Why preach?
Earlier this calendar week, my friend Richard Moy posted a bit of a rant nearly his feel of visiting cathedrals. Why is information technology, he asked, that when at that place is a marvellous opportunity to explain something of the gospel to people who might not otherwise here it, was nil done about information technology?
In all the services I have attended (bar a nearly deserted Durham) there have been scores of onlookers and oft scores of would be participants. Nonetheless but in the Cosmic cathedral did anyone make even the slightest attempt at a homily – let alone a succinct, compelling presentation of the Christian religion.
This leads him to inviting the Church to do some soul-searching:
It leaves me asking a bones question. Do we have whatsoever involvement in the conversion of England – or fifty-fifty the survival of faith within the CoE?
In that location were some understandable responses to this observation. Not all cathedrals take the same approach, and some will prioritise the teaching of the organized religion. This fascinating response came from Nicholas Henshall, Dean at Chelmsford Cathedral:
Our intention/claim is that in everything we exercise nosotros are seeking to exist a thriving, outward facing community seeking to serve the city, the diocese and the bishop'due south ministry above all in evangelism and teaching, as a powerful resource to the churches and networks of the region.
Equally a counterpoint to this, Anna Norman-Walker, who is Canon Chancellor at Exeter, asked a more cardinal question about preaching:
I … find it amusing that an evangelical would depict whatever scripture reading as 'then objectionable without context or explanation that a casual inquirer/gamble visitor/faith seeker would most likely exist provoked to run away (screaming)'….. two Timothy 3:16 ? Luther would make yous go and stand in the corner…
Anna is here asking why explicit preaching is necessary, and in the Facebook discussion there were like observations from David Runcorn (first) and Simon Butler (second), amongst others.
The assumption of some hither seems to be that the gospel is not being made known unless information technology is being verbally preached. If there is not a sermon null is being proclaimed in a Cathedral? Really? There is a case for proverb that whole Cathedral building is a sermon in it's way. Walking round it is to make pilgrimage. That is how the architecture works. My frustration is when the guide material and notices around the building are shy of making clearer connections – without becoming tracts. But this verbal focus feels like a very narrow theology of declaration, worship and creation – and preaching actually.
I think the issue hither is the assumption that unless the discussion is preached it is non proclaimed. I think that says more almost the lack of trust in God or in the (healthy) chemical element of Tradition than it does nearly what cathedrals practise. Imagine joining a conv ersation at a party and someone explaining the whole conversation all over over again but to bring you lot upwardly to speed, rather than just taking the fourth dimension to stop, listen and work out who is proverb what, why they're saying information technology, and what they're saying. The gospel of free grace is not dependent on the work of a sermon, it's dependent on free grace!
Although these comments were made in the specific context of cathedral worship and its visitors, the question here utilise to most aspects of life in the local church. Why preach?
In case the importance of preaching looks besides obvious, it is worth reflecting for a moment. There are enough of religious traditions which don't have much of a place for preaching. I don't know much about Hinduism, but whenever I accept visited a Sikh gurdwara, I haven't seen whatsoever obvious emphasis on preaching or explanation. In Orthodox Judaism, the reading of Torah has centre stage. And within Quakerism, the centralising authority of the preached give-and-take has been rejected in favour of an openness to the insights of all—or none, in the silence. Even within the evangelical tradition, there is a question to exist asked almost the need for preaching. In John Stott'south archetypeI Believe in Preaching, Stott's own rationale is slightly less disarming than it at kickoff reads. He contends that God has spoken, that when God speaks things happen, and that God continues to speak today through what he has spoken in Scripture. A first response to this might indeed be to ask 'And so why preach? Why not just read the Scriptures and leave it at that? Practise we need to aid God out, lest his words are not equally potent equally we had hoped?'
There is a real question here about whether preaching arises from our lack of trust in God, or our need to control, or a post-Enlightenment desire to reduce everything to the rational and the verbal—and in that location are several theological traditions which suffer from but such pre-occultation. But it is worth reflecting on the dynamic and evolution of preaching, or explicit proclamation or understanding, within the unfolding of Scripture itself.
The earlier parts of the the Hebrew Bible exercise non brand any mention of preaching in the way we might now understand it—primarily because the texts of Scripture largely consist of a record of preaching or proclamation themselves. One of my favourite passages, Deut 32, records the prophetic preaching/oracle of Moses over the tribes. And of course the majority of prophetic texts tape, in some form or another, the preaching of the prophet afterward which they are named. Even our 'history' books, known in the Hebrew Bible as the 'sometime prophets', offer a narrative sermon on the ups and downs of God'southward people.
