Repost: Was Paul preaching a sermon when he met with the church at Troas?

(post in honor of my friend Joe)

There are some cornerstone verses that are used to prop up the traditions we have come to expect in the traditional church, verses like 1 Cor 9:14 as a defense of paid clergy. These verses, taken out of context, are offered up as an unquestionable bulwark that makes cause even the mere suggestion that some of our traditions may not be as defensible as we think to be met with derision, dismissal and often anger.

One of the most frequently cited of these verses is Acts 20: 7-11. It is part of the cultural mythology of organized religion that these verses describe a proto-worship service, the earliest example of the church a) gathering on Sunday and b) listening to a sermon. As I hope to demonstrate in this reposting of Was Paul preaching a sermon when he met with the church at Troas?, this is not only not apparent from the text itself when studied as a whole but in reality what is being described is something quite different, radically so, from what we normally practice on Sunday morning.

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Back to this topic again.

Like a certain canine owned by Dr. Ivan Pavlov, there are people who will reflexively respond to the assertion that there is no command or example regading monologue sermons in the New Testament with “Oh yeah, well what about Acts 20:7?!?!” It never fails. What is also apparent is that this response is based on a knee-jerk reaction. Teacher X that I respect taught that in the account of Paul speaking to the church in Troas in Acts 20, what was going on was a sermon. In fact more often than not it will be accompanied by a joke about not complaining about how long someone "preaches" because when Paul preached to the church in Troas, a young man fell asleep and fell from a window! Hilarity and chuckling ensue but no one asks “is that really what happened or is that just what we were led to believe happened?”. Well I am asking!

I think some of the problem comes from the King James translation. Most Christians are familiar with the language in the KJV (i.e. our Father who art in heaven) and in the King James language from 400 years ago, it certainly sounds to our ears like Paul is "preaching", which of course means a sermon. If you read the King James rendering, this is what you get (emphasis mine in all three examples):

And upon the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul preached unto them, ready to depart on the morrow; and continued his speech until midnight. And there were many lights in the upper chamber, where they were gathered together. And there sat in a window a certain young man named Eutychus, being fallen into a deep sleep: and as Paul was long preaching, he sunk down with sleep, and fell down from the third loft, and was taken up dead. And Paul went down, and fell on him, and embracing him said, Trouble not yourselves; for his life is in him. When he therefore was come up again, and had broken bread, and eaten, and talked a long while, even till break of day, so he departed. And they brought the young man alive, and were not a little comforted.

The English Standard renders it slightly differently but in an important way.

On the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul talked with them, intending to depart on the next day, and he prolonged his speech until midnight. There were many lamps in the upper room where we were gathered. And a young man named Eutychus, sitting at the window, sank into a deep sleep as Paul talked still longer. And being overcome by sleep, he fell down from the third story and was taken up dead. But Paul went down and bent over him, and taking him in his arms, said, "Do not be alarmed, for his life is in him." And when Paul had gone up and had broken bread and eaten, he conversed with them a long while, until daybreak, and so departed. And they took the youth away alive, and were not a little comforted.

The same is true with the NASB. The New American Standard renders it:

On the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul began talking to them, intending to leave the next day, and he prolonged his message until midnight. There were many lamps in the upper room where we were gathered together. And there was a young man named Eutychus sitting on the window sill, sinking into a deep sleep; and as Paul kept on talking, he was overcome by sleep and fell down from the third floor and was picked up dead. But Paul went down and fell upon him, and after embracing him, he said, "Do not be troubled, for his life is in him." When he had gone back up and had broken the bread and eaten, he talked with them a long while until daybreak, and then left. They took away the boy alive, and were greatly comforted.

What is the difference? In the King James translation, the word “preach” is used twice and that word has a connotation of a monologue sermon because of our cultural understanding of what “preaching” involves. But both the NASB and the ESV strongly suggest that Paul was involved in a conversation with the assembled body by rendering it “talked with” and “conversed with”. So which is correct? I am not a Greek expert but I think we can draw some conclusions from what we have been presented with that support my contention that Paul was involved in a conversation, not a sermon.

First, there is the ESV/NASB translations which imply that Paul was involved at least partially in conversation with the church, that he was interacting with the people there and not merely “preaching unto them” a sermon. Certainly Paul would have been leading the conversation as an apostle but there is nothing to suggest that the gathered church sat mutely while he spoke. Given what Paul wrote to the church in Corinth in 1 Corinthians 14, he definitely would have expected all of the brothers to bring something to the meeting (a hymn, a prayer, a teaching, etc.) and not just sit quietly and listen politely. 

Second, does it make any sense at all to assume that Paul was preaching a sermon for perhaps eight hours? At least twice the church was eating so he certainly wouldn’t have been preaching then. Just from a practical standpoint, there is no way he was the only one speaking. If you have ever spoken to a group you know that it is draining and hard on your voice. An hour is a long time to speak, two hours is pretty extreme. By contrast I can talk with friends for hours on end because I am not the only one talking.

Third, trying to draw a parallel between Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ entrusted with writing large swaths of the New Testament as an authoritative text and your local church pastor delivering a spiritual lecture is foolhardy. I think it is ironic that many people will embrace Paul as their role model when they think he is supporting their traditions, like sermon preaching, but not when he exhorts church leaders to earn a living by working rather than coveting money from the church, something that happens a few verses after Paul allegedly was preaching a sermon in Acts 20:7.

Fourth, the purpose of the church gathering is important to look at. The church was gathered together to “break bread”. This was not a worship service where the expectation was that they were going to get a sermon, they were there as the church for a meal specifically as a going away meal with Paul (and they met on Sunday not because Sunday is the "sabbath" but because Paul was leaving the next day but that is a post for a different day). Certainly there were important conversation about matters of theological importance and certainly there likely was prayer going on (based on Acts 2:42) but the gathering was for a meal. Paul spent a lot of time speaking with the church because he was leaving the next day and apparently he had lots to talk about. Keep in mind that he was there for a week and during that time was no doubt also engaged in teaching and laboring alongside the believers in Troas.

