Someone Take Away Keller's Internet Access

So I went back to the original post from Tim Keller I referenced the my prior post. A woman accused me of being unable to "think beyond the concrete into the abstract" so I went back to gently correct her and then I scrolled through the comments and saw that Tim himself had jumped into the fray.

So, "preaching", i.e. delivering a prepared monologue sermon, is an art form. That is kind of what I have been saying for years. Actually it is exactly what I have been saying for years. It is a performance, a religious kabuki theater. See my post from way back when in 2008 when I made the kabuki theater comparison, A call for a new Reformation in the church. That post was one of my very first when I started to see the performance driven model of the institutional church that I have been speaking out against for almost a decade. Keller's comment is the epitome of what I have been saying.

So does Keller style himself as an artist? Is his preaching an art form? Because like the comment he replied to stated, I thought that preaching was the foolish means God uses to bring sinners to salvation, not an art form to be put on display by professional performance artists on Sunday morning for a paying audience.

Keller unintentionally exposed exactly what people charge the institutional church with. It is about professional performances all too often, especially for the big name guys with the huge "ministries". As such it is barely distinguishable from other forms of secular art, apart from the God talk and Scripture references. That is just as true, sad to say, in many Reformed circles as it is in liberal churches.

So thanks I guess to Tim for making my point. I think maybe he needs to put away the laptop or phone and ponder what he is saying because it isn't helping his case at all.