A break from reading…

I’m taking a brief break from working my way through Kingdom Prologue by Kline. It’s required reading for Theology of the Pentateuch.

I happened across this post on Scot’s blog (by which I mean to say it was in my feed reader). I think that the author of this email has some excellent question. I’ve often asked “why do we preach?” In all honesty, I find little use for it. I think that if we feel a need to “learn” or do “discipleship” during a Sunday morning worship gathering that a format more similar to teaching (complete with questions from the congregation) would be far more effective at helping people learn what a passage is saying. Of course, I’m not sure if learning is the point.

In Southern Baptist circles, and other churches belonging to the group we call Evangelicalism™, the Sunday sermon has taken on an almost sacramental quality. Which I find extremely ironic, in a way, since most Southern Baptists that I know disavow any type of sacramental theology. Yet, the Sunday sermon is supposed to be everyone’s weekly encounter with God, or God’s word, or what God desires for them. I’m not saying that that can’t happen. But it’s still not an overly clear explanation of what it is that preaching is supposed to accomplish. I have several preaching courses that I’ll have to take at GCTS. Perhaps I should ask that question and see if Scott Gibson or Haddon Robinson (assuming he’s back to classroom teaching by that time) have an answer that makes sense.

One thing that I was incredibly disappointed to learn is that so many emerging churches still make extensive use of a basically unchanged model of preaching. At least that is the impression I’ve gotten from talking with people, reading Emerging Churches and Emerging Worship. I’m not saying that preaching is a tool of the devil or anything quite so dramatic. But I do think there are far more effective ways to teach. If our goal isn’t teaching, but an encounter with God, I think there are far better ways to accomplish that (if such words as “accomplish” are even close to what we mean in that context)–and one such way is called the Eucharist.

Regardless of my own questions on the matter, it should be interesting to watch the comments on Scot’s blog over the next day or two.

~ by Calvin on February 21, 2008.