My sincere thanks to all who read, digested and responded to my first blog “Back to the Future” (found here:https://rb.gy/6j688). All your comments and observations were well received and as I said, will continue to shape how I roll out the ones to follow. So, thank you again.
In my previous blog, I alluded to the fact that mere innovation and reorganizing the way we do church is like re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. What sunk the Titanic was something the navigators did not see — a submerged iceberg. Deeply held assumptions need to be dealt with if we are to honestly and courageously rediscover what it means to be a church that is built on the biblical narrative.
Today, we begin to examine what some of those assumptions might be. You may have more to add.
Listed below are some general assumptions that many Christians (at least those who participate in worship on Sundays) hold, mostly unconscious, that need honest re-examination.
I will first name them and then make a case to deconstruct and reconstruct them.
Assumptions and beliefs
1. The primary role of the pastor is to organize a great worship experience every Sunday as the foundation of the Christian faith experience. As part of that s/he should be able to craft and preach a good sermon on Sunday.
2. Sermons if developed and articulated well, will grow the church.
3. Ministers are paid to serve the congregation (I can almost hear you ask, with indignation almost, “and that’s an untrue/ false assumption?”)
4. Attracting or inviting people to church is the best way to expose them to the gospel.
5. Evangelism is God’s strategy to grow the church.
6. Buildings belong to the congregation and are assets that are to be used in any way the leadership decides.
Assumptions 1 & 2: The primary role of the pastor is to organize a great worship experience every Sunday as the foundation of the Christian faith experience. As part of that s/he should be able to craft and preach a good sermon on Sunday. And sermons if developed and delivered well, will grow the church.
Ninety percent of laity when asked the question “what are the primary qualifications a minister should have?” respond[1] by stating that preaching (and conducting a good worship experience) is the first of the two most important; the other being pastoral care. Whether it is a chicken and egg situation or not, most church institutions play to that expectation. When seminarians were asked what they thought the most important skill of a minister was, most responded with “the skill of crafting and delivering sermons”. Anecdotally at least, one could deduce that the entire system within which the clergy-lay-institution interactions take place is practically premised on the assumption that sermon delivery is one of the most important competencies of a minister. Of course, there are seminaries and congregations that do not think so. They however, remain a minority.
So, it is natural that ministers would take a lot of care and time over sermon preparation and, it is a good thing that they do. However, as we know, very often the good becomes the enemy of the best, as we shall see.
First of all, I posit, based on what I read in the Bible, that the primary role of the teaching elder (whom we refer to as the minster or pastor) is to teach. S/he is to teach (as in train) believers the truths of the bible and thereby help them grow as Christ followers.
Expository preaching whether revelatory or explanatory has its place but is only a part of the overall mandate to teach. However, preaching seems to have taken the place of teaching and seems to be a gold standard that many ministers strive to achieve. It may help to think of it this way: that we are called to teach inside the church and preach outside. Sure, one might dismiss this difference as merely one of semantics. But consider this. Almost every time one of the apostles preached, it was outside the synagogue to crowds of people who were not necessarily Christ followers. Teaching on the other hand was done with believers, inside homes and the synagogue, whether it was using a lectern, a table or while sitting underneath a tree. Jesus was the best example: he taught (his disciples) while he preached the good news to people on the hillside and waterfronts.
In describing the overseer (a.k.a. elder) in 1 Timothy 3, Paul takes great pain to describe the expectations of an elder. Notice that most of what he names as qualifications (of an elder) are to do with character and faith and that he does not make a difference between an elder and a pastor (shepherd). The ONLY skill that he lists is the ability to teach. Two things to note. First is that pastors and ministers are elders with a special calling to teach. Secondly, teaching does not necessarily mean or equal preaching.
There is a place for people (elders especially) to teach in the church. The purpose of that should be read in conjunction with the passage in Ephesians 4 relating to the gifts of the Spirt that are distributed among the church for the edification (strengthening) of the body of Christ.
Ephesians 4: 11–13: Now these are the gifts Christ gave to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers. Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do God’s work and build up the church, the body of Christ. This will continue until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ.
