Last Sunday night (May 4), we did something interesting at my church. In the year and three month history of Seven24, we’d never done anything quite like it. I’ve been so tied up with school and what not recently that I haven’t been able to reflect on it until now. Before I tell you what we did, I must preface it with the following:
Several months ago I read the book Preaching Reimagined by Doug Pagitt. While reading the book I blogged about it extensively (take a look at my archives if you are interested), and it would certainly be fair to say that Pagitt’s thoughts, along with some other factors, have certainly changed the way I approach preaching. Pagitt says that most of what passes for preaching in today’s church is what he calls “speaching”. It is essentially a monologue of considerable length, which the audience listens to passively. His argument is, basically, that speaching ‘doesn’t work’. Its boring, it’s not engaging, and most importantly, it is largely ineffective in producing life change (more on this in a minute). What he advocates (and practices at his church) is what he calls ‘progressional dialogue’. Progressional dialog is a more interactive form of preaching. It involves the entire congregation, or at least all those who want to participate, and allows everyone to learn from everyone’s experiences, not just those of the up front “speacher”.
While wrestling with some of these ideas, I’ve also been in conversation with some other people in my life that are beginning to get frustrated with preaching (or specahing, as Doug Pagitt would call it). Some that I’ve talked to complain that preaching “doesn’t work”, meaning that it fails to really facilitate life change. I’ve seen this to be true in my own life, as I probably listen to three or four sermons a week, and very rarely can I say one of them makes a real, tangible difference in my life. In reality, good preaching becomes entertainment, bad preaching becomes drudgery. And, furthermore, as I give more and more sermons, I find my ability to listen to sermons is diminishing. I remember my college pastor warning me that something like this would happen (I believe his exact words were “the hardest thing to do once you’ve been to seminary is listen to a sermon”). All that to say, I’ve been struggling quite a bit with the relevance/importance/efficacy of sermons in our worship services. In a sense that is hard for me, because even though they are a lot of work, I like giving sermons. The question, though, is not “what do I like?”, the question is “how do we as a community best become the church?” And it is that second question that has forced me to look seriously at how effectively traditional preaching accomplishes that goal.
So here’s what we did last Sunday (and if you were there you can skip this paragraph): People walked in, and instead of having our band play music, we gave everyone a Bible and a sheet of paper with some instructions, and told them to find someplace to sit either in the room or someplace nearby. With almost complete silence in the room (there was some really quiet background music), people were instructed to study the passage in Mark that we were focusing on that night by themselves. They were told to read the passage (Mark 10:32-45, in case you were curious) through slowly a few times, and then reflect on what they thought the passage meant. I provided a few purposefully vague questions to loosely guide people’s thinking, but I pretty much left them on their own. After a half hour, we came together, and I got up like I normally would to teach, but this time I had no notes, no podium, no sermon. Instead of teaching, I facilitated a discussion. We talked, as a community, for about 15 minutes about how that experience was for people, and then we talked for another 25 minutes about what people saw in the passage. There wasn’t a single time (other than the very end when I spoke for maybe four minutes) that I spoke for more than two minutes uninterrupted. It was awesome. People shared insights and questions, and we were even able to talk a little bit about application. It was progressional dialog to the max, and I thought it was a very cool time. Most everyone that I talked to afterwards seemed to like it as well, and I really felt like it was a great experience for our community. After we were done the band came up and we closed with some music.
Now, as great as the night way, I see problems with it. Should there be no authoritative voice of truth in the church? Should we simply trust that the Holy Spirit speaks through everyone and let everyone have equal voice? There are certainly those who would say no, but there are plenty who would say yes as well. Also, there is the reality that a person who studies a passage for several hours and has some level of training will be able to draw out greater insights than someone looking at it for a half hour. That being said, the insights that an individual may draw out themselves in that half an hour, can in many cases be much more formative that any insights a professional speacher would share.
