IS PREACHING THE PROPER APPROACH TO PROCLAIM THE GOSPEL?
June 2014
Earlier Experiences
While biking – which I do a number of times each week, always between where I live in the country and the village where I shop, a distance of 11.2 km back and forth – I calculated that in my life-time I have gone to church and heard a sermon at least 5000 times. I started going there when I was as young as 5 years old.. Then attending worship services on Sundays was the family routine, always twice, followed by Sunday School. That meant sitting still some 90-105 minutes, standing up when ‘the long prayer’ was being held, that one alone often taking 10-15 minutes, about the duration of an average sermon today. And Sunday School yet to come!
Standing up in church?
I now think that that custom of some men- never women – to stand up during prayer was probably to fight any inclination to fall asleep. I remember my paternal grandfather doing the same even during the sermon to fight the urge to take a snooze, accustomed as he was to outdoor life because a stifling hot church produced mind-numbing conditions.
I also remember how, in the absence of a minister, an elder would read a sermon, prepared by a minister of course. That same grandfather refused to use the pulpit for that purpose: to him that was a holy place reserved for the holy man, appointed by God to be the proclaimer of the Good News, and he was not worthy to occupy that elevated position.
It must be me, but of the 5000 plus sermons uttered in my presence during my long life, I can only recall two, both at funeral services, one by Dr. Paul Schrotenboer, who preached on Psalm 116: 15: “The Lord takes pleasure in the death of his saints”, and one not too long ago by my friend Stephen Dunkin, also at a funeral. He, so far, has been the only preacher mentioning the New Creation as the destination of the saints. It could quite well be that I have subconsciously been influenced by pulpit talk. I do remember a few sermon-related incidents, one involving my future father-in-law- who died when both my future wife and I were 8 years old- pounding the pulpit to emphasize a point. The other instance was a merciful short service when our then minister, K. G. van Smeeden, had received some negative feedback from his church council and in retaliation, highly inflamed, quickly read through his prepared text and we were out of the church within an hour to our great delight. Those were the days when the ministers saw themselves a bit better than most, a notion that, I think, is still out there.
New wine: new containers
On that same bike ride one of Jesus’ sayings came to mind: you don’t put new wine in old wine bags, because that only leads to trouble. Any person with a bit of insight into the times we live in, realizes that we face different circumstances, of which the church itself is a shining – or better a terrible – example.
That the church is in trouble is no secret. Our church building was erected in 1891, almost 125 years ago. It seats at least 250 people. Today the audience often is no more than 25, a tenth of the capacity, the average age well in excess of 70 years of age. The people, my wife and I included, go to church faithfully, partly to express our loyalty to the people we love.
In an age where communication is mostly graphic, where the attention span has become shorter and shorter, the traditional church communication, by means of the spoken word, is sorely outdated. Jesus’ reminder that new wine belongs in new containers, is not followed. The church, almost without exception, has stubbornly stuck to the old model of preaching. The retention rate of speeches – and that is what sermons are – is less than 10 percent if it penetrates at all. When our congregation was established there were no other distractions, no radio, no television, let alone the host of mind-numbing electronic devices we have today.
Today our church- and all churches – uses the same format to tell people about the gospel as was done 125 years ago, when the church was full, the wine was new and so were the containers. Now the containers are old and whatever Good News is out there, is leaking away because the method of delivery no longer functions. Everywhere churches are grasping at straws to find new ways.
Are there new ways?
When Jesus spoke, as he did in the Sermon on the Mount, he sat down amidst his eager listeners, all stretched out around him while he spoke. Why did Jesus sit on the ground? It seems to me that he derived strength from the soil, totally aware that, fully human he was and we are, the soil was the material out of which we all are formed, something both Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Johan H. Bavinck constantly emphasize. Communication is more than just uttering words. By standing above the crowd, away from the earth, the elevated position suggests that the message has nothing to do with the earth. Heaven comes to mind. Also, after hundreds of years of sermons, it is almost impossible to hear something new. The Bible’s basic message is that God created, we uncreated, and Jesus has made all things new.
There’s also something else. In many denominations a minister is called Father. The head of the R.C. Church is even called Holy Father. When the new pope is elected the Latin words are: Habemus Papam: we have a new daddy, suggesting exactly what it is “paternalism”, which literally means ‘letting father call the tune while the children have no voice and the women are not even allowed to think for themselves.’ That stratagem has led to constant immaturity, and is one of the basic causes of the church’s stagnation. Having a person address the laity without a chance for discourse, without an opportunity for discussion, is entirely out of tune with the spirit of the 21st Century.
Jesus sat down, fully conscious of the mood of the people, feeling their reaction as shifting body weights or strained attention vibrated through the common ground. By sitting among them he could sense the bated breath, but also the waning of interest. I have a picture book of Dietrich Bonhoeffer where he too is seated on the grass while conversing with others.
