The Problem With Preaching IV

The Value of Oral Communication

Having laid out some of the problems facing preaching in church, it would be tempting to just do away with it. The common lament I hear is preaching is dry, boring and painful. And with the rise of the internet and the massive social changes that come with it, maybe preaching has had it's day.

However, being a good Anglican, I want to suggest that the way forward is the via media. I want to find some middle ground. I don't think we need to stop preaching. Instead, we need to preach better, we need to 'preach smarter'. It was encouraging to read Peter Adam describe John Calvin's preaching. Adam goes on to argue that it was Calvin's sermons rather than The Institutes and the Commentaries that were his most significant contribution: "[I]t was more through his preaching than through any other aspect of his work that he exercised the extraordinary influence everyone has acknowledged him to have had" (R.S. Wallace).

Calvin helped create a powerful pattern of vernacular expository preaching. His aim was to let God have his say, to project God's eloquence, to help the congregation to hear the voice of God. Calvin's sermons, heard in Geneva, written down, published, translated and published again, helped to reform Europe. We need to recover the health and vigour of engaged and lively expository preaching for the maturity and usefulness of the people of God, for the conversion of the world, for God's glory. We have much to learn from Calvin's preaching. - Peter Adam, "'Preaching of a Lively Kind' - Calvin's Engaged Expository Preaching", Engaging With Calvin, ed. M Thompson, IVP 2009.

If we want to preach better, or "preach smarter", then we need to recover the health and vigour of engaged and lively expository preaching for the maturity and usefulness of the people of God, for the conversion of the world, for God's glory. Preaching can be powerful when it is done well. Speech is powerful. Calvin's sermons transformed not just one city, but large swathes of a continent. Sure, the sixteenth century was a far more oral society than at the start of the twenty-first century.

But even today a good speech can move people. We've seen that in the past year with Barak Obama's election to the American Presidency. Never before had an election campaign harnassed the power of the internet. Facebook, YouTube, Twitter. You name it, Obama was on it. But it was the power of speech that captured a nation's imagination. Let us consider what this wordsmith has to offer us regarding preaching...

Only in America?

Obama's choice of church under scrutiny. Did any one raise an eye brow when K Rudd started attending St John's Reid?

100 Days and Histroy

The New York Times has posted some interesting articles by leading presidential historians on the 20th century's leading presidents and what Obama can learn from during his first 100 days in office.

As Barack Obama readies to take the office of president, which of his predecessors offers the best model for getting off on the right foot?

The historians include Richard Reeves and Robert Dallek, leading historians in the Kennedy and Johnston eras. I found Roger Morris' article on Nixon particularly insightful.

How F.D.R. Made the Presidency Matter by Jean Edward Smith.

Obama, F.D.R. and Taming the Press by Jean Edward Smith.

Kennedy’s Words, Obama’s Challenge by Richard Reeves.

L.B.J., Obama and Reassuring a Worried Nation by Robert Dallek.

The President Behind the Mask by Roger Morris.

Obama’s Reagan Transformation? by Lou Cannon.

Kudos for telling me why the picture is out of place.

Human Rights and Telling the Truth

If you missed Lateline last night, than Tony Jones' interview with Geoffrey Robertson on the current state of human rights is worth reading (you might even be able to watch the interview). Robertson has this to say on the challenges facing President-elect Obama:

"I think Obama and Obama's people - he's got some of his leading people are human rights advocates, in a past life, and undoubtedly want to reclaim the moral high ground that has been so tragically lost by the Bush administration in the last eight years. But - and they do. And they will have to deal with questions like the admissibility of evidence obtained by waterboarding and indeed the problem of inflicting the death penalty. The ludicrous thing about inflicting the death penalty on people who pray for it every day. I mean, there's nothing that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and co. want rather than in their own mind a fast track to paradise by being executed by the Americans. So, this is really - the death penalty is really rather what the Briar Patch was to Brer Rabbit. And hopefully these considerations will be taken on board. But they are some of the problems that the Obama administration with all its goodwill and all its determination to retain or regain the moral leadership of the world will have to grapple."

This is one of the reasons I feel excitement for an incoming Obama administration in Washington. Although I have serious concerns about Obama (voiced best by Byron), for me it is the prospect of having a President who will uphold the rule of law, not support torture and not obliterate centuries worth of development in human rights and international law. It is the hope of abandoning policies that lead to Abu Gharib, Guantanamo Bay and the covert transport of prisioners around the world.

What the church much continue to do all the more urgently in the coming years is to bear witness to the government the Lordship of Jesus. Although speaking about the situation here in Australia, Andrew Errington summarizes this point quite well:

"The second way we help governments be good is different, but crucial: we help our governments stay on the right track by holding fast to the true Gospel and so bearing witness in our society.

The great danger that confronts the church is that it will sell out to government, that it will stop preaching the true Gospel and start preaching a Gospel that fits better with our society, that’s a little less challenging. Because the Gospel never sits very comfortably with those in authority: it is the message that Jesus Christ is Lord and no one else, that the Kingdom of God matters more than any other kingdom, and that no earthly society is ultimate. This is always going to be a confronting message, especially for those in authority. Yet it is a message that desperately needs to be heard; because the alternative is something truly terrible: the demonic social order we see in Revelation 13. A government that fails to realise that there is a higher authority will end up becoming an idol. In Australia, I think we run little risk of making individual politicians into idols (thankfully). But I do think we run a risk of making “Australia” into a kind of idol. Just think about the rioting that happened at Cronulla a couple of years ago, with people waving flags and talking about defending our country and the Australian way of life, and most awfully, “Christian values”. This was, I believe, an example of a kind of nationalism which is actually idolatry. When we start treating people badly in the name of “Australia” (or any other community), we know we’ve got a big problem. The church must help our society and our governments stay on the right track by holding fast to the true Gospel, by keeping on preaching that Jesus alone is King, that our citizenship is in heaven, and that therefore “Australia” can never be the Kingdom of God." - Andrew Erringon, Jesus and Government.

Let Barack Be Barack

We've elected as president someone who is empirical, cautious, conservative with a small "c", yet unusually sure of his own judgment when he makes it, which is often slowly. He's sure to disappoint those of his supporters who believe he can raise the dead, turn water into wine, and walk on water. But he has rescued the White House from the besotted rationalists of PNAC with their Platonist designs on the world, and restored it to the realm of common reason. It's a measure of the madness of the last eight years that, for this seemingly modest contribution to the nation's welfare (and not just this nation's), grown men and women wept in gratitude on Tuesday night.
- Jonathan Raban , 'He tried his best to veil it, but Obama is an intellectual'.

Election Day

This brilliant analysis from The New Yorker editors is worth reading:

It has been an epic campaign for the American Presidency and one which has been scrutinised at close quarters by the US's finest writers on the New Yorker magazine - the country's leading journal of politics and culture. Here, in their leader column ahead of the election, the editors of the magazine offer a brilliant analysis of the choice facing America, deconstruct the strengths and weaknesses of the candidates and finish with a powerful endorsement of Barack Obama as the man best suited to answer the grave challenges facing the next President.

And so is this post from Byron. And this is how the election looks right now.