Preaching

tl;dr: I occasionally preach. Here's how I think about things like my context, Scripture, and its role in the service.

I recently joined a New Leaf Network class on Preaching in a Post-Evangelical World. I only preach 1-2 times a year, and in a church that would not typically be described as post-evangelical or any other kind of evangelical, but I still find the topic very interesting and I anticipated correctly that they would still be talking through some relevant questions.

I'm not going to recap everything they talked about, but will use it as a launching pad to touch on some of the main considerations I have when I am preaching:

Audience Context

They talk a lot in the New Leaf class about knowing your audience context. What you say to a mostly privileged church needs to be very different than what you say to a poorer, less educated, or otherwise oppressed church. My church? It's mostly privileged: not quite all white most weeks, mostly pretty solidly middle class, highly educated, mostly cis and straight, mostly married, mostly able-bodied, average age probably in their 60s. I am also mostly privileged. When I preach at my church, I am speaking from that perspective, as somebody wrestling with using my own privilege well and trying to help others do the same. So I do end up talking about things like systemic racism, or more broadly the need to acknowledge our sin. I wouldn't do that, or at least not in nearly the same way, with a majority Black or poor church. They know the world is broken; they experience it every day. They don't need that spoken to them. They probably need a lot more of a reminder of how God is with them in that oppression and we have hope that God will bring justice in all the practical ways to restore them as equal members of society.

One of the weird parts of considering audience context is being published widely to the Internet. When I write something to say, I'm writing it for my context. A lot of others share that context, and I hope if they stumble across it on this site or the church's site or YouTube that it will help them, and I do believe strongly that in almost all circumstances a church's sermons should be available publicly as an entry point for somebody wanting to check it out and learn more about the community. But it does also mean others with very different contexts can find it and it might be the exact opposite message of what they need to hear right now. That can be mediated a little by making my context as clear as I can, but it will always be true that one message can't be perfect for everyone in all contexts at the same time.

Expository Preaching

In the New Leaf class, they talk about expository as the default approach to preaching in evangelical circles. This approach that is very much focused on walking through the text, helping explain it generally in the order it appears, as opposed to a more topical approach that starts from a current relevant question. It has some big advantages mainly that it keeps the text a little more in its context.

I skew a little more expository than most in my church, but still not a lot compared to a lot of evangelicals. I mostly think it's hard to do really well in a meaningful way in a 15-20 sermon slot, at least not without being part of a longer series or being connected to Adult Education for more help. There just isn't time to go really deep into Scriptural context. There are exceptions: the first in my recent double header was much more expository, and I will have the final piece of a series on Ephesians that will likely end up a bit more expository. The New Leaf session touches on some of the problem with expository as well, that it often ends up arrogantly projecting what we want into the text, while pretending we're letting it speak for itself, because we do have a social context which does impact our reading whether we like to admit it or not. There is really no such thing as "letting the text speak for itself"; we're always interpreting. But if you're able to still come in with that honesty about your perspective, then yes, I think it is valuable to have some sermons that start from the text and some that start from the topic.

Is It Antiquated?

New Leaf's class raises the point that a lot of people think of preaching as an antiquated form. Having one person speak and others listen is not a very good way to learn. So why do we still do it? Several years ago, one member of our church preached on why he preached, and he essentially said that while only hearing something is bad for learning it, formulating your thoughts enough to be able to preach it is a very good way to learn or wrestle with something. So preaching is good for the preacher at least, if they're being honest in their wrestling.

That is close to what I'm often going for now when I preach: I want to model wrestling with the Scripture text and our tradition and our current world, and invite others into that wrestling. They don't have to conclude the same on whatever topic as I do. I don't care about that. But I do care that they are called into the kind of community that is willing to wrestle through the hard parts of life together.

That's also where I see the difference in preaching and teaching. Teaching is a fairly intellectual lecture or discussion getting deep into a specific issue, and in our church the Adult Education hour does that more. Preaching is more about inviting each other into a community around Jesus. That requires a lot more humility than the approach where the preacher is declaring God's perfect truth, and it probably takes more of a community where preaching duties are more shared in order to avoid only hearing one voice, but it's much more powerful.

The Role of the Sermon

So the sermon is valuable, but it probably shouldn't be the absolute only thing that matters. I'm a big proponent on doing the Eucharist/communion regularly, that embodied act of remembering the Jesus story together in an extremely tangible way. I personally do not care as much about music, but I know a lot do. I'm also a big fan of communal prayer, sharing our thanks and requests together.

I think sermons are often important, especially as an entry point for somebody who is new. It is the most opportunity to clearly convey what the community thinks this whole Jesus thing is about, and we live in a world where a lot of people no longer have any idea what this Jesus thing is about. So I especially want to preserve the sermon on days like Easter or leading up to Christmas, when people are most likely to come for the first time, or the first time in a while.

That doesn't necessarily mean it has to be the central feature of every service. It doesn't even mean that it has to be present in every service. On the opposite end from Easter may be something like Thanksgiving, at least in our church: a lot of people are away, and if they are there they are likely tired juggling family commitments, there is highly unlikely to be anybody new showing up, and while gratitude broadly is certainly coherent with Christianity Thanksgiving is not a specifically Christian holiday. So that day, our church usually doesn't have a sermon, instead replacing it with a day of singing and poems. It allows for a more meditative space, which is a valuable change of pace.