But preaching as commentary on the pre-existing scriptures does intrude at a particularly critical indicate. In Nehemiah viii, following the return of (some of) the people from exile in Babylon, Ezra the 'teacher of the law' has the people gather before him as he stands on a platform to read from the 'law of Moses'. And around him he has a preaching squad:
The Levites—Jeshua, Bani, Sherebiah, Jamin, Akkub, Shabbethai, Hodiah, Maaseiah, Kelita, Azariah, Jozabad, Hanan and Pelaiah—instructed the people in the Law while the people were continuing at that place. They read from the Volume of the Law of God, making information technology clear and giving the pregnant so that the people understood what was being read. (Nehemiah 8.7–8)
In other words, a gap of understanding had now opened up between the text and the people, and 'preaching' (or exposition, or caption) was need to fill that gap if the people were going to truly understand what was being read—and, by implication, avert making the mistakes of their ancestors and be taken off in one case more into exile.
This understanding of preaching—as bridging the gap betwixt the give-and-take (of the text) and the globe (of the hearers)—has profound implications at every level of preaching. It will make up one's mind who we approach preaching: what kind of gap do nosotros recollect we are filling? If it is a gap of ignorance, we will fill information technology with data; if it is a gap of interest, we volition fill it with motivation; if it is a gap of connection, we will fill it with spiritual insight—and so on. The unlike preaching traditions can be accounted for by noting the different understanding of the 'gap' in each tradition. And of course this is the foundation for understanding the role of hermeneutics (interpretation) in preaching—famously characterised past Anthony Thiselton as the demand to span the 'two horizons' of the text and the reader.
This dynamic—of filling a gap—is clearly at work in NT accounts of preaching and annunciation. Jesus' deportment in the gospels are consistently accompanied by teaching and preaching. In Acts, miracles and demonstrations of the Spirit'due south power atomic number 82 to explanations of what they mean and what response they need. In the archetypal example of Philip inActs viii:26-forty, the Ethiopian eunuch asks him 'How tin can I understand, unless someone guides me?' There will come up a time for 'silence in sky' (Revelation 8.1),but that time is when the end has come up, the opportunity for repentance is past, and sentence is at hand. In the meantime, the task is to bear faithful witness, and offering the invitation of grace. Equally Paul asks pointedly:
"Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord volition be saved." How, and so, can they telephone call on the one they have non believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they take not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? (Romans ten.13–14)
For many of us, although God continues to speak through art and architecture, through silence and music, through the visual as well as the verbal, we would never have come up to religion in the kickoff place unless someone had taken the time to offer us a word of explanation. To advise this is not necessary for others seems to me to exist similar entering the castle, and pulling up the drawbridge backside us.
Returning to Richard Moy's original question: is there a gap of understanding betwixt what is happening in our cathedrals and churches, and the people who find themselves wandering in? If so, then preaching is needed.
Boosted note
There are 2 interesting responses to Richard's original post, both from Cathedral deans.
Pete Wilcox, of Liverpool Cathedral, offers a fabulous response here, outlining all that goes on in Liverpool to engage visitors and explain faith. He concludes:
This, I call up, is the item ministry of Cathedrals, and I'chiliad confident all my colleagues know information technology, value it and desire to make the most of it. How we are doing then will differ co-ordinate to several variables: theological standpoint is only one; compages and location are pregnant likewise. But take center: there is much constructive evangelism taking place. Maybe we could all be making more of precisely the interface you cite, when Choral Evensong meets Tourism Central; but don't assume that'due south the whole deal. And also, give us a intermission: the Church of England is on a journey, and Cathedrals are on board. You can be sure that the language of mission is more and more than mainstream even in Cathedrals and that when the Deans meet to talk, we even talk, at least some of the time, nigh making Jesus known. We call back that that is what we were ordained to do, I hope.
The 2nd is from a very different tradition, that of Kelvin Holdsworth, Provost of St Mary's Cathedral in Glasgow.
So, I agree with some of the things Richard Moy is maxim. Lots of churches could engage people better. However, I find myself disagreeing with Richard Moy likewise, particularly in his presumption that the only fashion in which the gospel can be conveyed is through a homily.
Holdworth goes on to point out that sermons themselves can be part of the problem:
Boredom is ane of the devil's chief tools in church. And the truth is, I've plant myself experiencing boredom in all kinds of churches. Cathedrals certainly don't take the monopoly on this. Ranting sermons. Repetitive sermons. Sermons which seem to be concerned only with one view of the atonement. Nosotros've all heard them. Preaching itself is not the respond.
What is fascinating is that both these responses, in their different ways, support the key point that Richard is making: that the good news of Jesus needs explaining in some grade, and cannot merely be left to the flying buttresses. pete Wilcox talks of all the ways that explanation is happening in Liverpool; Kelvin Holdsworth points out that preaching can practise this desperately. Only, as has been said before, the answer to bad utilise is not no use, but expert apply.
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