What seems apparent from Paul’s time with the church in Troas in Acts 20 is that he was talking with the church in Troas while they were gathered to share a meal. Paul likely was leading the conversation because of his unique position in the church as an apostle but the church was engaged in conversation with him, an assertion I base on the text (“talked with” and “conversed with”) and on the sheer implausibility of Paul preaching a monologue sermon all night. Those who claim that Acts 20:7 is an example of monologue sermons in the New Testament have a difficult task because a) it is the only place they can even try to turn to and b) the actual text itself doesn’t support their contention unless you read Acts 20:7 convinced that your tradition is correct before you even start to read. If you base your notion of the centrality of sermons in the life of the church on Acts 20:7 you are on pretty shaky ground indeed.

Preaching The Gospel To Unbelievers Is Bad?

I watched this video from Todd Friel yesterday and it just rubbed me the wrong way for a number of reasons. Give it a look see...

I think where this goes wrong is where discussions like this often go wrong: at the beginning. Todd assumes that "preaching" means "sermons" and that this sort of "preaching" is what the Bible means when it talks about edification, equipping and discipleship. As I have stated over and over, we always see preaching done in the New Testament directed at unbelievers and never see a single sermon associated with the gathering of the church. It is only because we have adopted and modified the Mass that we assume that watching a speaker deliver a prepared speech somehow equates to preaching and this "preaching" is at the heart of the gathered church. The church as an event we attend is invariably going to attract sheep and goats so to decry some for trying to share the Gospel with the lost is foolhardy. If you are going to have a performance driven event, you might as well reach the lost while you are at it.

Todd seems to confuse our cultural religious expression of church (showing up on Sunday, sitting in a pew and somehow being spoon fed via sermon until we magically become mature) with the purpose of the church demonstrated and revealed in Scripture. These are all common topics I post about so no need to go any further on that.

That misunderstanding about the purpose of the church is not all that surprising. What I did find especially troubling was his "baby bird" analogy, the idea that we are continually showing up on Sunday to be spoon fed. The Bible talks about those who never seem to get beyond theological infancy

For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.  (Heb  5:12-14)

The author of Hebrews seems remarkably disdainful here. He seems to think that these people should be further along than they are and is disappointed that they are not. Keep in mind that these are people surrounded by a pagan culture unlike anything we can imagine, coming from a legalistic reinterpretation of the Old Covenant community and without the myriad "benefits" we have: a complete Bible, a deep cultural tradition of Christianity, ample resources. Yet the author of Hebrews expects that they will have moved beyond the "milk stage" into the more mature "meat stage", or moving from spiritual infancy to adulthood.

I don't necessarily blame Todd here, even though as someone who frequently posts discernment videos pointing out the errors in other you would think he would be past the stage of sitting around with his mouth open to be "fed", i.e. listen to a sermon. The church is structured in a way that locks people into perpetual spiritual infancy by constantly spoon "feeding" them via sermons, Sunday schools and rituals rather than equipping them with the expectation that they will come to a level of maturity and actually begin doing the work of ministry. The flip side of this is a spiritual dependency where Christians are perpetually dependent on their clergy to do the work of ministry while the rest watch. If you doubt this, visit a typical local church and see how many long term "members" have not served the needy or shared the Gospel with someone who is lost in the last six months. Few evangelicals can express even the most basic theological concepts. We have churches stuffed with Bibles, books, tracts, sermons and Sunday school that are also populated with milk level immature Christians.

The author of Hebrews exhorts the readers of his letter to come to maturity by constantly practicing their powers of discernment. How do we practice our powers of discernment? How are we fed and equipped? By picking out a "church" and listening to a sermon each week? Clearly not since that was not the practice of the early church so it hardly seems to make sense that the author of the book of Hebrews would imply that. The pattern clearly seems to be that being a disciple involves on the job training, i.e. being actively involved in the work of ministry and emulating the example of others, younger men emulating and imitating the elders and older, more mature women teaching and training by their example the younger women. In other words, getting saved, getting basic training and getting out of the pew and into the mission field all around us.

The trouble in the church is not that our sermons are aimed at the goats, the problem is that the sheep are being spoon fed astroturf and never being truly equipped. It is inexcusable that in a nation with millions upon millions of professing "Christians" has such lackluster participation in the work of ministry and such theological shallowness. Something is clearly not working and a solution that boils down to "more of what is not working" is doomed to repeating the cycle.

How can anyone learn if they are interacting?

This paragraph from a subtly titled post The Problem With Cell Groups elicited both a wry chuckle and a facepalm at the same time. 

In the typical cell group, no one actually teaches. Rather, one person will moderate a conversation. The environment created is typically one wherein everyone is encouraged to share his or her opinion and all ideas are considered valid. Should another member of the group actually critique another person’s contribution to the discussion, he is seen as being divisive. Rather than promoting Biblical fidelity, the typical cell group is actually promoting relativism.

Everyone is encouraged to share their opinion? Gasp! The horror!

Let me say first that in a way I get it. There is a lot of shallow study in the church. Frankly a lot of it happens within the four walls of church buildings. Lots of Christians have never advanced beyond the "milk" stage. Again, those folks have spent lots of time being sermonized and Sunday schooled. So yes we need more Biblical literacy, not less. Quashing discussion is not going to encourage that. I also would point out that the reason we have "cell groups" or small groups or Bible studies or whatever is that people are not getting fellowship on Sunday morning so maybe the problem is not cell groups but rather our church traditions. Just saying.

