The Purpose of the Pulpit
As a result of my link to Doug Wilson's comic strip regarding the sermon, I have received some questions regarding my view of preaching. One of my good friends emailed me a question, so I thought I would post it, as well as my response here:What type of preaching are you inclined to now? I ask this not as a challenge but as one that is very curious and eager to learn more. I have read some of the books that you recommended on preaching including "Famine in the Land" and have enjoyed them thoroughly. My struggle currently is that I see many sermons and methods that are in error, yet I don’t have all of the answers on what exactly to replace them with.
Here is the deal: I think a sermon should be an exposition of a given text. It should help the congregation better understand what God was saying when it was written, and how that has bearing on us today. I think it should be clear, well-researched, and leave the listeners with a bigger view of God, His Word, and their response to it. I don’t think it should be the main forum for introducing technical terms and serious intellectual scholarship (although this is necessary during the preparation for the sermon), rather the serious preparation should lead to a straightforward understanding of the true meaning and implication of the text being exposited. In other words, the sermon itself is not a seminary course, but it is a result of scholarly research that benefits all of the lay people. I do think we should require the congregation to put on their thinking caps and engage seriously with the scriptures, but I don’t think we should demand that they understand Biblical Greek or something just to be able to be admonished and encouraged by the word on Sunday Morning.
What do y'all think?
posted by DrewDog at 8:55 PM
6 Comments:
I might not have agreed completely in the past, but now I do.
Thanks Vijay. The funny thing is, I wouldn't have agreed in the past either!
Hi, Drewdog,
I don't think I would disagree with anything you've said here, except that what you're offered seems more like a list of qualities that a good sermon would display, rather than an anwer to the question "What is the purpose of the pulpit?"
In my cradle faith (and, I take it from your comments in other places, in yours as well), the pulpit's purpose was almost exclusively didactic. The pulpit was for teaching, for the primary effort at Christian education in the congregation. If this is so, then it would produce ... well, highly didactic expositions of the Bible, focused on a lot of exegetical, theological, and hermeneutical minutia, stuff that is highly valuable in the pastor's study, of course, but hardly sermonic in the classical sense.
In my Southern Baptist phase, the purpose of the pulpit was evangelism, no matter what the Biblical text chosen.
Now, I'm all for teaching, exegesis, theology, Bible exposition, sophisticated and subtle hermeneutics, and all the rest. All these should serve the pulpit, but I think it would be a pastoral error to think the pulpit is merely a delivery system for these kinds of activities.
If the Bible is the primary basal content of the pulpit, then the purpose of the pulpit seems best expressed by Paul's dictim in 2 Tim. 3:16:
All scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness, so the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.
If this is our guide, then the purpose of the pulpit is:
doctrine
reproof
correction
training in righteousness
If the pulpit is deployed ONLY for the first in this list, then it necessarily happens that the others are not furthered by what happens in the pulpit.
I don't know that every sermon must serve all four purposes in equal degrees. Circumstances are going to affect that mix, not to mention pastoral agendas and assessments of the congregation's needs at the moment.
bq
Thanks for your comments, BQ. This is very helpful.
By the way, I usually choose a catchy title after writing my post, so sometimes it doesnt' fit (i.e., this post does not answer the question, "What is the purpose of the pulpit?"). Hopefully I'll get better at this with time.
I would love to see others interact with your proposition. What do you all think of this 4-fold purpose?
As to evangelism in the pulpit, I guess I have a fairly deep reaction to that from my Baptist days. So, take my ravings below with a grain or two of salt.
I actually responded to pulpit evangelism, for which I owe some long-forgotten Baptist revival preacher an eternal debt of thanks. I must also thank the Baptist matron who scooped up the neighborhood ruffians (me included) and carted us off to a week-long series of revival meetings during the summer of 1955 in a dessicated town in the middle of the Mojave Desert.
But, over the next ten years or so, my estimation of what was for me typical Baptist pulpitry evolved through these stages:
1. Wow! There must be a lot of unbelievers in here each Sunday.
2. Hmmm. It's always the same people, and they're fine church folk. Where are the unbelievers?
3. Hmmm. Maybe they just think they're Christians and the pastor has some reason to think they're not.
4. Hmmm. Maybe I am not really saved.
Meanwhile, I'm reading my Bible and starting to ask a lot of questions, and I don't get any answers.
I could spin this out, but I think you can guess where this is heading. I was all set up to switch over to a classical Bible Church kind of ministry (as such existed 30 or 40 years ago), where the pulpit was not one evangelisitic sermon after another, followed by The Never Ending Singing of Just As I Am. Instead, I found myself in seminary disguised as a church.
In these kinds of churches, I grew a lot. I even ministered in that fashion as a pastor for some years. But, sooner or later, you hit a wall there too.
In neither case (the Baptists; the Bible-church folks) did the problem lie in what was there. Evangelism is always right; teaching Bible and theology is always right. The problem wasn't with what was there, but in what was not there, often because it was expressly rejected.
As to doctrine, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness, there is a perfectly sensible reason for those ideas expressed in that particular order.
Doctrine is the truth of the Bible, stated baldly in its pages, or arising necessarily from a synthesis of all its pages.
Reproof is the first and inevitable and necessary result of the encounter between truth and a sinner, including redeemed sinners.
Correction is the always-desirable advancement on reproof. It does no good to identify and expose sin if there is no turning away from the sin thus exposed, no healing of the harm sin and folly have brought.
Training in righteousness goes the next step -- to the formation, development, and maturity of the new nature, the new man.
Good works -- that is what God has created that we should walk in them. We were created for these, and to attain them we need the pastoral ministry such as Paul has exhorted Timothy to pursue.
bq
Thanks for all of the feedback, now how do I prepare for this Sunday's sermon? Actually, I am not preaching Sunday. First of all, no one would understand my pathetic attempt at Spanish, and secondly, I am not the pastor.
Seriously, where does one begin? How do you now take all of this information and apply it to formulating a sermon or series of sermons?
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