The Decline and Fall of the Protestant Sermon

From The National Review-

The Episcopal Church of my youth, in a memory now fading around the edge but still vivid at the core, was a place of binary judgments. In those days now long gone, there was right and there was wrong and never were the twain to be conflated. God’s Commandments, which concretized Christian principles, were not offhandedly suggestive. They were starkly dispositive. Old-school sermons pushed home the point that there was His way and the dark way and, pace the triangulators, not much at all in the way of a via media.

When it came to moral conundra, as some of you may recollect, the intellectual living was easy. Clarity had been pressed upon us. We all knew where we stood, which was on the wrong side of the bright red line dividing saint from sinner. And we all knew what we had to do. As John Kennedy put it unforgettably in another context, we had to do better. (You had to be there. JFK’s salty Boston accent gave eternal life to the mundane phrase.)

As even a casual student of human affairs might have guessed, we didn’t do better. In the increasingly politicized view of fancy-pants Protestantism, we began to do worse. And the Episcopal Church, with theatrical reluctance, seized the opportunity to gather more extra-cathedral responsibility into its own well-manicured hands.

More here-

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/02/decline-and-fall-of-protestant-sermon/

THE MEDIUM AND THE MESSAGE

From The Living Church-

Fred Craddock’s As One Without Authority (1971) marked a significant shift in the way preachers were thinking about the form of the sermon. Craddock began by addressing the problems facing the preacher in an age when people no longer accept religious authority. Critiquing the traditional approach to preaching, the three-point sermon, he suggested that one of the reasons so much preaching was ineffective is that listeners have changed — they are in many cases more sophisticated and less open to a traditional authoritative mode of preaching. He  recommends an inductive rather than a deductive approach to preaching. Instead of simply offering a thesis and then exploring and defending the thesis in three or more relatively balanced points, he argues for beginning with questions that will grab the listener’s attention because they are pertinent to the lives of the listeners.

Craddock’s argument has been dismissed by many who want to hold to a high view of preaching, since at first blush the emphasis on the listener appears to advocate for relevance over faithfulness. Rather than placing our confidence in God’s self-communication in Scripture and through preaching, the focus appears to shift to the preacher’s ability to communicate. With confidence in God, objectors maintain, we need to keep our primary focus on faithfulness to the biblical text, which argues for classic expository preaching where the preacher carefully and faithfully “unpacks” the text for the listener.

More here-

http://htl.li/ZS5P30e6frm

Sermon Content Is What Appeals Most to Churchgoers

From Gallup-

As Easter and Passover help fill churches and synagogues this week, a new Gallup poll suggests the content of the sermons could be the most important factor in how soon worshippers return. Gallup measured a total of seven different reasons why those who attend a place of worship at least monthly say they go. Three in four worshippers noted sermons or talks that either teach about scripture or help people connect religion to their own lives as major factors spurring their attendance.

More here-

http://www.gallup.com/poll/208529/sermon-content-appeals-churchgoers.aspx

Let us pray that vicars stop telling jokes in sermons

From The Guardian-

Arecent poll has found that churchgoers hate the vicar’s jokes. Well, let’s hope the message gets through. Because there is nothing more excruciating than the lame stories that clergy tell, mostly as warm-ups at the beginning of their sermons. I would end up fleeing down the road to the local mosque if Dawn French became my vicar. No, I wouldn’t agree with them theologically, but at least they would adopt an appropriate seriousness of mood that would allow me properly to think and pray. And please don’t get me started on vicars using puppets in the pulpit. I’d bring back the inquisition for that. The Venerable Jorge had the right idea in Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose: some comedy just doesn’t work in church. Church is a serious house on serious Earth. And, ultimately, people go for serious purposes.

It is not that all humour fails. Take Dr Paisley, for instance, a master of pulpit wit. Now, in order to get this one you have to hear it in his strong Northern Irish accent. One Sunday, Dr Paisley was preaching about death and damnation, one of his favorite subjects. “There will be weeping,” he thundered, “and wailing and gnashing of teeth.” An elderly lady on the front row stuck up her hand and objected that she didn’t actually have any teeth. Dr Paisley fixed her with a withering gaze: “Madam,” he said slowly, “teeth will be provided.” I love the idea of the Almighty handing out replacement dentures to those not able to gnash.

More here-

http://www.theguardian.com/world/shortcuts/2016/may/10/pray-vicars-jokes-sermons-clergy-humour-church

Too much ‘claptrap’ in sermons – Justin Welby

From The Telegraph-

The Archbishop of Canterbury has warned vicars against filling their sermons with “moral claptrap” about being “a bit nicer” to everyone.

The Most Rev Justin Welby said religion should never be reduced simply to a code of morality instead of an active faith in which people are willing to “get [their] hands dirty”.

He added that the message of Christianity was so radical that it could be mistaken for a call to “violent revolution”, were it not for its emphasis on peaceful means.