The bigger underlying issue is the paranoia of losing control. When a pastor preaches from the pulpit every week, he controls the conversation. There are no alternate views and there is no discussion. No one makes a mistake or says the "wrong" thing. When you control the medium, you control the message. Some pastors are OK with being questioned afterward but I have also met (and been) the kind of pastor who views that as somehow disrespectful. Now when you get small groups of Christians meeting outside of the control of the "leadership"...who is in charge? Who is making sure no one says the wrong thing? When the "laity" gets loose, chaos ensues and control is lost. So the solution is to hand pick certain men to teach (i.e. lecture) and then field questions in order to provide authoritative answers. Open discussion is straight up dangerous!

Isn't this just having a smaller scale sermon? One person "teaches" while everyone else listens? The answer probably would be an enthusiastic and unapologetic "yes!" because most of the church assumes that listening to a monologue is the best way of learning and this is especially true in Reformed circles where sermons are good and more sermons is better.

The church needs to stop being afraid of the laity, of open discussion, of questions. The church too often functions like the old Soviet Union when it comes to controlling the message. The result is a laity that is ill informed and immature. Guess what. They will never stop being immature if they are constantly coddled and spoon fed teaching. Pastors/elders need to remember that while they are called to watch over the church and be watchful for wolves, they are also called to equip the entire Body for ministry and mature faith.

Elders, the church is not a seething mass of potential heretics to be afeerd of. The are your brothers and sisters in Christ. The best defense against heresy is not to control the message, it is to equip and empower the entire Body. By definition a mature Christian is not a heretic so lets stop treating our brothers and sisters as if they are guilty of heresy until proven otherwise.

Repost: Multi-Site Churches taken to their logical extreme

I was directed to a post by Carl Trueman that linked to a Christianity Today article, Multi-Site Churches Go Interstate. The article at CT looks at Mars Hill, better known as "Mark Driscoll's church", a concept worthy of a post of its own, expnbding their brand into new states.

Mars Hill Church is coming to town.

Pastor Mark Driscoll's megachurch recently announced plans to expand into Portland, Oregon, and Orange County, California, using multi-site campuses that feature live bands and a sermon piped in from the main campus in Seattle.

The move is part of a trend among megachurches to extend their brand of church to new communities, in hopes of reaching unchurched people with the gospel. But critics fear the out-of-state campuses turn churches into franchises like McDonald's or Starbucks.

Needless to say this is not sitting well with a lot of people.

The whole thing reminded me of a post I put up a while ago. While I think "multi-site" churches led by one celebrity pastor with streaming videos of sermons is a terrible idea and bears no relationship to the Biblical vision of community and fellowship, I also think that it makes perfect sense in light of what people assume "church" is all about: hearing a sermon, listening to someone else pray while we bow our heads, singing some songs and occasionally observing a ritual we call "The Lord's Supper. If that is what church is all about, why not get the very best? Thus my post, Multi-Site Churches taken to their logical extreme.

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Michael McKinley at the 9 Marks blog, Church Matters, asks if the rise of multi-site churches doesn't lead to just playing a recording of someone reciting Jonathan Edwards sermons for the gathering of the church instead of a live preacher.

Well, why not?

I think this is a great idea!

If the purpose and pinnacle of the gathering of the church is for the people to hear one man give a sermon, then why shouldn’t we just listen to the very best men via teleconference or even recording? We hear all the time that the problem with the church is that we need more and better expository preaching. With all love to my friends who preach and in full recognition of my own limitations in preaching, I would say that you get a much better expository sermon from Piper or MacArthur than you get from virtually any senior pastor in any local church in America. If the goal is to hear a solid, expository sermon why not get the best sermon you can get? Better yet. What if you broadcast Bob Kauflin every Sunday morning on a tape delay “leading the worship”? What is the difference between Bob on video and a guy up front telling you what songs to sing? Bob is going to give you a “better”, more polished and professional song leadership. The accompaniment will be on key, the singing will be perfect, the songs will be properly vetted. How about we film Ligon Duncan praying and reciting 1 Corinthians 11 over a huge pile of oyster crackers and pallets of grape juice? Then we could ship portions out to churches observing the Supper that week and splice in the footage of Duncan blessing it prior to passing around the platters.

For most Christians in traditional churches on a Sunday morning, they are primarily sitting and watching. Does it really matter if they are watching a guy in-person on stage or Mark Dever on a video feed? I think taking the traditional model of evangelical church life to a logical extreme, why not do this? Just think, we could take up the offering and put it into the bank and then the central church could sweep the money into one big account and distribute it. That is how mormons do it. Instead of squabbling about carpet colors at the local level, let a regional super senior pastor figure it out. For those of us who are Reformed, we could break it down regionally. Albert Mohler could get the south, MacArthur everything west of the Mississippi, Piper the Midwest and Northeast and Dever could run the east coast. We could appoint under-under shepherds in smaller areas, Steve Lawson in Alabama, Kevin DeYoung in Michigan, etc. No more boring, wandering sermons. No more butchering of “A Mighty Fortress is our God”.

I think this idea has real promise.

A different perspective on sermons

Most of the time we see advocacy or defenses of sermons coming from pastors of traditional churches where the sermon is the focal point of the gathering. I read a post on sermons (and a follow-up post in response to a question about the original post) with interest because the author is part of, for lack of a more precise term, a house church group in the home of the college football team with the more wins than any other program, i.e. Ann Arbor, Michigan.. The author, Van Parunak, is a great guy and his wife is one of the nicest people I know.

Van starts off his post, In Defense of the Sermon, with this:

Traditionally, the sermon has been an important feature of the assemblies of God’s people. The sermon is so central to many groups that its delivery is one of the main duties of a professionally trained and salaried individual, the pastor.

The sermon is coming under attack in many quarters as ineffective and out of date. Yet the practice of delivering material through an extended, carefully prepared verbal presentation has strong biblical precedent. Before abandoning serious expository preaching, let’s think more carefully.

To be clear: what I mean by “sermon” is an extended lecture on a biblical text or theme, prepared in advance by one individual who delivers it orally to a group of people. Unlike a discussion, the presentation is asymmetric (primarily from the teacher to the congregation, though it may be interrupted by questions). Unlike a meditation, it develops its content with an argument that usually takes some time to present. Unlike an extemporaneous address, the teacher devotes effort to preparing it in advance.

