One of the pressing questions in contemporary worship is, where do we touch one another? A case can be made for singing to one another, but praise songs tend to be directed toward God. We can speak of communion with one another, but the truth is that we most often focus on our relationship with God. I believe that one of the things we do that is most fellowship- oriented is the sermon--this is us, but again one must admit that such is not often in view. What is the shape of meaningful preaching?
One might quickly observe as a beginning point that preaching should be faithful, relevant, effective in changing lives. Faithful to the biblical text, relevant to the world in which we live, and capable of motivating to action.
If preaching is to have a unifying effect, it builds community through shared stories. At times, those may be "our stories" in the sense of our history, our past, our defining moments. That is important, that is who we are. But many do not know those stories. So they must be told. But the real shared stories that make us community are the stories of Scripture.
These stories must be told, but they must be told according to the traditions, according to the intention of Scripture. They must not be misapplied, and the story must be allowed to exist for the sake of the story and its impact in our lives.
Augustine wrote one of the first homiletic treatises, and identified a well-known trilogy-- he said preaching must teach, please, and persuade. Along the way in the chain of church history, the latter two generally were lost, and preaching became largely teaching through the decades. That is certainly the model of preaching we have historically known in the Restoration Movement, and it seemingly served us well with a doctrinal emphasis, a focus on what the Bible says, a comparison of the teachings of various religious groups, etc. Most of our preaching from week to week was teaching. The persuading dimension of preaching has not historically occurred in the weekly preaching we have done, but has been reserved for special meetings, revivals, gospel meetings, campaigns, city-wide campaigns, and similar activities. So we knew teaching and persuading as models for preaching, but we largely practiced teaching in our churches.
But about 50 years ago, a major shift occurred in the US religious world with a book urging more persuasion in preaching. "As One With Authority, The Homiletical Plot.... Various religious groups began to have more campaigns, revivals, Billy Graham crusades became popular, and gospel meetings which we had been having for 50 years became the "in" thing, even among our religious neighbors. This continued, with various media emphases through the ‘50s and ‘60s, and even early ‘70s. Evangelism ‘73, TV, radio, increasing mailings--these were the preferred methods.
But in 1971 an influential book appeared which called for a new emphasis on "pleasing" as a function of preaching. In 1973 Ray Stedman wrote of Body Life as a dynamic of evangelism, obvious focused on pleasing, and a small groups moment took off. I think these things generally had little influence in the churches of Christ, although I would point out that in the 1970s we began to hear more about expository preaching. Expository preaching was still teaching, but there was a move from the "proof-texting" approach which treated themes or topics to a more textual approach which dealt with sections of the text. The problem may be that the move to expository preaching at least as it was done in most of the churches of Christ was neither pleasing nor persuasive. Some of it was good, a larger part of it was frankly awful, including much of what I tried.
In the last decade or more, there has been an effort in the denominational world to return to preaching that teaches--one could cite Swindoll as an example, and much preaching in community churches uses outlines and fills in the blank.
At the same time there has been a call for preaching that answers the needs of our world-- families, financial concerns, etc., which in reality continues the focus on pleasing. At a recent community church service, after the music was over and the "lesson" began, there was the preacher interviewing three couples who had recently become Christians, and had found changed lives and renewed relationships. Then a video came on, and a woman talked about her marital problems, and then she became a Christian. Then a man came on, same story, became Christian, and began writing "god-music" and then the two of them were together explaining how their lives were brand new.
As the drama finishes, the lights focus on a man playing his guitar and singing, and it is obvious he is the man in the video. He is playing his god-songs. It is obvious that the focus is pleasing, yet there is teaching and persuading going on. Lessons are being told, stories shared, in powerful ways. Then the preacher stands up to present the sermon, and the sermon is the typical community church sermon with fill in the blanks, and biblical points.
The point I am making is this--in this real example, it is not the sermon which is teaching, delighting, and persuading. The interviews and video and drama are a part of the delight and also of the persuasion. If Christianity changed their lives, perhaps it can change mine. The sermon has as its only task teaching, and the methods used are well-suited to the teaching task.
I believe we have in churches of Christ imitated others in our assemblies too long without understanding how and why certain things were being done. If we continue, I fear we may lose our identity. Drama may be an effective method of communication and persuasion, audience identification, emotion, but we have largely wanted drama to teach. We have done some good things but done them poorly, so that any possibility of delight and pleasure is gone--AV, skits, puppets, the list goes on and on. It is good to fill in blanks, but it is hard to present a sermon that does more than teach with such a method. At the end of the sermon, perhaps we can persuade. Again my point is that we try to understand something of the dynamics of worship as we come together, and of the goal before us.
Narrative preaching has become popular, because it is both delightful and persuasive, but it is often short on teaching. Expository preaching is long on teaching and short on delight and persuasion. What is the solution. That is something I must wrestle with every week.
I think we find help in returning to Augustine. We must teach, with good Biblical foundations. But we must also understand that there is a place for delight. As a people we have been against pleasing--many have called it entertainment. We have even questioned persuasion as manipulation. Persuasion is when we are moved to act, we love the promises of God, and we are involved emotionally.
My goal, you deserve to know this, and to share with me the challenge. My goal is to put in every sermon teaching, and pleasing, and persuasion. I want us to learn, to enjoy that learning process, and to leave with the commitment to be Christians. I want to define Christianity as the Bible does--something we are, day by day. Christianity is not defined by whether we go through the right motions in an assembly.
