Perils and Problems with Preaching

There comes a time in every Christian’s life when they get bored with listening to sermons on Sundays. Can we all admit it? Preaching is the central focus of a Sunday service in just about every evangelical church, but inevitably many of the attendants are going to get bored.

Many churches come up with new ways to circumvent this problem. They might update with some nice power point. They could even euphemize “sermon” with “conversation.” Maybe the preacher needs to dress down a bit and put more clever stories in his sermons –err conversations. We can even remove pulpits. We can shorten their length. There are so many things we can do –even sermon notes!- in order to keep the congregation engaged in what the Holy Spirit has to say to them.

But what if none these are really solutions? What if the problem is not with the manner of preaching, but the fact that preaching is central to the sunday worship to begin with? What if the expectation that you go to church, sing songs, and then “tune in” to “the man of God who gives you the word of God” is the problem? None of these the adjustments above would seem to offer a solution.

I realize that many people reading this can’t imagine going to “church” and not expecting the pastor’s sermon to take up most of their time. Sitting reverently during a “conversation” is part of Sunday worship. To do otherwise might seem to fail to make God’s Word important.

It is for all those out there that I write this blog. Please bear with me a bit. Sure, what I’m writing is not going to be popular, but I think if you read it you’ll see that I am not completely mad.

Making preaching the center of the service can create problems. Not all the problems I list are inevitable, but I believe that they pop-up more often than is easily seen. With an iconoclast’s hammer in hand, here I go:

Making preaching central can reduce the communication of God’s truth to verbal mediums only. Of all the reasons I could list, this is probably the most abstract so let’s get it out of the way. Not all communication is verbal. Not all communication uses words. Preaching reduces our worship and learning to what we do with our ears and one person’s voice. The other senses of touch, sight, and smell are ignored.

In older high church traditions, the senses of hearing, sight, smell, and touch are used in concert with each other. In a Missouri Synod Lutheran Church I attended the central visual focus of the church was stained glass image of Christ the King. The pastor stood off to the side when he preached a short homily, not a grandiose sermon. The senses of touch took place through the partaking of the Eucharist, which was preceded by prayer and singing, not an explanatory sermon.

Thus the worship and learning was not through words alone, but through other senses and experiences.

Making preaching central can give an inordinate amount of authority to the pastor. Ignoring other mediums of communication doesn’t mean that something is not communicated through them. Consider what is visually center. Often the pastor stands on an elevated platform above a crowd that is sitting. All eyes are on him. He might have a pulpit or not, but that makes no difference –especially when the pulpit is replaced with a spotlight. The most reverent Christians are the ones passionately taking notes. This lasts, in many cases, for the majority of the Sunday service. It goes on week after week, year after year.

All this communicates that this man talking, is not only a special, specific, role, but that he is to be followed and to be obeyed. This is a bit autocratic, no matter how benign the leader maybe. It is also incredibly ironic that a single person becomes the center of attention for the greater glory of God. Are we not able to look to God directly? Do we follow Apollos?

There is also a problem with a commitment to have the Bible as the authority. Most people in the pews do not have the time, the resources, or sometimes even the will to learn how to study scripture (and I can add that neither do many ministers!), thus the job of interpretation falls to one person. Eventually, what the pastor says gets conflated with what the Bible says. (Admittedly, there is always an interpretation of some kind going on when we read the Bible.) Still, when the pastor’s sermon and the Bible get conflated, it produces a kind of dogmatism. Questioning the pastor becomes the equivalent of questioning the Bible. This is too much influence in one guys hands.

Making preaching central can create a “cult-of-personality” or outright sacredotalism. It should go without saying that there is a problem when a well-known minister receives celebrity treatment when he walks into a room or attends a conference. Again, this pastor becomes the center of attention for the Glory of God. What is even worse is when it turns into sacredotalism.

Sacradotalism is a ten dollar word that is lost in evangelical vocabulary, but it is alive and well in practice. It means that there are two types of Christians; the lay Christians and the really spiritual ones. Sacradotalism means that there is a “man of God who delivers the Word of God” to the lay people. That one person has the role of being extra holy and has an almost exclusive access to the Holy Spirit. He delivers it to the congregation through his presence and speaking –with the appropriate humility of course. In some circles, the pastor may even declare himself the anointed man of God who is accountable only to God. (I recommend running from such people.)

People sometimes shrug and ask what the problem is. There are two. First, this creates problem with the congregation. Now, not only is authority of the pastor conflated with scripture, but pastor can become proverbial prophets who can be no more questioned than the Apostles. As bad as this is, it is only a small problem compared to what it can do to a pastor.

