i grew up in the shadow of willow world (for those of you not in the christian sub-culture - willow creek community church. it's a huge church/corporation with a famous pastor/c.e.o that brought the world christian skits and saxophones on sunday mornings. oliver north spoke there. larry norman did not). then there was saddleback (another mega-church with a normal looking guy in charge but he speaks for like an hour and it's like listening to a wickipedia monologue).
i grew up in the era of christian franchises. the year i first moved to british columbia there were over 2000 churches uses the sermons from saddleback. someone once asked me why i did not subscribe. i told him the sermons were:
a. boring and long
b. sculpted for a certain audience
c. long and boring.
he was appalled. did i not know that 15,000 people went to hear these sermons and 2000 churches subscribed? i guess i should have had more tact but before i could stop myself i said, "well maybe the church would be 50,000 if the sermons didn't suck so much." again, tact was not my strong suit. I have since become far more holy and less offensive...
roll the tape forward to 2008. my eldest son is in preaching class at the local bible college and is getting killed because he does not use the expository/exegetical model (if you aren't in the culture it's too boring to explain). after all he has grown up listening to me and tony campolo (bald guy, amazing... tony that is). he is frustrated and does not understand that there is only one safe way to speak now within the christian world - never mind that pretty much all the greatest speakers in history did not speak this way (listen to m.l. king sermon sometime, or campolo, or churchill, or... or...).
the problem is that my son has not grown up in the christian sub-culture. though he is a brilliant speaker, he is not familiar with phrases like "pastor-teacher". he does not understand that real pastors exegete a passage of scripture and speak for 45+ minutes about it. he is confused because Jesus spoke narratively and topically. he has grown up in a secular world of sound bytes and mtv. he finds sermons like those from saddleback and others nauseatingly boring and irrelevant.
the funny this is, though, when he speaks to his culture the audience, if you can call it that, is enthralled. they get what he is talking WITH them about. they respond. for some reason they do not want a 40+ minute expose on the finer points of scripture. they are hungry for truth but not bound by tradition.
how do i tell nate he is wrong?
i grew up in the era of christian franchises. the year i first moved to british columbia there were over 2000 churches uses the sermons from saddleback. someone once asked me why i did not subscribe. i told him the sermons were:
a. boring and long
b. sculpted for a certain audience
c. long and boring.
he was appalled. did i not know that 15,000 people went to hear these sermons and 2000 churches subscribed? i guess i should have had more tact but before i could stop myself i said, "well maybe the church would be 50,000 if the sermons didn't suck so much." again, tact was not my strong suit. I have since become far more holy and less offensive...
roll the tape forward to 2008. my eldest son is in preaching class at the local bible college and is getting killed because he does not use the expository/exegetical model (if you aren't in the culture it's too boring to explain). after all he has grown up listening to me and tony campolo (bald guy, amazing... tony that is). he is frustrated and does not understand that there is only one safe way to speak now within the christian world - never mind that pretty much all the greatest speakers in history did not speak this way (listen to m.l. king sermon sometime, or campolo, or churchill, or... or...).
the problem is that my son has not grown up in the christian sub-culture. though he is a brilliant speaker, he is not familiar with phrases like "pastor-teacher". he does not understand that real pastors exegete a passage of scripture and speak for 45+ minutes about it. he is confused because Jesus spoke narratively and topically. he has grown up in a secular world of sound bytes and mtv. he finds sermons like those from saddleback and others nauseatingly boring and irrelevant.
the funny this is, though, when he speaks to his culture the audience, if you can call it that, is enthralled. they get what he is talking WITH them about. they respond. for some reason they do not want a 40+ minute expose on the finer points of scripture. they are hungry for truth but not bound by tradition.
how do i tell nate he is wrong?
Labels: preaching
posted by Scott at 3/10/2008
10 Comments:
Who? The prof?
Just tell him he's wrong.
:)
hey Mr Williams - right on!
tho i didn't realise the church was so small? - oh - i guess yor talking about the contents of the buildings?
and bible college??? you must be joking - i thought we were supposed to make disciples - not send them to school?!
from a ranting momma
I pray he never stops being "naive!" When I read stuff like this I don't know whether to laugh, cry, or just pull my hair out and leave it at that!
had the same issues when i attended there....
I think the operative word in effective communication is, as you say, speaking 'with' rather than speaking 'at'... My dad (who wasn't a church going person) used to say about preachers, 'why would I want to sit and listen to some guy talk at me for an hour and not get to say anything back?'
It kind of makes me wonder about preaching altogether...was it originally intended as a one sided monologue - or a conversation?
maybe the people that think preaching is a one-sided monologue think the same about prayer?
lori your dad had a point and talking about church-going - i always thought church was something i (my body, soul and spirit) was a part of - not a place to go to.
in my limited vocabulary the word 'church' can be substituted with the word 'body' - a body in which no member is inactive or less important than another (or less able come to that - whoever heard of any organ being able to function without the blood, the air being pumped, the veins being in place........) and a body which only has one head - and that certainly aint the pastor, the preacher, the apostle or any other guy with a name. a body which doesn't function like a puppet where the head bone's connected to the neck bone, the neck bone's connected to, etc which would walk along with jerky movements, but a body where even a far away part like the little toe receives its instructions directly from the brain.
OK, how about explaining to Nate that different audiences require different methods of communication. When speaking to normal people you communicate one way, when speaking to 'churched' people you do it different. 'Churched' people like to be bored, it gives them a sense of satisfaction, like they've suffered for their faith. It also means that they can pat themselves on the back after the service and think that they've done well. I guess there must be some corralation between boring and right. The more boring the more right... right of course I may be wrong ;)
beautiful...
Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
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