I will cautiously say that this stance is something of an outlier among house/simple church folks. That doesn’t mean it is wrong of course just kind of unusual. Also note that in this group, as I understand it, questions are welcome and different brothers often deliver the sermon so it is not like a monologue delivered by the same guy to a mute audience of observers week after week. Again, I haven't had the chance to meet with this group but I do know several people who are part of Washtenaw Independent Bible Church.

I would like you to read both posts, first his post In Defense of the Sermon and then his follow-up to my question regarding Peter’s preaching on the day of Pentecost in Acts 2, Peter’s Planned Presentation. Be warned, they are lengthy and detailed. Let me know what you think!

Was Paul preaching a sermon when he met with the church at Troas?

Back to this topic again.

Like a certain canine owned by Dr. Pavlov, there are people who will reflexively respond to the assertion that there is no command or example regading monologue sermons in the New Testament with “Oh yeah, well what about Acts 20:7?!?!” It never fails. What is also apparent is that this response is based on a knee-jerk reaction. Teacher X that I respect taught that in the account of Paul speaking to the church in Troas in Acts 20, what was going on was a sermon. In fact more often than not it will be accompanied by a joke about not complaining about how long someone preaches because when Paul preached to the church in Troas, a young man fell asleep and fell from a window! Hilarity and chuckling ensure but no one asks “is that really what happened or is that just what we were led to believe happened?”. Well, I am asking!

I think some of the problem comes from the King James translation. Most Christians are familiar with the language in the KJV (i.e. our Father who are in heaven) and in the King James language from 400 years ago, it certainly sounds to our ears like Paul is preaching which of course means a sermon. If you read the King James rendering, this is what you get (emphasis mine in all three examples):

And upon the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul preached unto them, ready to depart on the morrow; and continued his speech until midnight. And there were many lights in the upper chamber, where they were gathered together. And there sat in a window a certain young man named Eutychus, being fallen into a deep sleep: and as Paul was long preaching, he sunk down with sleep, and fell down from the third loft, and was taken up dead. And Paul went down, and fell on him, and embracing him said, Trouble not yourselves; for his life is in him. When he therefore was come up again, and had broken bread, and eaten, and talked a long while, even till break of day, so he departed. And they brought the young man alive, and were not a little comforted.

The English Standard renders it slightly differently but in an important way.

On the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul talked with them, intending to depart on the next day, and he prolonged his speech until midnight. There were many lamps in the upper room where we were gathered. And a young man named Eutychus, sitting at the window, sank into a deep sleep as Paul talked still longer. And being overcome by sleep, he fell down from the third story and was taken up dead. But Paul went down and bent over him, and taking him in his arms, said, "Do not be alarmed, for his life is in him." And when Paul had gone up and had broken bread and eaten, he conversed with them a long while, until daybreak, and so departed. And they took the youth away alive, and were not a little comforted.

The same is true with the NASB. The New American Standard renders it:

On the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul began talking to them, intending to leave the next day, and he prolonged his message until midnight. There were many lamps in the upper room where we were gathered together. And there was a young man named Eutychus sitting on the window sill, sinking into a deep sleep; and as Paul kept on talking, he was overcome by sleep and fell down from the third floor and was picked up dead. But Paul went down and fell upon him, and after embracing him, he said, "Do not be troubled, for his life is in him." When he had gone back up and had broken the bread and eaten, he talked with them a long while until daybreak, and then left. They took away the boy alive, and were greatly comforted.

What is the difference? In the King James translation, the word “preach” is used twice and that word has a connotation of a monologue sermon because of our cultural understanding of what “preaching” involves. But both the NASB and the ESV strongly suggest that Paul was involved in a conversation with the assembled body by rendering it “talked with” and “conversed with”. So which is correct? I am not a Greek expert but I think we can draw some conclusions from what we have been presented with that support my contention that Paul was involved in a conversation, not a sermon.

First, there is the ESV/NASB translations which imply that Paul was involved at least partially in conversation with the church, that he was interacting with the people there and not merely “preaching unto them” a sermon. Certainly Paul would have been leading the conversation as an apostle but there is nothing to suggest that the gathered church sat mutely while he spoke. Given what Paul wrote to the church in Corinth in 1 Corinthians 14, he certainly would have expected all of the brothers to bring something to the meeting (a hymn, a prayer, a teaching, etc.).

Second, does it make any sense at all to assume that Paul was preaching a sermon for perhaps eight hours? At least twice the church was eating so he certainly wouldn’t have been preaching then. Just from a practical standpoint, there is no way he was the only one speaking. If you have ever spoken to a group you know that it is draining and hard on your voice. An hour is a long time to speak, two hours is pretty extreme. I can talk with friends for hours on end because I am not the only one talking.

Third, trying to draw a parallel between Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ entrusted with writing large swaths of the New Testament as an authoritative text and your local church pastor delivering a spiritual lecture is foolhardy. I think it is ironic that many people will embrace Paul as their role model when they think he is supporting their traditions, like sermon preaching, but not when he exhorts church leaders to earn a living by working rather than coveting money from the church, something that happens a few verses after Paul allegedly was preaching a sermon in Acts 20:7.

Fourth, the purpose of the church gathering is important to look at. The church was gathered together to “break bread”. This was not a worship service where the expectation was that they were going to get a sermon, they were there as the church for a meal. Certainly there were important conversation about matters of theological importance and certainly there likely was prayer going on (based on Acts 2:42) but the gathering was for a meal. Paul spent a lot of time speaking with the church because they were leaving the next day and he apparently had lots to talk about. Keep in mind that he was there for a week and during that time was no doubt also engaged in teaching and laboring alongside the believers in Troas.