Exactly how holy is holy enough for the “man of God who delivers the word of God”? I think very few people can appreciate the kind of pressure it takes to be “extra holy.” Pastors often talk about how they need to watch their own moral and spiritual lives for sake of their congregation. The problem is you can never be holy enough. The external pressure of a spiritual perfectionism can be crushing. A pastor cannot pray enough, fast enough, avoid sin enough and such if his condition so dramatically determines how much of the Holy Spirit gets to his flock. One has to wonder if pressure like this paves the way for downfall through hidden escapisms. Ted Haggard anyone?

It is not that I don’t like a good message and a good sermon, and I don't think they should be abolished. In fact, my wonderful iPod has kept me busy as I have downloaded various messages from ministers all over the country. Neither am I saying that I think that all these problems will happen every time, in every church, on every Sunday. I am saying that the problems are there, and I think for the most part unadressed because they are unknown. As long as preaching central to sunday worship, problems like these will eventually come up somehow.

And I can never get over the subtle irony that worshiping god Sundays means (in part) sitting down, passively, while focusing on someone other than God for forty-five minutes.

Book Review: Jesus Made in America

Just Give me Jesus…Which Jesus?

One of the most difficult endeavors anyone can undertake is describing what “water” is to fish. Or in this case, how American culture influences Christianity to members of American cultural Christianity.

Yet this is exactly what Stephen J. Nichols accomplishes in his book Jesus Made in America.

This book is a historic survey of American Christianity. It begins with the puritans and ends with the present day. Some chapters on the past help us understand the present. Who is Jesus according to founding fathers or Jesus according to cowboys? Later, several chapters of the book are dedicated to issues relevant to the present day Christians. Who is Jesus according to the political right (and left) and who is according to Bible book stores? The book is a flowing, and fascinating read that is neither boring nor heavy on jargon. All of it is quite illuminating and challenging.

But this book is not for faint-hearted or the non-introspective. Nichols criticizes much of contemporary evangelicalism as having missed the mark on the understanding of Jesus of all matters. Not only does he tell fish what water is, he tells fish that the water is polluted. There are more than a few sacred cows (golden calves?) that Nichols wants scratch at. He even calls out a few heroes by name, including Max Lucado, Beth Moore, and James Dobson. Not even Veggie tales remains untouched!

Space does not allow me to cover every section of this book, but I there were two that hit close to home for me. The first was Christian music. Nichols points out how often Evangelicals get their theology from their songs, and their songs are sometimes –shall we say thin. Much of evangelical CCM creates and then perpetuates the cultural image of Christ that Nichols decries. There is too much emphasis on “how Jesus makes me feel,” little regard for “what Jesus has done in history,” and barely any “who Jesus is.” He even points out how close Christian lyrics are to pop love songs*, as has been satirized on South Park. At one point the Christian Contemporary music was a grass-roots, spontaneous and genuine before in turned into a money making industry that watered down its message as it tried to evangelize. This leads to the second section of the book I enjoyed: Jesus according to consumer culture.

Many Christians are often shocked when Jesus overturned money tables and chased out the lenders with a whip. Strange think is, Nichols probably believes that Jesus would do the same thing at most Bible bookstores. Jesus and consumer culture form an unhappy marriage in Nichol’s view. One of the saddest points in the book is a story of women who was not able to buy a Jesus fish for her car. She wondered who she was supposed to witness. Nichols is fair in his belief that the Holy Spirit can use anything, but the culture of T-shirts, endless mass-market books, childhood media, etc makes him wonder if this is because of or in spite of a mass-market Jesus. Yet this is the water that many people swim in. What kind of Jesus are we really looking at? Is the culture conforming to Christ or is Christ revised to fit the culture?

Even thought the book is critical, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Nichols, in the epilogue, explains that he believes evangelicalism can hit the mark. To do so, Christians must learn to look outside their own generation and pull on resources from the past. He suggests the great Creeds (while recognizing the bias they had) as a guide for evangelical Christology. He also admits that the Christology has never been an easy task, but we should never be afraid of complexity. It is our job, as Christians in the dominant west to ensure we both learn and pass on these teaching of Christ. No matter how difficult the task.

Thanks for reading. Now go read this book or see a few other interesting ones.




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*May I gently add a point to all the Christian girls/women who ask “where are all the good, single, Christian men?” this comment: please consider that men worship God differently than women do. For instance, Christian heterosexual men are generally not interested in relating to Jesus as if he is our boyfriend. We’re not interested competing with him either.

