When you are a Christian academic with a doctorate, many people assume that you are a seminarian and thus ask you to preach. During the past couple of years, I have been called upon to do it a few times and have always accepted because it just seems like the thing one should do.
Today, I had the chance to deliver a sermon at a Calvary Chapel service in Houston. I wrote out the whole thing, as I usually do, and then delivered it taking care to look up frequently and make eye contact. Upon finishing, I felt good. I tend to focus on disaffected young people because I always hope my lack of preacher training will result in a delivery different enough to get the attention of the kid who has heard it all a thousand times and is just waiting for his chance to stop going to church. It seemed to me that the sermon achieved the goal. The topic was the resurrection of Christ as the strong foundation of the Christian faith. My disaffected looking kid seemed to focus in on what I was saying.
I felt a little less good afterwards, though, because a man in the congregation sought me out to give me a detailed report card on the message and my style in delivering it. Although he was positive in his remarks, it troubled me a bit to put something like a sermon through the same kind of judgment process a food critic might apply to a meal. I mean, to me it felt a little more personal than that. And why would you ever assume that a speaker wants to go straight to the metaphorical telestrator to review his performance?
My sermons, because I am not a preacher and have no real theological training or training in homiletics, tend to begin from personal experiences in life or things I have learned along the way. From that point, I usually find my way into the scripture and try to drive the message home. My friendly critic remarked that I started out talking about just whatever and he was wondering “Where’s the verse? Where is he going with this?”
I have to say, the thing that worries me the most in preaching is the wary waiting judgment of this type of person who feels that the only thing of value that can come out of a sermon is basically expository preaching from the word of God. I wouldn’t seek to replace it. But there is room to say more, is there not? Isn’t there some value in personal testimony, in life experience, in reflecting upon literature, film, culture, etc.?
I’d love to hear from the peanut gallery on this one. And before doom descends upon me, I promise that I finished strong in the scripture with just about the full second half of the sermon.
November 8th, 2009 | 6:29 pm | #1
I don’t mind the occasional topical sermon, but my congregation takes great effort to teach through the Bible, spending each quarter of the year in a different part of scripture and then picking up where we left off the previous year that quarter if we don’t finish a book in one quarter. If someone were to take part in that preaching schedule and not get to scripture until the second half of the sermon, I would consider them to have dropped the ball.
And I do think there are good reasons for doing things this way, where if I see a congregation regularly having sermons that are not focused entirely on scripture or even taking scattered texts that don’t teach through a book, I’d think they’re not really teaching the whole counsel of God adequately.
But that doesn’t mean an occasional sermon from a guest preacher has to be this way as an absolute. There surely are things to learn from things other than strict exposition of a text. But I do have to confess that I think a sermon that reads a text and then talks about everything but that text is amiss, and I prefer the non-expositional moments to be asides or illustrative examples when moving through a text.
November 8th, 2009 | 7:25 pm | #2
Let me add in response to this that while the first half of the sermon was all in build-up to the second half with the scriptures, I don’t mean to imply that the critic was correct to wonder where I was going. I was very clearly going somewhere. I was talking about what it means to witness to someone (on the interpersonal level), what you should be prepared for, and what witnessing is all about (the resurrection of Christ as the reason for our hope).
I think it is great when a church has a pastor preaching straight through the scriptures. I think that is the preferred model. But I’m very reluctant to accept the idea that it is the only way to go.
November 8th, 2009 | 8:40 pm | #3
The fact that he was wondering where you were going with it means that you had his attention and that when you did get to the Scriptures he was able to make the connection. Mission accomplished. It made him stay focused. Sounds like a job well done.
It sounds like he has a problem with attitude going into a message. People who go to church to critique the service, the sermon, the preacher, are missing the whole point of worship. We go to worship and to fellowship and to learn. Even bad sermons, if coming from a true believer, have something that can benefit the most mature believer. The best sermon in the world cannot benefit those who come in with a report card to grade the preacher on.
November 8th, 2009 | 8:45 pm | #4
I myself have preached on occasion, although, like you, I am an academic with no seminary training. However, my wife does and she is kind enough to vet my sermons before I deliver them.
Out of curiosity, Hunter, which scripture lesson(s) was (were) read before the sermon? Is there generally an expectation that the sermon must be based on that text or texts? I ask because that “where’s the verse?” comment seems a bit odd if the congregation had already heard the lesson and if that was the passage on which you were preaching.
November 8th, 2009 | 9:36 pm | #5
Hunter –
It’s always dangerous to comment on something you haven’t read or heard, but you have my unadulterated sympathies. One of the things Catholics accuse Protestantism of is having 10,000 popes since every man is his own final arbiter of what’s right — and that’s a fair charge in substance if not in formal theory.