What seems apparent from Paul’s time with the church in Troas in Acts 20 is that he was talking with the church in Troas while they were gathered to share a meal. Paul likely was leading the conversation because of his unique position in the church as an apostle but the church was engaged in conversation with him, an assertion I base on the text (“talked with” and “conversed with”) and on the sheer implausibility of Paul preaching a monologue sermon all night. Those who claim that Acts 20:7 is an example of monologue sermons in the New Testament have a difficult task because a) it is the only place they can even try to turn to and b) the actual text itself doesn’t support their contention unless you read Acts 20:7 convinced that your tradition is correct before you even start to read. if you base your notion of the centrality of sermons in the life of the church on Acts 20:7, you are on pretty shaky ground indeed.

Great Tweet!

Now in these days when the disciples were increasing in number, a complaint by the Hellenists arose against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution. And the twelve summoned the full number of the disciples and said, “It is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God working in our offices on sermon preparation to serve tables. Therefore, brothers, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom and handy with tools, whom we will appoint to this duty to the office of deacon. But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word to the preparation of sermons which we will deliver on Sunday.” (Acts 6:1-4 ESV Re-Mix)

I saw this tweet last night from Steve McCoy and wanted to share it:

Acts 6 isn't about choosing servants so that the Apostles can spend 25 hrs a week in the study to prep for 1 sermon.

That is good stuff!

Many a preacher sees Acts 6 as not only an excuse but a command to spend most of the week preparing for their Sunday sermon(s). I have read many men piously talking about how many hours a week they spend in sermon preparation, as if it is some sort of badge of honor to spend 20, 30 or more hours every week reading about a couple of verses you are going to sermonize about on Sunday. If you read Acts 6 in context, what should be happening if you are not working a regular job and are not engaged in works of mercy is that you should spend all of your time out of the church and preaching the Gospel to the lost. You aren’t likely going to talk to many lost people while sitting at your desk looking through a half dozen commentaries to make sure you get just the right nuance in your sermon. Another great reason to read the Scriptures in context and read them for what they actually say, not what we assume they say.

The Problem With Preaching

Eric Carpenter put out a great post last night, 4 Problematic Defenses of Preaching Monologue Sermons During Church Gatherings, where he looks at the deep problems associated with the four most common defenses of the monologue sermon that dominates church life in much of the evangelical world. I have run into all of these and if you already assume that monologue preaching is proper because that is what we culturally expect, they certainly seem like sound defenses. When you step back and really examine them, they fall apart. Jump over to Eric's post and take a look and leave a comment or three.

Thoughts on expository preaching

Eric Carpenter has apparently garnered the attention of one of the big guns of the Reformed world, Thabiti Anyabwile. Eric questioned something Thabiti had written in his book on What Is a Healthy Church Member regarding being an “expository listener” and apparently Thabiti read Eric review and responded with his post Who's Doing the Talking in our Church Gatherings?.

Here is the crux of his argument. According to Thabiti and most advocates of expository preaching, what is happening is not one guy talking to a bunch of other people from a platform and behind a pulpit. It is God speaking through His Word, God speaking to His people. According to Thabiti, the structure of the service (something I have railed against many a time) actually facilitates this dialogue between God and man…

The very structure reflects a running dialogue–not between the people gathered, though we “speak to one another in songs,” etc.–but fundamentally between God and His people. We come singing to our God, but He speaks the first word in the “call to worship.” We respond in song. Then God addresses us again by the reading of His word. We then speak to Him in prayer of confession. Following the confession, God speaks to us in the “assurance of pardon” taken from Scripture each week. Hearing His promise of pardon, we then respond in song. God speaks next in the sermon. God gets the bulk of the service to say what’s on His mind, disclosed in the word of God. Following God’s word to us, we respond in praise. We then receive the benediction or words of blessing from God, before sitting in silence (hopefully awe) before the God of the universe.

Here is my problem with that.

From a theological position, we affirm that God is speaking through His Word.

From a practical standpoint, what we get is one guy speaking on behalf of God.

That is a huge difference. Is God’s Word really God speaking to us all the time or only under special circumstances? Is this a dialogue between God and man or is it man telling us what and how to respond to what he has chosen to share from God? From the Scriptures read to the songs we sing to the prayers we listen to, all of it is selected by a few people and imposed on the rest. All of that is done in most churches with the very best of intentions but the reality is that the majority of believers are mute observers of the performance, even when we are permitted to sing along with the songs someone else chose (standing or sitting by their direction of course). In every church we have been involved with up to the gathering we met with in East Lansing, the entire church gathering was focused around one guy, i.e. the pastor, who does virtually all of the speaking. Is there something special, from a Scriptural standpoint, about when a pastor delivers a sermon versus when two brothers are opening the Word over a cup of coffee? Everything we are taught to understand, even the way the church service and building are structured, gives the impression that something special is happening in the pulpit but frankly I have been far more edified by informal conversations with brothers outside of church buildings than I ever have sitting in a pew.

Expository preaching sounds so great. We open the Word of God, study it and then exposit what it is saying. What is not to like about that? Almost everyone I know grew up in a school setting where one person always spoke and the class listened. Many of us had a similar experience in college. That mode of learning is comfortable and familiar to us and that transfer to the church where we are also taught to expect to sit in a pew and listen to the guy in front. Something odd happened as we progressed in college to upper level classes. As I went from a big lecture hall for PoliSci 101 to senior level seminars that dug deeper, there was far less lecturing and far more interaction. Guess what? I needed some basics up front (not as much as the normal college frosh but I digress) but once I had the basics I was able to engage in conversation with my professors and fellow students, in dialogue and not in simply listening. My learning was far deeper and meaningful in those classes. We all know this to be true, but why do we never progress beyond “from the pulpit to the pew” edification?

When we restrict the conversation to talking about expository preaching within the context of our presupposition and culturally attuned preferences, everything is fine but when we take the time to dig into Scripture and ask: what is commanded and what do we see modeled through example, it just isn’t there. It is amazing the more I read through Scripture to find so little of what we take as absolute truth in the church is completely absent and that often the opposite is what we find.