Why I am Frustrated with Futurism

While it was never my intention to be overly negative or deconstructive when it comes to this blog, I think I finally need to comment on Dispensational Futurism, otherwise known as “end times” by the popular evangelicalism. Dispensational Futurism, for those of here who may not be familiar with it, is a specific understanding of the Olivet discourse in Matthew 24, Revelation, Daniel and such. It represents the popular dogmas like the rapture (when Christians disappear) the coming tribulation, black helicopters, and a world government of the Anti-Christ. It was popularized by the Left Behind series, which is a whole different blog entirely.

At this time, I not only think that Dispensational Futurism is off track, I think that dispensationalism faces quite a bit of problems; problems that I think are not easily overcome. Here are some of the reasons why I am frustrated with futurism.

Dispensational Futurism is not a “conservative” view. Dispensational Futurism is often taught in evangelical churches, and especially charismatic and very fundamentalist churches, “what the Bible teaches.” Deviations from futurism are often taught as “liberal” viewpoints to be viewed with suspicion. Dispensationalism is right because it is conservative.

The strange thing is, dispensational futurism is far from conservative. It began in the 1800s –very late by Church History standards- and it was incredibly novel of an idea even then. Most Christians, including the big names in Protestantism like Luther, Calvin, and Wesley, never knew of futurism like we know it today and would not endorse it if they knew of it now. Furthermore, when futurists first came on the scene, they snubbed ministers who they considered to intellectual (and were consequently the actual conservatives) as not having anything worth saying.

Dispensational Futurism is a liberal view. In fact, if one considers how futurists approach scripture, the positions might actually be radical. This leads me to the second point…

Dispensational Futurists are hermeneutically challenged. While I am sure that there are futurists out there who are very conscious and aware of their interpretative methods, I am beginning to think that many futurists not only do not know their own hermeneutic, but do not even know what a “hermeneutic” is.

The more I talk to futurists, the more I am convinced that they do not know the difference between an interpretive method (a hermeneutic) and the act of interpreting. Furthermore, some of the most basic principles of interpretation are outright doubly ignored, such as reading a passage in its literally context or according to the time period it was written.

I believe that the conclusions of futurism are matters of presumption, and it is a presumption they are not aware of. The parable of the Purple Cow exemplifies this problem.

Dispensational Futurism has made Too Many False Prophecies. One can pick up a book at a Christian bookstore entitled “Charting the End Times” but chances are you aren’t going to find “88 Reasons why Jesus is coming in 1988.” Most books that talked about the end of the world around the year 2000 are less than likely to available for purchase too. I also doubt anyone is reading “the Late Great Planet Earth.” Why? Because these books prophesied about then current events that turned out not to be true.

There is a serious problem with consistency here. Many Christians rightly denounce the latter day prophets of Mormonism and the Jehovah Witnesses for their failed visions of the end of the world. Rightly, people invoke the test of a false prophet in Deuteronomy 18.

For even one false prophecy made by the founders of Mormonism, your average evangelical will rightly say “away with them and their theological projects.” Why then do we tolerate the failed predictions of dispensational futurism? Is it because names keep changing every ten years or so? Failed prophecies are failed prophecies. This should be enough to make at least reevaluate futurism if not dump it completely. Sadly, people seem to have a short memory about these things.

Dispensational Futurism encourages a “fire escape” Gospel I almost entitled this section as “Dispensational Futurism has a suspicious genesis.” But I think it suffices to say this, Dispensational Futurism, since its inception, has taught that the W.A.S.P.’s are alienated people, losing control in their society, and thus will eventually be sucked away from world because they’re just that special. In other words, get on board, and get out. Many articles, like those found at the preteristsite.com and the slacktivisit have already noted this same attitude in the Left Behind series, and I need not expound on them here.

I do not believe the Gospel, the Kingdom of God, and such is about escape planet earth and letting all God’s creation burn. The Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed that starts small and then grows into something huge within the soil it was planted in. It is not like a soldier in a foxhole waiting for helicopter evac. Christians should not be looking to things like the rapture index to see how horrible the world is getting and looking foreward to our escape with self-satisfactory smugness, rather we should be doing the work of God in the world and preparing it for his coming.

So there it is: Four reasons why I am frustrated with futurism. It is a liberal view supported by poor interpretation. It has a bad track record when it comes to predicting the future and encourages, if only implicitly, that Christians need not care about the condition of the world around them. This is something I have been frustrated with for years.

So suck it, LaHaye.