All of this leads me to a few questions: First, to those of you who were there: Did you like doing church that way? Did you see any problems with it? Would you like us to stuff like that more often? Did you feel like you left having learned something? Any other thoughts or comments? Next, to the rest of you (especially my fellow professional holy people): Have you ever conducted a service like that? Do you think it is a good idea? What are some advantages or disadvantages of this model as opposed to the traditional music/message/music church model? Is this something that you personally would be more inclined to engage with? Any other thoughts?
As you can tell, I have more questions than answers at this point…I’m just wrestling through how the church can be a place that is truly forming the community of God.
Hey BK. So looking back on that Sunday night that feels far far away… I think it was definitely a good experience, mainly to remind us all that we are very capable of studying the Bible and hearing God speak through that. On the other hand, I do think that it is important for there to be an authoritative voice commanding a Bible study. While I believe that the Holy Spirit can and will speak through ANYBODY, there was a certain lack of depth.
On a personal note, I was a little convicted during my small group the following Wednesday, when I realized I could only remember the things that God showed me or that I wrote down during the initial quiet time.
I seriously forgot everything else people said…my bad.
If only there was a way to compact this quiet-time-like-experience, worship, prayer, and Bible study all into 2 hours. Or wait, are we trying to compress the experience of faith a little too much?
To wrap things up, I think we should try this experiment again, but maybe we could have more time to let people share and then you could give a sermonette at the end. Thanks for being honest and creatively trying to expand our view of what the church community has the potential to be. Take care!
Brian, Sorry I’m late to the game in reading your stuff. I loved reading this post and think it is a great idea. I personally try to make my role, when I’m speaking that of discussion leader rather than as a speacher, and I have a long way to go, but there is much merit to the fact that I don’t have all the answers and others bring in powerful insight that I miss. That being said, I agree that when we as leaders spend time preparing and meditating over scripture we can bring something to the table others wouldn’t bring in the 30 minutes they study the passage, but that is where you come in as a discussion leader. (again, I still have a long way to go in this) You set the table for people to connect with God through their own thinking and wrestling, yet you still guide that process when it becomes a corporate discussion.
I would also like to encourage Alyssa, it’s not that bad that you only remember your stuff. I think the goal is that the message would affect you personally in your heart and your life, rather than as information, so yes, we do want to hear from everyone and learn from everyone, but the reality is, that the real goal is transformation and that happens in your own heart.
Brian, lets keep in discussion about this. I alos personally feel convicted that speaching is boring and robs the gospel of its intensity and excitement; this is the most amazing and epic story for crying out loud! As I said, i feel like this is my speaking style, and I also don’t feel like I do a great job of executing it as I envision it.
Keep it up, brother
Alyssa- I get to talk about stuff like this with you all the time…so for now I’ll just say thank you for your comment, and thanks for the incredibly valuable contributions you make to Seven24.
J.D.- if you’re late in the game reading, then I’m super late in responding to your comment. I think you really hit it right on the head when you talked about “setting the table for people to connect with God through there own thinking and wrestling”. There is something very active about that, which is all too often lost in the passive activity (is that an oxymoron?) of merely listening to a sermon. I believe that our time together as a church community can be so much more valuable when all of us are engaging the Scriptures and engaging with each other on a deep level. That being said, in the two weeks since the night I wrote about, I’ve resorted to basically giving speeches that had minimal interaction. The more I do it, the less I like it. I just don’t believe it is effective. So then, I find myself back at wondering how do we go about communicating truth and communicating what God is able to reveal to us during our hours and study and meditation while still making it an interactive process where, in a very real way, we are all discovering truth together? I’m not entirely sure what the answer is (or if there even is an ‘answer’), but I believe it is crucial that we learn to move in that direction. Let’s definitely keep up a discussion on this so that we can hopefully share ideas and learn together how we can best communicate to our groups in our respective contexts. Thanks again for reading and replying.