A fellow missionary working in Thailand wrote on his blog "In Defense of the Sermon - Part 2" dealing with 3 common objections to maintaining the sermon as a central part of the life of the Christian Church.
Objection #1 "Sermons are ineffective",
Objection #2 "People learn better in a participatory environment. Listening to a sermon is too passive.
Objection#3 “The sermon is a Western church tradition, rooted in culture and not the Bible. We should find more indigenous ways of teaching the Bible.”
To be honest, having graduated from a Bible College which is perhaps the only one in Australia to have a school of preaching, I had no doubt in my mind that it was the central and most important aspect of church. However, I now have a few questions which I expressed in my comments to my friend's post which follows:-
"Dear Karl,
In terms of objection #2, Frank Viola (Reimagining Church) argues that "In the first-century gathering [i.e church], neither the sermon nor "the preacher" was the center of attention. Instead, congregational participation was the divine rule" (p.53). So he is arguing that not in terms of participatory being better because of learning styles, but this was the biblical norm for the early church. He argues that there different types of meetings where preaching was central, i.e Apostolic Meetings where apostolic workers preached to an interactive audience with the goal to plant a church from scratch or to encourage an existing church one. Evangelistic meetings. These commonly occurred outside the regular meetings of the church (p.49-50). However, normal church meetings were participatory as described above.
I haven't had time to look into Viola's claims to be honest (hopefully I will find time one day), but he provides another view perspective which I was not aware of before.
I'll still thinking through this one. To be honest, I would have agreed completely with your comments upon leaving college and ministry in Australia. But being in Thailand and thinking over the role of the sermon, I'm wondering whether we can put too much emphasis on the sermon and that it becomes an idol of sorts (extreme example would be a pastor sending 30+ hours on his sermon to get it perfect while neglecting the congregation pastoraly) rather than emphasizing the Word of God . Is the sermon what is important or is it that people are receiving the Word of God. Can you even separate the two?"
Any thoughts?
Posts
Before They Reached Bangkok: Gutzlaff, Tomlin, and Psalm 106
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อ่านบทความนี้เป็นภาษาไทย
On August 23, 1828, the first two Protestant missionaries arrived in
Thailand, Karl Gutzlaff and Jacob Tomlin. Gutzlaff was Germ...
4 days ago
3 comments:
Rich, I haven't been in this discussion but have been following the blogs. In my opinion I think that Driscoll's recent talk at the Text and Context conference addresses this issure pretty well. Actually I think that his talk is directly aimed at this very discussion. Although I could disagree with some things that Driscoll teaches, I do believe he does a pretty good job showing that preaching has been the ordained means by which the Lord has brought life to his people all throughout redemptive history. I know it's quite long and you are busy, but if you get a chance to listen to it, let me know what you think.
http://www.marshillchurch.org/media/text-and-context/putting-preachers-in-their-place
-Chris in Lopburi
Hi Chris,
Thanks for your comment. I will have a listen to the talk.
The focus of our discussion has been the role of preaching in church where there is a body of believers already. I think there is no argument about the role of preaching to non believers, i.e. to bring people to new life.
In the NT most of the explicit examples of preaching were to non-believers evangelistically not in a church context.
Hope you've been following the comments on Karl's blog on the subject.
Cheers.
Rich
Dear Chris,
I had a chance to listen to Driscoll’s sermon this afternoon. I’m a big fan of Driscoll and I listen to his sermons regularly. However, I must say that I did not find the argument in this sermon convincing.
The issue I’m trying to deal with is “Is preaching as it is done today, a monologue usually by one Senior ministor/pastor week by week to a passive audience, is that what the Bible intended for the Church?”.
Driscoll would say yes by referring to numerous passages of preaching by Jesus, Paul and other Apostles, but nearly all these passages are in the context of preaching to Non-believers outside of a church. The context is different so to then argue that preaching is essential part of church from these passage is not right.
Driscoll says that Acts 13 clearly shows that there was a team of preachers at the church in Antioch. But when you look up Acts 13:1 it says “Now there were in the church at Antioch prophets and teachers”. O.k. it is possible there were a team os preachers at the church in Antioch but is this what the verse is actually saying? Is these passage advocating the current practice of most churches of one pastor preaching every week?
I don’t want you to think I’m against preaching in church. Not at all. I’m just questioning whether preaching by one pastor every week in church was what the Bible is advocating. I believe that the word of God is central to church. I’m just not sure that preaching by one ordained person though is what the Bible is teaching. I think there is room for several teaching elders. Does preaching have to be a monologue? Is the Bible teaching this?
In Driscoll’s argument for preaching being the central part of church he goes to the teaching of the reformers, Calvin and the like and their thinking on the marks of the church. But he does not show us where from the Bible this is evident.
Looking at preaching today. Almost all of it is done in the church to believers and hardly any to non-believers. In the New Testament most of the preaching is to non-believers. Preaching in the church context and what form it took I don’t think is clearly addressed as opposed to preaching outside of church to non-believers were there are numerous examples.
The way in which Driscoll unequivocally denounces the book, Pagan Christianity by Frank Viola and George Barna (he only mentioned Barna) I thought was unhelpful. He doesn’t do justice to the arguments in the book. Sure I don’t agree with everything in Pagan Christianity, but he makes out that their arguments are without any basis which I don’t think is a fair reflection.
Sorry Chris, I wasn’t convinced by Driscoll this time.
Rich
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