I’ve noticed a post by somebody named Ray Ortland being quoted on several blogs recently. I honestly have never heard of this guy. For the most part, the blog post is call for most churches to do what they are already doing. I never get why people think that the problems that exist in their small corner of the world apply to everyone, but that’s another issue. There is one point from the blog post that seems quoted most often:
Preach from the Bible, and from the Bible only. Again, does this need to be said? One thing’s for sure. The Bible is fascinating, disturbing, offensive, sweet, alarming, comforting, stretching, shocking, controversial, caressing, strengthening. No way are you and I that interesting. Let’s put the Bible front and center and let it be itself and do its thing, whatever the impact. Submerging the Bible for the sake of our cool personas isn’t really cool at all. It’s a way of avoiding risk, chickening out.
At first, this seems like a good call. But the more I think about it, the more it makes me sad. If I didn’t find my preacher interesting, I probably might want to consider if I am at the right church. If my preacher can’t take scripture and apply it to his life, what chance do I have? If he has no stories about overcoming evil with good, why should I care what he has to say about Bible verses?
The really sad thing is, I hear calls like this all the time. And I have been to a church that went through periods of doing this – preaching only the Bible with no personal stories. The crazy thing is, you can’t share too many scriptures without coming to one where Jesus uses a story from the life of everyday people to make his point. People forget that the stories told in the Bible weren’t scripture until after the events in the book of Acts. The parable of the sower wasn’t Jesus preaching from scripture – it was Jesus using a story from an everyday person’s life to make a spiritual point. So Jesus found you and I interesting enough to grab stories from our lives and preach them, but Ray thinks we are wrong for doing the same? That seems odd to me.
If you look up preach in the dictionary, you see that it means “to make known” or “to deliver”. Words like “by sermon” or “the gospel” are in parenthesis, interestingly enough. So, when someone gets up and delivers the announcements, they are preaching the announcements. Does that also mean you can preach a pizza? Depends on how close dinner is, I guess…
The word “preach” is even more interesting when you look at it in the Bible. I really just don’t get the sense that we are meant to “preach” to congregations of those that already believe. In most places in the Bible, the word “preach” is used with evangelism. In other words, you preach the good news to those that haven’t heard.
Maybe if there is any real problem with preaching in the church today, it’s not from preachers not being cool and relate-able enough OR from preachers not preaching the Bible enough. Maybe it is just from the fact that we are preaching instead of teaching.
Let’s face it – most sermon criticizers out there that I have read seem to approach sermons like a high school speech class project. And, I have to admit, several preachers I have known prepare for them like that is what they are. They aren’t trying to teach people, they are just trying to make a good point. They aren’t worried about what people learn as much as they are about finding the right scriptures or funny stories.
I work in education; in fact, I have a Master’s degree in instructional design. When creating a lesson, you always start off by creating instructional objectives. You have to know what you want your students to learn, and then you come up with the activities and information to convey this knowledge to them. You don’t start off with facts and figures and then try to come up with a good speech that attempts to make students laugh.
Now, truthfully, most preachers I have known do at least start off their sermon prep by considering what they want the congregation to learn. They may not take that far enough to make the actual sermon a solid lesson every time, but they do sometimes and when they don’t they still get close because they started with a solid foundation. Maybe this is what needs to happen more at these churches where people just complain about their preaching not being expository enough or relate-able enough or whatever. Maybe the preacher need to look more at a sermon as a teaching, and even state some objectives right from the front.
But, for those that like to go on and on about sermons not being relate-able enough, or not having enough scripture… can I say something a little tough in all love. It doesn’t matter either way. Jesus used both methods quite frequently. When the Bible says that Jesus looked on the crowds and had compassion on them – have you ever thought what that meant? He already had compassion for them – He is God after all. But the writer saw Jesus doing something before speaking to the crowd that he labeled as compassionate. But the writer knew this, so there was something different about this compassion. Jesus was looking at the crowds and assessing their needs, and then delivering a message that they needed to hear in a way that they needed to hear it. Sometimes he used scripture, some times he didn’t. He didn’t care what preaching style he used. He was trying to teach the people, to give them what they needed. There should only be two critiques of a sermon – is it scripturally sound and did it help people learn the what was being taught. All else is just jibber jabber.
I do have to call Ray out for this one sentence: “Submerging the Bible for the sake of our cool personas isn’t really cool at all.” I’m sorry, but you have no idea if that is what people are really doing. Maybe they are, maybe they aren’t… but to me it seems a tad judgemental of you to say this.