I love a lot of what Thabiti writes and I deeply respect him as a brother in Christ. I just disagree, vehemently, with the idea that being a mute listener is a sign of a healthy Christian. That is a great quality to be desired in a mannequin but not in a fellow follower and disciple of Christ. Certainly there are times to be quiet and listen just as there are times to be active and involved but the determining factor is not whether a preacher gives you permission or not. It is high time that we release Christians from their pews, equip them and exhort them to minister to the world and see what happens!

Believing Bible stories instead of believing the Bible

My wife and I were talking about the prior post, the "If you won't venture out in the snow to go to church, you don't love Jesus" tweet. She pointed out that this is a perfect example of how Protestants are like Roman Catholics in many ways. We believe Bible stories, i.e. the interpretation someone else has told us in Sunday school or a sermon, instead of what the Bible actually says.

Here is a perfect example. When I threw out the challenge "Show me one place in Scripture where Christians gathered to listen to a sermon", I got back the predictable response of Acts 20: 7-11. The Bible story we are taught to believe is that Acts 20: 7-11 describes an event where Paul preached a really long sermon to people who silently listened and then one guy fell asleep, fell from a window, was revived by Paul even though he seemed dead and then they all went and listened to Paul preaching a sermon even longer. John Gill's commentary even says that they had lots of lamps for the purpose of providing sufficient light for the preacher to read and "administer the ordinance of the supper", as if what was going on was indistinguishable from a traditional church service. Heck, it was likely that Paul was wearing vestments while serving the sacraments from a table with "Do This In Remembrance Of Me" carved in the front! This Bible story makes for a cute sermon illustration and is guaranteed to get a chuckle from the audience.

The reality in the text is completely different. Here is the pertinent text:

On the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul talked with them, intending to depart on the next day, and he prolonged his speech until midnight. There were many lamps in the upper room where we were gathered. And a young man named Eutychus, sitting at the window, sank into a deep sleep as Paul talked still longer. And being overcome by sleep, he fell down from the third story and was taken up dead. But Paul went down and bent over him, and taking him in his arms, said, "Do not be alarmed, for his life is in him." And when Paul had gone up and had broken bread and eaten, he conversed with them a long while, until daybreak, and so departed. (Act 20:7-11)

So what we have here is Paul, gathering with other Christians in a house and without the benefit of pew or pulpit. First, what is the purpose of the gathering? To listen to Paul deliver a sermon? Nope, they "gathered together to break bread". It was the meal that was the driving factor for gathering. While they were gathered, Paul "talked with them" and after Eutychus was revived we read that Paul "conversed with them a long while", until the morning. If you read that through the lens of Western cultural Christianity and base your understanding of this passage on the Bible story you have heard (and be honest, we have all heard this used in a sermon), what is happening here is that Paul preached from early evening to the next morning. What Scripture teaches us is that Paul talked with the other Christians who were gathered to break bread. Certainly he was leading the conversation but everything about it indicates that this was not a sermon or "preaching", it was a conversation among believers. When you look at what Scripture has to say, it becomes apparent that this event is not a cute story about sermonizing in the early church, it is just the opposite. The church gathered together to break bread in a home and during that time they talked with one another all night. It was a time of close and extended fellowship and a time of mutual edification. It is nothing like the Bible story that tells us we should not complain about long-winded sermons because Paul preached a sermon all night once.

When we replace studying the Scriptures with memorizing Bible stories, we often lose the original intent of what was written. We shouldn't read the Scriptures with an eye toward confirming our traditional Bible stories, we should let the Scriptures speak for themselves even when that makes us uncomfortable and shakes up our understanding of the church and of doctrines.

Being word-centered doesn’t mean being sermon-centered

I am lifting a quote from a book I haven’t read, reproduced on someone else’s blog and I ain’t apologizing for it! It is such an excellent quote that it deserves to be widely reproduced and discussed. So with apologies to Alan Knox, here is the quote from “ Total Church: A Radical Reshaping Around Gospel and Community”.

All too often people equate being word-centered with being sermon-centered. People argue for sermons by arguing for the centrality of God’s word, assuming that the word and the sermon are synonymous in Christian practice. It assumes God’s word can only be taught through sermons. Or people assume that the alternative to sermons is anarchy or relativism with no place for the Spirit-gifted teacher of God’s word, as if Spirit-gifted teachers can only exercise their gift through forty-five-minute monologues.

But our concern is not to reject the sermon. Monologue continues to have its place as one of the ways in which the Bible can and should be taught. It stands alongside other complementary methods such as dialogue and discussion. Being word-centered is not less than being sermon-centered. Our contention is that being word-centered is so much more than being sermon-centered. (pg 114)

How excellent is that!?

I think there is a place for prepared, monologue teaching in the church. Sometimes it is the appropriate method, provided that the same person is not doing the monologue every week, that the monologue is not the only method of teaching utilized and that the entire body gets the chance to discuss what was taught. So I am not “anti-sermon” as much as I am “pro-every member priesthood”. I think the best two sentences from that quote are:

“Being word-centered is not less than being sermon-centered. Our contention is that being word-centered is so much more than being sermon-centered.”

This has been an area of real shift for me. I was a big advocate of more sermons and longer sermons (as long as they were expository sermons). My view now is that the week after week monologue by the same person week after week is unhealthy for the preacher and unhealthy for the congregation. An overemphasis on the sermon leads to pastoral burnout, pastoral pride, apathy in much of the local body and a view of the church that is focused on ritual instead of community. We need more teaching in the church, that is true, but we need not just more but better teaching and that means more people being involved in the teaching beyond listening and more teaching that puts action to the words.

How will they hear without a preacher? Who are "they"?

