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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.