Read the context as well (Chapter 4) to further understand this passage. It is very clear that these gifts (there are more listed in other passages such as 1 Cor 12 and Romans 12) are given for a specific purpose: to equip God’s people (meaning the entire body of Christ) to do the work of God and build up the church, the community of saints. What does equip mean then? It means that the work of the pastor (teaching elder) and teacher is to provide training (knowledge and opportunities for practice) to the rest of the body of Christ so that, they in turn might be fully prepared and ready to do the work of ministry within and outside the church: i.e. in their homes, communities, neighbourhoods and wherever God has placed them. This teaching which has an inward direction (i.e. to form the heart of the believer) has an outward focus (i.e. to equip them for proclamation and presence in the world). That is what pastors are expected to do inside the church. How we do this can vary given the circumstances. It will look different depending on who, when, where and what is being taught. But the idea is “teaching” with an intention to equip and transform, not to simply preach and inform. And, teaching does not have to be limited to Sunday mornings.
So, what about preaching then? Does it have a place at all? Paul, Peter, the prophets spoke (preached or proclaimed) boldly to folk they never met before, outside the temple. They preached and did so with conviction and courage, mostly at personal cost. Sometimes we are given opportunities to “preach” inside our church building as when people gather for a funeral or even a wedding service. Sermons have been used to inspire, comfort, affirm and encourage; all good goals but if there is no equal parallel effort to teach, train and equip, what we inadvertently encourage are congregations with a consumer mindset that depend on a Sunday sermon weekly spiritual “fix”.
We, in our contemporary version of church, seem to have gotten our priorities mixed up. We “preach” inside the church to our own people and don’t teach or teach very little at all, at least not to our adults. Of course, this is not true in many churches where teaching is done very intentionally and methodically. But here is the problem. Most ministers spend (in my estimation) about 10–20 hours/week preparing for the worship service and sermons which amounts to about one third to half of their time. But, what if they invested most of that time instead, in preparing to train/equip their congregants in the ways of discipleship and service? What if they were strategic in training lay leadership to be equippers themselves? “So, no preaching, no sermons?” I hear you say. I’ll leave you to answer that question but what if we used our Sunday time together to praise and worship corporately, testify and celebrate the Lord’s supper, God’s goodness and work in our lives during the previous week, prayed as a community, and yes, spent some time in an interactive teaching session, not necessarily led by the minister? Is that at all possible? Is it possible to envision a shared teaching schedule every Sunday where pastors take turns to teach and relay their sermons online to other churches, thus releasing the other local pastors to concentrate on equipping their congregation in other ways that week? Is it any wonder why most faithful minsters work way above and beyond their expected hours trying to balance congregational expectations with bible-based conviction? Ministers are dedicated and want to do all they can to maximize their time to respond to need but they often spread themselves thin which may lead to burn out, as we know all too well.
And then there is another myth: that good sermons are directly proportional to church growth. Many believe that if a good sermon is preached, it would result in a growing church. Of course, this assumption might hold true for a short while depending on the way one describes growth. I’ve known many churches that “grew” in number only because they were drawn to listen to a gifted, articulate preacher. In general however, the assumption is simply not true. Consider the number of sermons being preached every Sunday in North America. If that assumption were to hold, wouldn’t our churches be full and overflowing? They are not and there is obviously a step or two missing.
Sermons by themselves are just not enough. They are what we have come to expect after centuries of doing church but they do not bring about the change and transformation we desire. Training and equipping requires a step past that of “informing” or preaching. Yes, there is always the potential for the Spirit to use a Sunday sermon to inspire, challenge and motivate a hearer. However, in general, teaching needs to transition from informing, to forming to transforming and that requires intentionality and a completely different paradigm of what we have come to accept.
How we do this is a subject to be explored in a sequel to this article and best left for another blog post. And that too, only if we are open to being changed and to discern our way through the massive changes that are already happening. We are in the midst of a huge paradigm shift of our times and we need to ask what our story is, in all of this.
I’m always open and welcome feedback, positive or not-so-positive 😊. We grow and learn through authentic engagement and that is the whole point of this exercise. So please keep responding and where it is helpful, engage so we can grow churches that are built on biblical principles.
A special word of appreciation to Dr. Christine Jerrett whose insightful critique and feedback helped tighten up the content of this (and future) posts.
[1] Informal survey taken a few years ago.