His comments came in a homily at an evensong at Trinity Church on Wall Street New York which has been published online by Lambeth Palace.

Speaking about deprivation and inequality he detailed his experiences in Liverpool, where he served as Dean of the Anglican cathedral for four years, insisting it was imperative for churches to be involved in their communities.

More here-

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/11372455/Too-much-claptrap-in-sermons-Justin-Welby.html

You Might Want to Fact-Check Your Pastor’s Sermon

From Faith Street-

A few weeks ago, my teenage daughter laid down the law.

No more Tweeting in church, she told me. No surfing the web or sneaking a peak at a Facebook game on my phone. And most important of all — no more fact-checking the pastor’s sermon.

One of the dangers of being a reporter is that you don’t trust anyone. We live by a rule made famous at the now-shuttered City News Bureau in Chicago: “If your mother says she loves you, check it out.”
Reporters know that just because someone — even a pastor — says something is true doesn’t make it so. That can be a problem in church. Not so much when it comes to matters of faith — there’s no fact-checking those. The trouble comes with more mundane things, the anecdotes and factoids that pastors like to sprinkle into their messages.

Take this lovely story I heard in a sermon recently:


http://www.faithstreet.com/onfaith/2014/07/25/you-might-want-to-fact-check-your-pastors-sermon/33257

Preachers, choose your words wisely

From The LA Times-

On Sunday, hundreds of preachers are expected to celebrate something called "Pulpit Freedom Sunday" by sermonizing about the moral qualifications of candidates for public office. The event is organized by the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian legal organization. The alliance is offering legal representation to clergy whose remarks might run afoul of the prohibition of politicking by churches. It's a challenge the Internal Revenue Service should take seriously.

Under the law, not only churches but other so-called 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organizations must not "participate in, or intervene in (including the publishing or distributing of statements), any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office." The restriction, which dates back to the 1950s, is based on a sound principle: that organizations characterizing themselves as charitable and receiving a government benefit should refrain from election activity.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinionla/la-ed-pulpit-20110929,0,875114.story

The Bible and the New York Time

Book review-

Foreword by William H. Willimon This collection of vividly illustrative sermons by a leading contemporary Episcopalian preacher eloquently heralds the Christian call to faith in the face of modern challenges. Widely known for their up-to-the-minute relevance to modern life, the sermons of Fleming Rutledge are always out on the edge, challenging the boundaries of contemporary thought and experience. No issue is too threatening, no event too shocking, no question too impertinent to be addressed.

Following Karl Barth’s dictum that sermons should be written with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other, Rutledge weaves the changing events of the daily news together with the unchanging rhythms of the church seasons. Her book leads readers through the liturgical year, from All Saints to Pentecost, showing how the biblical story intersects with our own stories.

The Bible and the New York Times is a collection of sermons by Fleming Rutledge, an Episcopal priest with an exceptional ability to engage the shifting stories reported in the contemporary media without losing her firm footing in scripture. She’s not a flashy preacher–no rhetorical fireworks here–but her sermons have a quietly urgent style that comes from her fearless interest in some of the most frightening stories in the world. The explosion of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, for example, would not be most preachers’ first choice to illustrate an Advent sermon.

But for Rutledge, they’re a natural and mutually illuminating match, because “Advent is designed to show that the meaning of Christmas is diminished to the vanishing point if we are not willing to take a fearless inventory of the darkness.” In his introduction to The Bible and The New York Times William Willimon offers a near-perfect summary of what’s so difficult and extraordinary about these sermons: “The reason why it’s tough speaking of Jesus is much the same reason why they kicked him out after his first sermon at Nazareth–Jesus spoke of and enacted a Good News which assaulted our settled definitions of news.”

http://www.jacksonnjonline.com/2010/07/25/the-bible-and-the-new-york-times/

Drop the comic altar ego, clergy told

From Australia-

LAUGHTER may be the best medicine, but God is no joke, according to an Anglican bishop who has chided Christian church leaders who think of themselves as stand-up comedians and resort to making jokes during sermons.

The Bishop of South Sydney, Robert Forsyth, says there is nothing funny in "lame-fisted attempts" to crack jokes and be funny during services and church meetings. Humour has its place, but God and church, he says, is no laughing matter.

"I am frankly sick of 'leaders' ruining the atmosphere of the meeting/service and disrupting the focus on God with half-baked comic lines," he wrote for a Sydney Anglican online ministry resource guide. "Or they detract from my reflection upon some important point made in the sermon with smart cracks or attempts to make funny comments about the preacher or the sermon."

This, he said, interfered with the congregation's relationship with God.

Bishop Forsyth came to public prominence as the minister who wittily crossed words with the publican Arthur Elliot across from St Barnabas Anglican Church in Broadway. While humour was a good tool to connect with a congregation, it should not compromise the message of salvation, he said.

The rest is here-

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/drop-the-comic-altar-ego-clergy-told-20090608-c0we.html