I was reflecting on this quote this afternoon which I think has huge implications for how we do church.
“People are often unaware of how much the culture of their church is shaped by their social class. Someone on the door of a church, for example, may hand a newcomer a hymn book, Bible, service guide and bulletin with a smile and greeting without realizing how intimidating these can be to someone from a non-literate culture. The social activities to which the poor are invited, the decision-making processes of the church, the unwritten dress codes, the style of teaching, all can be alien to the marginalized. As a result, however warm the welcome, the poor can feel marginalized within the church just as they are outside...
If our congregations are full of respectable people, then it may be that we have not truly grasped the radical grace of God.”
P. 79 Total Church: A radical reshaping around gospel and community (Tim Chester and Steve Timmis)
If we are preaching sermons that only those with a university degree could appreciate, with references to the “Greek” or how “the NIV gets it wrong here”, are we surprised that the majority of the people in the congregation are from the middle or upper class and there are hardly any working class or poor people? Can we really think that just by preaching the truth that everything else will somehow fall into place?
How a church treats (or mistreats) the marginalized is an important measure of a church.
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2 comments:
a truly great preacher is one who can take the deep and mighty truths and speak them clearly & simply, in a way that his listeners can understand so as to behold God. A preacher has got to know who is speaking to (or the range of people he is speaking to) in order to be effective.
At the same time, there is an education process and a learning curve for newcomers to church, such that phrase like "in the Greek" or "in the NIV" which may sound strange at first will become more familiar over time. I am not saying you should add in unnecessary academic bells & whistles into sermons, but merely that it will take time for people to learn the ins and outs of the Bible and the Christian faith and that is normal.
To simplify our speech such that anyone walking in off the street would understand everything immediately would be to get rid of the Gospel.
Hi Karl,
The aim of the sermon is to lift up Christ not lift up the preacher in the eyes of his congregation. Many occasions when I hear a preacher talk about the Greek or how the Bible translation gets it wrong, they are impressing the congregation with their knowledge rather than uplifting Christ.
There are ways of phrasing which can go a long way to avoid this error. You could say for example, “the word here for love can have 2 possible meanings” as opposed to, “the Greek word Paul used for love is agape as opposed to eros” etc.
I’m not so much opposed to “in the NIV”, as to “the NIV has got it wrong here” which I so often hear. It makes the congregation feel that the translation they have is unreliable and it again makes the preacher “so wise” - he can pick up the “mistakes” the translators made. Why not just say, “it is more helpful to use this word to understand the meaning of this verse”.
I’m not talking about simplifying speech to “dumb down” the Gospel. My point is that a sermon is not a lecture.
I believe that in my experience that in the majority of cases when the preacher has referred to a particular Greek word or questioned the reliability of the translation that the sermon has been unnecessarily academic.
If you want to look at the Greek or issues with translation, it would be much better to do it in the context of a Bible Study.
In my experience of Evangelical churches, the far greater problem has been a sermon being too academic and the congregation “tuning out” or falling asleep, rather than the over simplification of the Gospel.
Rich
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