Albert Mohler posted an essay Thursday lamenting the lack of priority placed on preaching. The title is How will they hear without a preacher? and here is a key excerpt:

Indeed, preaching is the central act of Christian worship, but its great aim reaches far above merely changing the world. The preaching of the Word of God is the chief means by which God conforms Christians to the image of Christ. Rightly understood, true Christian preaching is not aimed only at this earthly life, but is the means whereby God prepares his people for eternity.

Man, that sounds great! A year or two ago, I would have posted this and said “Amen!”. Today I post it and wonder if it is terribly accurate at all.

My first question comes right from the title of the essay: How will they hear without a preacher? . This is a quote from Romans 10:14 and is often quoted to support the need for preaching in the church. I am not sure that the connection is correct. Here is Romans passage in its fullness:

But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. For the Scripture says, “Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.” For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!” But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?” So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ. (Romans 10: 8-17)

Boy, is there a more often quoted section of Scripture that this one (other than John 3:16)? I don’t think it is saying what we traditionally assume it does. What we are seeing here is not a call for a weekly expository sermon preached in the church. Paul’s point doesn’t seem to be “How will Christians get edified unless someone preaches at them?” This is dealing with the way people are saved, unregenerate people hear the Gospel preached by a Christian and in concert with the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit they come to faith and confess Jesus Christ as Lord. This is a passage about preaching the Gospel to the lost, not the method God uses to prepare His people for eternity or conforming them to Christ. The idea that “preaching is the central act of Christian worship” is similarly nice sounding rhetoric but lacking in Scriptural foundation.

I certainly understand where Dr. Mohler is coming from. He comes from a denomination (the Southern Baptist Convention) that values the monologue sermon. He is the President of an institution (Southern Seminary) that is in the business of training vocational preachers. Dr. Mohler is personally committed to and one of the leading proponents of expository preaching in evangelicalism today. Listen to the talks at Together for the Gospel and you will hear preaching put forth as the weakest link in the church on a regular basis.

What I will say is that while I am in favor of seeing less monologue preaching in the church, I am concerned that what is replacing the sermon in most cases is actually worse. It is easy to cast stones at preaching but when you look at the alternative it is rarely a more inclusive ministry of the entire Body. What is replacing the sermon is entertainment, pure and simple, a mere religious exercise that does even less to engage the Body than mutely listening to a sermon.

The answer is not more preaching. The answer is also not less preaching if that means an even less faithful gathering of the church. The answer is for the church to be the church instead of going to church. The answer is for all of us to minister to one another. Until that happens, all the preaching in the world isn’t going to change the state of spiritual infancy that plagues the church.

(Alan Knox clearly is reading my blog drafts and posted on this very topic on Friday)

In praise of being unprepared

Sermon preparation and to a lesser extent Sunday school preparation are hallmarks of a faithful ministry in evangelicalism. Not many people are going to fault brothers for spending too much time preparing a sermon or a lesson. There is also no doubt that things tend to run more smoothly and be more pleasing to the ear when they are prepared. Who is not pleased when a sermon is neatly laid out with an intro, three main points, a conclusion to wrap it all together (on time of course!) with a sprinkling of clever anecdotes and “Amen!” lines?

May I suggest that being “unprepared” in the sense of not coming with a preconceived sermon/talk/lesson can be valuable as well?

I have found that an unscripted, unprepared meeting where brothers open the Word, comment on Scripture, request songs that are not picked out and practiced ahead of time and pray spontaneously brings out the best in others and in me. It takes some getting used to. The silence can be deafening at times to ears that are you used to the constant hum of something always going on “in church”. Sometimes you are going to get a clumsy talk or someone may get up and then lose their train of thought. It may end early or it may go longer (almost always longer in my experience).

Where is the room for the Spirit in a highly planned out meeting? When everything is planned out based on a minute by minute schedule, the presence of the Spirit is relegated to a feeling instead of a leading. In far too many cases we are either full of what we perceive as the Spirit and utterly lacking in the Word, or we are steeped in the Word and the Spirit is locked away. It doesn’t have to be this way, it should not be this way.

I don’t think that many ministers outside of a few kooks on the fringe of the “Truly Reformed” extreme would disagree that there needs to be some sort of participatory component in the gathering of the church. The reality of it is somewhat different because typically there is little opportunity for the average Christian man to be involved with the gathering of the church because those gatherings are tightly compressed time-wise and subsequently rigidly scheduled.

One of the greatest preachers in the church was the English Baptist Charles Spurgeon. Spurgeon is known for his lack of “sermon preparation”, famously not even starting to prepare until Saturday night for a Sunday morning sermon and not preparing his Sunday evening sermon until Sunday afternoon. That seems incomprehensible in the church when it is not uncommon for men to spend 10, 20 or more hours a week in deep study and preparation of their sermons. So how could Spurgeon pull off sermon after sermon with such minimal preparation? Well he was of course a rare intellect and had an amazing gift with words. It may be that he was more concerned about who he was preaching about than how he sounded to the audience. More importantly though he was deeply immersed in the Word. The Word seems to have come naturally to him because he spent a lot of time in it. Well, you may say, not everyone is Charles Spurgeon. I would agree that he was an extremely gifted man. That doesn’t mean that other men in the church can replicate what Spurgeon did by spending half of their week in their studies. It does mean that we need to spend more of our time in prayer and in the Word.

I think there is a place for a planned, prepared talk in the church. I appreciate systematic Bible studies and expository sermons. But if that is all we have, if the church gathers and 99% of the Body has no voice, how can they truly be a part of “worship”? The Holy Spirit isn’t obligated to abide by our schedule. God is a God of order but God is also a God of Spirit. An orderly service without the Spirit, if I may be so bold, is not a Christian worship service at all. A worship service where we watch is not a worship service because it gives you a warm and fuzzy feeling. Worship cannot be something I watch someone else doing, can it?

