What is preaching?
The Rev Charles Royden
Commitment
We gather together tonight and we celebrate the fact that Claire has been
called by God and is being equipped for the service of preaching in the
Church. It is really a time of thanksgiving and recognising the commitment
which you have shown Claire and which you going to make in taking on this
role. I hope it doesn’t sound inappropriate when I say ‘Well done’
More of that later. But I want to say something about preaching; what it is
and where we are all going with it. Preaching and teaching are in the minds
of many people very different things, tomes have been written about the
different meanings in scripture of the distinctions of the Greek words used
for preaching and teaching. I will spare you that tonight. The reality is
that to you I and many others here tonight, is entrusted that ten minute
slot in our church services which is of fundamental importance. This is
perhaps one of the most important occasion when our faith is challenged and
encouraged.
So we need preachers who can use it this time effectively, this is the
reality of where we are now irrespective of the theological arguments.
There is a lovely rubric in the Church of England which states that the
effectiveness of the consecration of the holy sacrament is not diminished by
the unworthiness of the minister who consecrates it. In other words he or
she might be a right so and so, but it is still the body and blood of
Christ.
That is not the case with our preaching. Our words mean little in life or in
the pulpit if they are not substantiated with our actions. One of the most
lovely quotes is from Francis of Assissi who said to his followers
‘go and preach the gospel everywhere and if necessary to use words.’
As preachers we do have to use words, but they are seen as hot air by
congregations if we are not seen to try and live them.
It is said of Spurgeon that whatever he was in the pulpit he was in private
People will pay much more attention to a poor preacher with a remarkable
life than they will to a remarkable preacher with a poor life.
Claire I have known you for a considerable time now and I know of your
Christian commitment and your living testimony to the presence of God in
your life. For that reason I know that you will have a ministry which draws
attention to Christ and gives glory to God. I share with all of the
congregation tonight in celebrating the service to which you have been
called.
I am somewhat disappointed that you pursued your calling in the Methodist
Church however because you will remember that I tried to get you for the
Church of England some years ago.
When God appoints us for a task he anoints us for a task, he gives us the
grace we need. So we commit ourselves tonight to pray for you. That
commitment of yours and ours is the first of several words which I want to
use to frame my address beginning with 'C.' The next is Change.
Change
I want us to think for a moment about change. I came to St Mark’s and
Putnoe in 1990. I went on the internet and found a picture of Dubai in 1991
Dubai 30 years ago was a fishing village. The pace of change has been such
that now Dubai is a very different place.
It is said that there was much change between 1900 and 1990 as in the
previous 1900 years. And then in the ten years between 1990 and 2000 there
was as much change again. Change is now a feature of our lives and the pace
of that change is quite remarkable.
The lives of each one of us have been turned upside down. My point is that
as preachers we need to be imaginative in the ways that we teach and preach
and communicate our faith in such an age of change. We have to be
imaginative and creative if we are to make Gospel real in the lives of
people today.
I remember that our first church website address was
www.http://btinternet.com/~stmarkschurch
That has changed and we now use www.Thisischurch.com
When we started a website people said we were daft. A couple of years later
the Methodist Church did a website competition which we won. Some people
still thought we were daft. Now we are making contact with over 1300 people
per day, much more than we could ever have dreamed of. I always ask our
local preachers to contribute by writing the commentary for Partnership
News, putting copies of their sermon on the web, what an opportunity to
reach out.
Last night I typed into Google ‘Church Prayers’
Thisischurch.com came third and fourth. This is ahead of the main
international denomination websites of things like the Roman Catholic
Church! Prayers are one of the biggest sources of hits on our websites, with
people wanting to use prayers and send us prayer requests.
The point is that how people learn and the media that they use has changed
greatly. Yet we are still not changing in so much of what we do. we need to
ask ourselves questions about. How we learn and therefore how we preach and
teach.
We all learn in different ways and educationalists will be falling over
themselves with different theories at this point but what is beyond doubt I
would suggest and we would all agree that especially in today’s multi-media
environment we are used to seeing as we learn. But how much of our preaching
involves images?
Why are we so slow to use different media? We hardly ever use overhead
projectors let alone computer projectors in teaching and communicating.
YouTube was created in February 2005 by three former PayPal employees
With its easy to use interface, YouTube made it possible for anyone who
could use a computer to post a video that millions of people could watch
within a few minutes. It is now owned by Google and attracts millions of
hits. But sadly the amount of Christian video on You Tube is extremely low
and poor. We need to get more stuff out there. You could get a mobile phone
record something for your sermon and then post it online afterwards on You
Tube. You might easily have more people hear what you have to say in one
month than in the rest of your ministry.
But even if we do not feel able to use some of the opportunities which are
available to us. We need to find better ways of communicating.
Sermons need to be quality, they should take days of thought and hours of
preparation, not minutes. It is quite sad how easily the fire of the gospel
can be extinguished by the cool words of a sermon. The teaching of Jesus was
so wonderfully brought to life with stories and hyperbole and rhythm and
rhyme.
