A Hopeful Heretic

Sermons as a Spiritual Formation Device

As I begin a new post on a new subject I'm inclined to thank the handful of people who actually read any part of my self-indulgent commentary on Romans in the past year.  From what I can tell from my stats there were, what, six of you?  Or it might be that my friend Jeff just kept looking at the site several times a day because he couldn't believe what he was reading.  No matter, I'm off to a new thing.

I'd like to jump into the conversation that Kingdom Grace and many others are having regarding the book, Pagan Christianity by Frank Vioia and George Barna.  In her latest post, Grace looks at the issues that Vioia and Barna raise in chapter 4 of their book regarding sermons.

First, I want to confess that I have not read Vioia and Barna's book and I am reserving judgment on it until I do.  But I feel compelled to weigh in on the idea of sermons if only from a deconstructionist perspective.

One can hardly dispute the fact that the sermon has become the central feature of Western Christianity.  It is rare that a church service of any flavor doesn't make this the defining part of their weekly event.  In my experience, churches that are considered "done well" are the ones where all aspects of the church's message are well coordinated with the sermon.

The objection to this that Vioia and Barna raise (as quoted by Grace) is that it is really a pagan practice with its roots not in the first century church but rather in Greco-Roman (read "pagan") culture.  Rather than coming from a practice of Jesus and the Apostles, they maintain that sermons come from the orators who were essentially entertainers in the day.

I would answer this objection to sermons by noting that expressions of Christian faith and spiritual practices have always had a symbiotic relationship with the culture surrounding them whether we like to admit it or not.  Throughout history, the church has been influenced by culture and has also influenced culture and this is not necessarily a bad thing.  It forms a connection between the church and the world God aims to redeem through the church.  Even allowing that Vioia and Barna are absolutely correct in their assertion, that in itself is not a reason to do away with sermons even if that were possible, which it is not.  The sermon IS our culture now, or at least a central part of it, and cultures do not change easily.

But I would offer a different reason to consider whether to change the centrality of the sermon in our practice.  I just don't believe that it's very effective as a spiritual formation device.  For one thing, it isn't very efficient.

It seems like it would be, doesn't it?  After all, a pastor can do the same sermon for hundreds if not thousands of people in a single weekend.  Then if you record the sermon and distribute it on Cd's and mp3s on-line and get a book deal from Zondervan and a speaking engagement at a conference or two that same sermon can be heard by millions.

The trouble is that communication that is one-directional always runs the risk of being misunderstood.  Blast a complex message out to a huge audience and you are virtually guaranteed to have most people miss your point.  If that is the communication channel where you put the bulk of your efforts for spiritual formation in your church then the bulk of your efforts are going to be ineffectual.

But there is another shortcoming of the sermon, it is incredibly time-consuming to produce.  As I understand it, teaching pastors in churches large and small often spend half their time every single week researching, writing and practicing for the event.  That means that a key member of the community is sequestered away, limited in their ability to spiritually influence people in the church except from the podium on Sunday mornings.

I would submit that pastors could influence fewer people but in far deeper ways if they preached less and spent more time in one-on-one spiritual direction and leading small groups.  But this requires the pastor to break down the fourth wall, an act that would leave them exposed and vulnerable and I'm not sure that many pastors would handle that well.  It would also require the congregation to become less like spectators and more like, oh what's that word? - Disciples.

Romans 16:17-26 - Paul's Parting Words

In the last nine verses of Paul’s letter to the believers in Rome you can find the answer to the killer Bible trivia question of all time: who wrote the Epistle to the Romans? That guy Tertius must have just had better penmanship than the Apostle, perhaps due to multiple beatings, shipwrecks and time in dungeons. Or maybe after being on the road planting churches and fighting the good fight for thirty-some years Paul had acquired enough of a loyal following to have a secretary. After all, that’s when you know you’ve made it as a pastor, when you have someone to keep your calendar, screen your phone calls and write your letters. But I digress.

Paul’s style is apparent to me in these final lines of his letter. For example, it is characteristic of Paul to send greetings from others in his letters, often with a bit of praise and news for a church from the outside world. We see this in 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Philippians, Colossians, 2 Timothy and Titus.

Likewise, we see Paul mention or warn about Satan in verse 20, something common to almost all his letters. This strikes me as worthy of notice but I am not qualified to explain it. I have wondered whether Paul’s concerns of satanic influence might figure prominently in his theology due in part to his conversion experience where the charge of Jesus included a call to turn people from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God.

Yet, key thing I see in Paul’s parting words is that he sees fit to return again to what I have called the central purpose for his writing: a call for unity. At this, the end of his letter, he makes this call specific by warning the believers in Rome against those who would divide them. Although he doesn’t refer to it explicitly here, we know from other letters that one of his primary concerns stemmed from Jewish Christians who spoke of requiring circumcision and other Jewish customs and rituals of Gentile believers. But regardless of specific concerns, his warning only underscores a core desire of Paul, a desire that the infant church overcome the all-too-human tendency to splinter apart when challenges arose.

Paul, where are you when we need you?