There is so much that the Body of Christ has to offer but it rarely gets a chance. So much power, so much service, so much love and so often wasted. Little wonder that a small segment of the Body is wounded and weary and the rest of the Body is atrophied and lazy. Participatory meetings are neither an anachronism that “doesn’t work” today nor a sign of new fangled emergent practices. It is an ancient path that has command and example in the Scripture and that is more than we can say about an awful lot of what passes as “Christian worship” in even the most conservative evangelical churches.

Preacher, take a chance. Let the Body worship as the Body. You might be pleasantly surprised.

Prepared sermon or a participatory meeting?

A post at The Assembling of the Church, Sermon Central, got me thinking about sermons, sermon preparation and participation.

In recent years, I have made something of an idol of the sermon. The longer, the better. The more prep time, the better. Of course the more Reformed, the better. A twenty minute sermon was mailing it in, 45 minutes was adequate and an hour was better. I often stated quite confidently that the entire gathering should be prepping for the sermon. The most qualified man should give the sermon and everyone else should listen. I have long been a fan of expositional preaching. Open the Bible and preach the Bible from the Bible. I still think this is a great way to get into the Word. What I am wondering though is two-fold: should that be the focal point of the local assembly? Should that be something that is a passive monologue, one man preaches every week and the rest sit silently?

This is a hard one for me. I know both from experience and from reading the New Testament that there is not much justification for a “one man show” style of teaching in the Bible. I always look for command and example, is there a command for something or is there an example of something? I don’t see either when it comes to monologue preaching to believers. To unbelievers, sure. But not to the church. Still, I like the predictability of it. You show up and you get a 40 minute sermon like clockwork every week. Nice and tidy. I absolutely am convinced that we need to get into the Bible a lot more than we do currently. At least with lengthy expository sermons people are getting the Word. I am less convinced that it is healthy and Biblical in spite of my own personal bias in favor of lengthy, in-depth expository monologue sermons. I have to wonder if it is healthy, healthy for one man to do all of the preaching and for the rest of the people to be passive observers. It is little wonder that so many Christians have become spiritually atrophied and so many pastors are burned out.

The other thing that I started thinking about was not just that the sermon is the focal part of the weekly service, but how much time and effort is invested into that sermon in the week leading up to the Sunday service. One of the most unquestionable features of the contemporary church is the professional, vocational paid pastor who spends a sizable chunk of their week in sermon preparation.

Ligon Duncan, in an article for 9 Marks, came to the number of eight hours per sermon in prep time being appropriate. If a “full-time” pastor preaches two unique sermons on Sunday, that would mean that adequate prep time is 16 hours per week. In the spirit of full disclosure, I was not and am not an eight hours of preparation per sermon kind of guy. I normally would read over the text several times during the week, jot down notes as they came to me and assemble the final product on Saturday night. I spent even less prep time on Sunday evening sermons, usually just a rough outline of the text. Oddly (or perhaps not) I think that the Sunday evening sermons were “better” than the Sunday morning sermons I spent more prep time on. I was working a full-time job when I was also a bi-vocational pastor, so I often jotted notes during the day and worked on ideas on my laptop at lunch. I often thought it would be wonderful to be like my “full-time” brothers who had so much more time available to prepare a sermon each week.

Again, at the risk of further alienating my fellow Reformed believers, is it the most appropriate use of funds to pay a pastor to spend 2 or more days a week sequestered in their office preparing for a 45 minute monologue sermon on Sunday morning? To be a pastor in many churches means having a seminary degree with classes on preaching, owning lots of commentaries, reading books on preaching, attending seminars on preaching. There is a ton of focus on sermons because sermons are the focus of the gathering of the church. It sounds great to the ears, a firm commitment to verse by verse expository preaching by a man with seminary training. I don’t think it is as faithful to the Scriptures unfortunately.

So what is the alternative? I fancy myself to be a pretty good teacher and one of the things I really strive to do is draw people into conversation when I teach. Make them think, encourage them to participate. The best Sunday school classes I have taught were the ones where I spoke the least, where my role was to draw people into the conversation. The least effective were the lectures where I did all of the talking. I liked the lessons where I spoke the most because the focus was on me, but I also know that people learned more when they participated more. In spite of that, I then turned around and gave a monologue sermon because that was just what I was supposed to do. Why? Just because that is what pastors do, they preach in the second half of the service. I daresay I am far more effective in teaching when I am leading a group that is all participating than standing up front and talking for 45 minutes.

Last Sunday, as we gathered for the Lord's Supper, we met in the room around the table of bread and wine as we do every week. No one has a liturgy or even a program. No one is leading. Every man in the room is welcome to share as he is led, whether in prayer, or requesting a hymn or opening up the Word. It is unscripted and open, just a room of redeemed sheep edifying, praying, uplifting one another. Sometimes there is silence for several minutes, quiet reflection and prayer. Gasp! It is uncomfortable for me, I want something to fill in the silence. I crave that order and predictability. Participatory meetings are not orderly in the sense we think of in the contemporary church structure. They are not disorderly per se, but when we think of “orderly” we are thinking programmed, scheduled, regimented, regulative, liturgical, “order of worship”. I think Paul’s concern was less that we had a bulletin to follow and more that meetings not be chaotic.

This is not to demean preaching. I love preaching, I love to listen to preaching and I love to preach! Preaching is eminently Biblical. Teaching is eminently Biblical. A monologue sermon preceded by days of preparation? Not so much. What is becoming clear to me is that often the brother who works a regular job, has no theological training and is just praying or opening the Word has far more meaningful things to say than the famous preacher who spends his week preparing for a sermon. Singing a song extemporaneously is more meaningful than singing a battery of songs selected beforehand or watching a choir performing on stage. Prayer from different men as they are led is often more meaningful than one guy praying on behalf of the rest of the room. We need to examine our church practices from Scripture and ask ourselves if they are truly fulfilling the spirit and letter of what we see in the Word or if they are merely manmade inventions designed to replace what Scripture commands and describes. As I try to do that, I find myself in the uncomfortable position of realizing that I have been wrong about the gathering of God’s people for a very long time.