A preacher asked his wife what his sermons were like and she said, why don’t
you listen to them. She agreed to tape his next sermon. The preacher duly
got the tape went to his study switched it on sat down, started to listen
and fell asleep.
Listen to some sermons and they will send you to sleep. We always used to
say that if somebody falls asleep in your sermon wake the preacher up. I
don’t actually believe that any more because I remember one evening
practically shouting ‘wake up’ and I could not arouse a member of the
congregation. But we do need to tell more stories, bring sermons alive with
humour and colourful anecdotes, and these take time. Those of you who are
any good at Family Service talks will know that these are the most difficult
of all things. The secret is to take a profound truth which will challenge
all ages and then to deliver it in a manner which will be understood, albeit
in different ways, by all ages. To do this you need to do the sermon and
really understand it and what you want to say and then think of a vehicle,
to get the message across.
Some of the most complex things which Jesus taught he was able to summarise
in a sentence
Render unto Caesar …..
I am not in any way saying that if we were all better preachers then people
would be flocking to church. We are not assured that people will listen, we
are not assured that they will take any notice, we preach and teach
regardless, leaving the work of bringing forth fruit to God. However we do
need to faithfully seek by our gift of teaching, to bring our God alive in
the hearts of congregations. With hard work and imagination.
Conflict
Many people are against our faith in new ways. How many people will there
be in our churches in another 20 years time? If current trends continue
there will be very few. We have lost generations of young people who have no
knowledge of what Christianity is. But there isn ‘t just ignorance there is
also direct attack
For most of the time folks plod along in life as though there was nothing
more to each one of us than skin and bone. The presence of a spiritual part
of our lives, a soul is ignored by most. However there are those who
positively fight against us. Recently we saw that some people will pay good
money to buy advertising on the back of buses in London to tell us that
there really is no God. The Atheist Bus Campaign is an attempt to place
atheist advertising on buses (and potentially other forms of advertising) in
the UK. It was created by comedy writer Ariane Sherine and launched on 21st
October 2008, with official support from the British Humanist Association
and Professor Richard Dawkins.
Richard Dawkins is an atheist fundamentalist who believes that religion is
evil. He sees science and religion at war in an apocalyptic battle in which
only one can win, the battle between good and evil, reason and superstition.
In his book ‘Unweaving the Rainbow’ he speaks of how religious people are
infected with a ‘meme’, a virus which allows them to believe in God.
Religion impoverishes the mind. Religion leads to evil, it is the result of
this 'meme' a virus of the mind.
However not all scientists are atheists and Dawkins much not be allowed to
get away with his view which lack any kind of evidence, something of which
he accuses religion. Stephen Jay Gould, a scientist and himself an atheist
said that science cannot adjudicate on matters of faith. He did an analysis
of every evolutionary biologist since Darwin. The result was two piles, each
about the same height. The outcome was therefore that either half of his
colleagues were wrong, or science could not pretend to be able to
adjudicate. Science neither proves or disproves religious faith.
Religion is not a virus of the mind. Science does not automatically lead to
atheism. There are religious views of creation and scientific views on the
origin of the universe these can easily be reconciled. There are scientists
who believe and scientists who do not. Huxley, ‘Darwin's Bulldog’ invented
the word agnosticism, believing that science could not speak either way.
That is the honest position of science, anything else depends on faith,
either faith the religion is true, or a faith that it is not. Science cannot
answer either way on God, neither should it.
You and I as preachers have to be alert to the messages which are being taught by those who are opposed to our faith and we have to be able to expose the criticism when it is false and without any substance. Our faith can withstand the most rigorous analysis and we need not be afraid of scrutiny.
Conviction
I want to conclude just by saying that as we look for effective ways of preaching, new ways to reach out. Our core message never changes and we really do need preachers with conviction. The method of communication might change, but the content of our preaching should be like a compass always pointing people in God’s direction.
In the pages of scripture are words of eternal life and a message which
can give hope to our world. To us has been given a most wonderful privilege
and an onerous responsibility of communication. Preachers without conviction
do not convict the hearts, when our hearts have been warmed we can more
easily speak from those hearts to warm the hearts of others.
Preachers of conviction can speak from the heart and will be faithful and
honest in preaching. Always seeking to faithful and willing to say unpopular
things and to challenge. This honesty enables us to overcome our fear of
speaking unpopular messages, for no one should preach who fears people more
than they fear God.
Our belief is that God loves us, each and every one of us and he wants us
to know and love him. we believe that through his Son Jesus Christ, God
shows his love to the world. We must ask God to give us that same love and
concern for those to whom we preach. To love to preach is one thing; to love
those to whom we preach is another. A God who loves people cannot be taught
by a preacher who does not.
So may God convict us and so empower us to take his love to a lost and
broken world that by his grace more may find his peace.