for example, to survive, must appear to be not too radical and not
too traditionalist.
But prophets are
always radical. There’s the rub. Remember Woody Allen’s movie about Leonard
Zelig? Filmed in documentary style, Zelig purportedly recounts the life and
times of a ‘chameleon man’ who was so completely compliant than his physical
appearance changed to accomodate his companions.
Talking to some
Orthodox rabbis, he sprouts a beard and side curls. In a Chinese laundry his
features become Asian. To psychiatrists he utters much psychobabble…
Good preaching has
both heat and light: heat without light leaves us scorched and brittle; light
may help us ‘see’ (and as Horace Bushnell once said, there can be no preaching
worth the name if there is no thinking), but knowledge without faith won’t save
anybody. W B Yeats in his poem ‘The Second Coming’ says ‘the best lack all
conviction’ while ‘the worst are full of passionate intensity.’ We must search
for the dividing line between enthusiasm and fanaticism…
Good preaching touches
mind and heart and will: we learn, we love, and we change. It goes without
saying that good preaching is not constantly negative, opposing anything and
everything. We shepherds sometimes spend too much time mending fences rather
than feeding sheep. There ought always to be a prophetic dimension to our
preaching, calling us to repentance.
The ministry of
prophets was very important in New Testament times. Paul regarded it highly,
urging the Corinthians to seek this highly prized spiritual gift (1 Corinthians
14:1, 39). Paul wanted them all to speak in tongues, but even more to prophesy.
Why? Because tongues helps the individual; prophecy helps the church. In the
three lists of church ministries (Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 12 and Ephesians 4)
only one ministry is mentioned in all of them – the prophetic.
Prophecy is a direct
communication from God for a particular people at a particular time and place,
for a particular purpose. Prophecy gives the church fresh insights into God’s
truth (Ephesians 3), of guidance about the future (Acts 11:27ff), or
encouragement (1 Corinthians 14:3; 1 Timothy 1:18), or inspiration or
correction. It either edifies the church or brings it under judgment (‘God is
in this place!’ – see 1 Corinthians 14:25). The biblical prophets combined
judgment with hope. Their messages were sometimes very challenging: prophets
‘disturb the comfortable’ while pastors ‘comfort the disturbed’! Prophets ‘tell
it like it is’.
Paul told the
Thessalonians not to despise prophesyings (‘inspired messages’
1 Thessalonians
5:20-22) but ‘put all things to the test: keep what is good and avoid every
kind of evil.’
Hans Kung has written:
‘[A church in which the prophets are not heard]
‘declines and becomes
a spiritless organization; outwardly everything may seem all right, things run
smoothly, according to plan and along ordered paths… but inwardly it will be a
place where the Spirit can no longer blow when and where he wills.’ (The
Church, London: Burns and Oates, 1968, p.433)
In true worship God
speaks, we answer, God speaks again, we respond. ‘The Lord said to [Jeremiah]‘…
‘I answered…’ ‘But the Lord said to me…’ (Jeremiah 1:4-7). ‘I heard the Lord
say, “Whom shall I send? Who will be our messenger?” I answered, “I will go!
Send me!” So he told me to go…’ (Isaiah 6:8-9).
Over and over in the
Bible God tells us he is not pleased with worship that’s just words or
formulas, and does not lead to a changed life. Indeed if worship does not
change us it is not true worship. As Jesus, God’s Word, was totally obedient to
the will of his Father, so we must respond with our total selves (Romans
12:1,2).
Being ‘saved’ is more
than ‘receiving Jesus as your personal Saviour’ (an expression, incidentally,
that’s not in the Bible). Biblical salvation/wholeness includes justice and
mercy as well (Matthew 23:23, Luke 11:42). ‘Take away from me the noise of your
songs! …But let justice roll down like an ever-flowing stream.’ (Amos 5:24). ‘I
cannot tolerate your… festivals. When you lift your hands in prayer, I will
hide my eyes from you.
Though you offer
countless prayers I will not listen… Cease to do evil and learn to do right.
Pursue justice and champion the oppressed…’ (Isaiah 1:14ff. see also Mark
7:6-8).
To sum up: good preaching
‘exalts Christ’: our response is not ‘what great oratory!’ but ‘what a great
Saviour!’ In a moving article in The Christian Century (August 24, 1994) Martin
Copenhaver describes his last sermon to his congregation. He preached on the
text ‘Who do people say that I am…? But who do you say that I am?’
‘The first question is
as easy for us as it was for the Twelve. As Casey Stengel used to say, “You
could look it up”. And you can answer a question like that without offending
anyone… A scholar can answer that question historically or sociologically. A
preacher can answer it with a sermon packed with quotes from Schillebeeckx and
Crossan. It does not ask for commitment of any kind. But then comes the second
question: “Who do you say that I am?” Only one word is different, but that one
word makes all the difference. There is no escape into comfortable objectivity.
This question demands not so much the insight of our minds as the allegience of
our lives…’
Copenhaver mentioned a
conference when evangelist Michael Green asked a the clergy: ‘When was the last
time you told your congregation what Jesus means to you?’ The question haunted
him. So he told his people, on the last day of his ministry with them.
‘At the conclusion of
that sermon I stood at the door and shook hands with the congregation. One
woman, a beloved saint of the church, came to the head of the line but was so
overcome with emotion that she could not speak and went to the back of the
line. I assumed that she simply did not know how to say goodbye. But when she
finally reached me again, her voice cracked slightly as she asked, “Why didn’t
you tell us this before?”‘
Well…?
Further Reading:
Walter Brueggemann, Finally Comes the Poet: Daring Speech for Proclamation
(Fortress Press, 1989); John Claypool, The Preaching Event, (Word Books, 1980);
The Light Within You, (Word Books 1983); Fred B. Craddock, Preaching, (Abingdon
1985); Rowland Croucher, Your Church Can Come Alive (Melbourne: John Mark
Ministries, 1996); Michael Duduit (ed.), Handbook of Contemporary Preaching,
(Broadman 1992); Bill Hybels, Stuart Briscoe, Haddon Robinson, Mastering
Contemporary Preaching (IVP, 1989); Reinhold Niebuhr, Leaves from the Notebooks
of a Tamed Cynic, (Meridian, 1960); John R W Stott, Between Two Worlds: The Art
of Preaching in the Twentieth Century, Michigan (Eerdmans, 1982); William
Willimon, Richard Lischer eds., Concise Encyclopedia of Preaching (John Knox
Press 1995).
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