There is much more to communication than mere words. Ministers, by and large, are not trained in the full spectrum of conveying meaning: it also involves voice projection, a logical structure of the message, enunciation, the inclusion of emotions in the presentation and an intimate involvement of one’s own feelings.
Most people have become aware that the way we live leads to death. We constantly violate the laws of creation, which means we sin against God in the way we live. We also sin when we violate the laws of communication. Even though a person may have the correct academic qualifications and has been institutionally properly installed, this means little or nothing when he or she is not schooled in the total range of communication. Sermons usually lack creational input: today in whatever we do we have to take God’s cosmos into account because God’s Word is more than the Bible. God’s creation is the Primary Word: the written Word is needed to understand the Primary Word. Failure to integrate the two Words is a form of “the shifting baseline syndrome.” Coined by the biologist Daniel Pauly, it described our relationship to ecosystems, which is utterly relevant to theology as well: we can’t have one Word – creation -without the other Word – the Scriptures. To charge ahead without doing justice to the totality of the Word is the main reason why, by confining preaching to one dimension, we have imperiled the entire ecclesiastical system. That’s why the church is suffering, retaining mostly only those who are loyal to the institution through friend- or family ties or simply through custom and superstition.
Seek First the Kingdom
Another reason why preaching is a passé experience is that it promotes individualism. The church has the wrong approach when the goal of the church is nothing else but personal salvation, with heaven as the eternal destination. It seldom mentions the pursuit of the kingdom, the dominant feature in the Scriptures. “Seek first the Kingdom,” is Jesus’ most emphatic exhortation.
Both Bavinck and Bonhoeffer emphasize the corporate aspect to salvation. J. H. Bavinck writes:
“The central point of the gospel is not us poor humans and our pain and suffering: its entire focus is aimed at the unique, powerful reality that God wants to reinstate his Kingdom.
It is God’s intent to unite all fractured parts of his creation into one overarching harmony. There is no such thing as individual salvation. All salvation is of necessity universal. The goal of our life can never be that we personally may enjoy God and be saved in him. The goal of our life can only be that we again become part of the wider context of the Kingdom of God, where all things are again unified under the one and only all?wise will of him who lives and rules for ever.”
So far this quote from Between the Beginning and the End: a radical Kingdom Vision.
A new approach to worship: preparing for the New Creation!
So how then should worship services be fashioned? Yes, there is a place for sermons, but only by those who have mastered the necessary art of combining the both Words and are capable of using the entire range of communication to implement that: speeches are not dead. If a minister lacks these integrated gifts then sermonizing should stop, with the assembly concentrating on singing, prayer, the Lord’s Supper and Bible reading, all done with everybody doing a part, however imperfectly. The audience should then split up into smaller groups where a bible passage is studied, with the aid of some guidelines distributed in advance, always relating them to today’s circumstances: theology has no place in church services.
Some weeks ago I injured a muscle in my shoulder and right away went to see a physiotherapist who gave me instructions and helped me to heal myself. The church plays a similar role: it must help us, as communities, to live in God’s creation in preparation for the Kingdom to come, especially now in an age of universal turmoil.
Numbers are not important. Where there is a pool of knowledgeable people a paid preaching position is probably not necessary. Bonhoeffer recommends that the church leader has a fulltime job in the real world. The money saved from paying a stipend can be better used elsewhere. Also with economic prospects from poor to disastrous, this would be the only way for a church community to survive financially.
Since energy is highly polluting, and church buildings – especially the ancient ones – are notorious for being energy hogs and all require automobiles to reach, gathering in nearby homes must be considered. Also when church people are re-settling, they must contemplate buying or renting in close proximity to like-minded people, keeping in mind that future economic development will require much more sharing in preparation for the End to come.
The ultimate solution is to form convents for families. When we visited our youngest son who served in Africa, we discovered that such communities are standard practise there: people are clustered around the place of work, a hospital for instance, complete with school, church, market and stores. Those churches will survive which are composed of self-sufficient communities, with as principal aim to prepare the people for The Kingdom to Come.
Bavinck has stated: “The goal of our life can only be that we again become part of the wider context of the Kingdom of God, where all things are again unified under the one and only all?wise will of him who lives and rules for ever.”
If we want to be part of the kingdom, then we have the glorious task to make that ideal our own and, even though our entire society conspires to prevent that all- inclusive aspiration, we still have to mentally, spiritually, if possible physically, embrace that ideal. The word is E.Q is the opposite of Q.E. which is the current monetary scheme – Quantitative Easing. Q. E. propagates to tell us to enjoy life today and pay tomorrow. EQ, on the other hand, measures a person’s Emotional Intelligence. It sees through the phoniness of today’s economic state and works for a better world. Thanks to Q. E. every child born in America has a $176,833 debt sticker on its head. E.Q. sees beyond today, embraces the hardships facing us now and looks forward to the Kingdom and speeds its coming. That’s what Jesus wants us to do, mindful of his words: “my burden is light and my yoke is easy.”
More on this in a following blog.