It’s one thing to play full-contact blog hockey as this is a mostly-open forum for broadly-Christian essays and thoughts — it’s another to spend the worship service picking nits out of the sermon as if that is honoring to God.
My friend Phil is somewhat of an expert on Spurgeon, and his interest has become something of a recreational interest of mine. The stunning thing about Spurgeon is how little time he usually spends in the text in any particular sermon. No extended explication of the Greek; no endless references to commentaries or other scholarship. Yet Spurgeon is seen as a great preacher — perhaps the greatest of the 19th century.
The warning that often follows that is, “beware young preacher: you are no Spurgeon.” Yet I find that warning a little, um, hagiographically-blind. The way Spurgeon preached was, as I see it, the way Paul preached – from the Scripture, thru Christ, to real people who need a real savior. And maybe that’s more important in preaching than conducting a seminar class in Greek Lexigraphy or Ancient-eastern sociology.
You should remind your future critics that in Paul’s letters there is very little reference to other Scriptures, and in his preaching recorded in Acts, there is little-to-none (Look at Acts 17 and find the Scripture quotes in the monologues at Mars Hill). The history of the church tells us that the sermon is lead by Scripture, and is preceded by Scripture, but it does not itself have to be an annotated book report of Scripture to be given to God’s people. If God gets the first word, and you thereby explain to people what He means, it’s up to them to hear it and live as if it is true.
When they face Him on the final day, they will account for all the times their pride and pessimism prevented them from receiving the good news gladly as they did in Berea.
November 8th, 2009 | 10:02 pm | #6
I appreciate these thoughtful comments on the matter. And thank you, Frank, for the extended thoughts on Spurgeon. What an outstanding role model for us all.
David, in many evangelical churches there is no structure where by a scripture verse would be read to the congregation prior to the sermon. That was the case in the example I am giving.
November 8th, 2009 | 10:52 pm | #7
I have to agree with the idea of preaching through the text, week by week, as the best model, but since you were a guest, that isn’t as much of an issue.
I think it can be appropriate to include much more than just Scripture. It is something that I have been guilty of, to dismiss ideas because there is not “a text” given to support it immediately. Eugene Peterson speaks of how this stifles spiritual wisdom in his book “The Wisdom of Each Other.” We are often too quick to dismiss thoughts because they lack a proof text, when often they are true spiritual wisdom gained through experience and growth in Christ.
So, if you were preaching every week in the same church, I think a series based on the text and following over time would be better, but as a guest, I think it is appropriate to start how you did and finish strongly with the text (as long as you do devote time to it and explain it, which you say you did).
November 9th, 2009 | 9:35 am | #8
“David, in many evangelical churches there is no structure where by a scripture verse would be read to the congregation prior to the sermon. That was the case in the example I am giving.”
The absence of structure is undoubtedly part of the problem here. If there were a clear point in the service where the scripture lesson was read, and if it was generally understood that the sermon would be based on this, that would eliminate (or at least ameliorate) the “where’s the verse” problem, I should think. This is not a criticism of you, Hunter; this is directed at the church, which should have made clear its own expectations when it invited you to preach.
Years ago I attended an independent baptist church in which there was little structure to the worship. In the course of the service only one brief prayer was said — over the offering plate! No other prayers were offered at all, which is not an inconsequential omission. An absence of structure can only lead to defective worship.
November 9th, 2009 | 9:55 am | #9
David K –
disclaimer: I’m a Baptist by temperament and by conviction, so whatever I say next is wholly colored by that. Forgive me. :-)
I think there’s a LOT to be said regarding the complete absence of liturgy in Baptist and post-Baptist circles. A LOT. Not the least of which is that the defective form which reduces Sunday worship to an orientation speech, 3 songs, a handshake, an offering and a sunday school lesson misses the point in the same way having the whole thing in Latin misses the point.
HOWEVER, I don’t think what happened to Hunter was necessarily a function of bad liturgy. The idea that someone should accost the guest preacher immediately after the sermon with a critique of the content (giving tips on how to make it more form-fitting, of all things) misses the larger matter that as Baptists we sort of formally abhor formalism.
Pheh!
November 9th, 2009 | 10:40 am | #10
If you don’t know this already, Calvary Chapel traditionally favors an expository, verse-by-verse preaching style. There is a lot of variation from one CC church to the next, because the churches are loosely affiliated and each senior pastor is considered to bear ecclesiastical authority comparable with that of Moses (though obviously not exactly the same). It’s possibly you were attending one of the CC churches that adheres strictly to Chuck Smith’s preaching style.
November 9th, 2009 | 11:31 am | #11
Interesting, A.M. I hadn’t known that.
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