We went to church yesterday and, I must say, the sermon wasn’t very impressive. But more generally speaking, I haven’t really been impressed by a sermon in quite awhile.
I got to thinking about this while the sermon was going on, and while I was trying to follow what she was saying. Specifically, the pastor was talking about Creation, referring to the scripture readings from the beginning of Genesis (“In the beginning…”-type stuff). Now, she got to talking about dirt, how the ground can give you things and how you can “play” with/in dirt, etc. I was hoping she would then move into how this is important for farmers in the area, or people at home with their gardens. How the earth provides food that we need, and how satisfying it can be to use the earth at our disposal to be productive.
But she didn’t go there. Instead, she moved past that and made it to how, essentially, we need to read the Bible (i.e. “The Word”) and glean everything from it. She also repeatedly referred to “visions” she had (hopefully she meant “dream,” ’cause otherwise, I think she needs to adjust her meds accordingly) that provided analogs of Heaven, with people praising God in His Creation.
Basically, she re-tread the same steps countless pastors of mine have tread in the past. And these are things I’ve been exposed to practically every Sunday for 28 years.
Now, I realize that there is a time and a place for such talk. “Seeker churches,” for example, where you have a proportion of individuals that have not been attending church for as long as me and they are hearing these things for the first time in their lives. And I also realize that, at any church, there will be folks that walk through the door and need to hear some of these things as an introduction to the Christian faith. Likewise, children in church need to hear it at some point, too (but there’s this thing called “Sunday School” where a lot of that can be addressed, and frequently is).
But seriously, it feels like Brooke and I have been attending churches on various levels for the last 5-10 years (and separately before that), hearing sermons in a variety of contexts, and the vast majority of them tread the same ground as has been done before. And the most serious problem for me is that “the same ground” is losing relevance quickly. The things being discussed in most of these sermons are the things I heard discussed when I was in elementary school. Are they still important? Sure. But so is poverty. So is on-going war. So is strife in third-world countries. So is crime. So are natural disasters. These are all things that are relevant in today’s world, that apply to everyone, and that need to be addressed in the church setting.
I’m not talking “poverty” in the sense of “poor people” like discussed in the Bible. I’m talking about specifics. About people in Asia and Africa that live on less than I make in 2 min, let alone all the people in the United States that don’t make a livable wage and can’t afford to feed their families. I’m not talking “war” in the sense of battles waged in the Bible, but the specifics of Afghanistan and Iraq, amongst other places in the world. I’m not talking “disasters” in the sense of a Great Flood, but in the specifics of Hurricane Katrina, tornadoes, flooding and a Gulf oil spill. And, moreover, I’m not talking about pastors devoting a sentence, or a mere mention to these issues, but rather about devoting the entirety of their sermon on such things.
To me, it represents a form of intellectual laziness. A given pastor can sit at their desk, read a book or two, and effectively repeat most of those tenets on a Sunday morning in their sermon. Books written that are designed to “transcend time” and talk generally about issues that affect a great many people in the world, but still don’t talk about today.
I think it takes quite a bit more thought and analysis to “find God” in the situations of the present, in the aforementioned poverty, wars, and crimes. It requires a lot more bravery on their part to discuss complicated issues that we are exposed to on a daily basis, including abortion and homosexuality. For some reason, these issues are popular to talk about outside of church, but once you are within the doors, they are ignored to avoid offending congregation members.
That is, I argue, what people today need to be hearing. Not what God did 2000+ years ago, but what He’s doing today.
well, you could have listened to how we should be more like our current preacher when it comes to people not liking him and he putting that aside and being a ‘good’ christian anyway…
I found myself nodding vigorously as I read this entry… David and I recently attended a service at Christ Church Cathedral downtown–an Episcopal church specifically known for being an Oasis congregation (open to gays, lesbians, and transgendered persons). The congregation was mostly little old ladies and gay couples, with a smattering of young families in the mix. The service was the formal Anglican style and lasted an hour and half and some people drank from the cup during communion (as a life-long Methodist, of course, I’m used to a 60-minute service so as to beat the Baptists or Catholics or whomever to the restaurants for lunch and the germophobe in me prefers communion by intinction). But anyway. The sermon was SO GOOD. So smart. It was about the Nicene Creed, the history of how it came to be part of Christian theology, and how it invites us not just think about the idea of the trinity but think about how we can actually apply it to our lives.
In other words, if we think about God as being the Creator, what does that say about us as stewards of His creation? (The priest also said that people who preach that we are here to use up the resources of the earth and thus bring about the second-coming of Christ are stupid–and that’s a direct quote).
If we think about Jesus as a guide, what does it say about us who go through our daily lives without actively seeking out people who might need help or guidance or assistance of some kind?
And if we think of the Holy Spirit as a means of allowing the disciples to speak in tongues and communicate with everyone they meet, how are we as a Christian community changing our communication skills so that we address the languages of the twenty-first century–facebook, twitter, blogs, and all of that?
It was everything a sermon should be–provocative, informative, inviting self-reflection, and calling people to be more actively in the service of Christ without making anyone feel guilty or overwhelmed. It was hands down the best sermon I have heard in YEARS.
So… we’re planning to return to this Episcopal church. I don’t know that we’ll be changing membership because I really feel comfortable being Methodist, but I, too, want to hear a sermon that makes me feel smarter for having gone to church.
I think the last time we heard a “good” sermon was 2 years ago. When you go to church about 50 times a year, that’s pretty bad odds. We’ve talked about this a lot, and have come to the conclusion that a “good sermon” should not only teach you something you haven’t yet learned, but challenge you to go out into the world and do something using Christ’s example. This seems to rarely happen in the Methodist churches we’ve attended, and not exclusive to a certain age of pastor or seminary attended.
When we got married, I researched lots of denominations so we could decide where we were going to go to church, since Andy grew up ELCA Lutheran and I United Methodist. No other denomination offered congruity of theology and practice that I love about the Methodist church and is likely to have congregations that embrace contemporary worship. I really like that I can go to any Methodist church and know what to say, when to say it, and why it’s being said.
We often wondered, when we were first married, fresh-out-of-college, church goers why we were the only people like ourselves in church. Now, it seems to be more and more obvious why people our age so often stop going to church when they leave their parents’ care until they have babies and feel compelled to return for their sake: When you’re young, your parents make you go and you distract yourself by filling in all the empty spaces on the bulletin and making up new words to hymns with your siblings, then when you have a child, you’re too distracted to notice the sermon is super-shallow.
That sounded really cynical (and the communities we’ve been a part of at our churches have certainly been worth all of our energy!), but if pastors in mainline churches don’t figure out a way to be relevant to young, educated, worldly people, those churches don’t have the long future they deserve.
So, I read this note immediately before leaving for a canoe trip in the boundary waters. I wanted to comment then but didn’t really have time to digest all of it, let alone translate my thoughts and feelings into type. So- here I am, back to it.
Rachel and I are both Methodist. Well, really I’m Wesleyan, but you get the idea. We went to every Methodist church in Columbia. Blah. We’ve lived here more than two years and still haven’t nailed down a place with a decent service.
As far as relevance goes, I’m not entirely convinced that what God did 2,000+ years ago isn’t relevant to you and me today. No, I don’t store up my grain in a silo but I can pretty easily make the jump to saving up money in my electronic bank account.
What we need is not to stop talking about all those biblical stories, but rather to make them be what they are meant to be. Certainly we don’t think God intended the Good Samaritan story to only apply to people who might find themselves on dirt roads with the needy. He himself was telling it to others, to convey an idea in a relevant way.
There are a million things that the bible says to us, we just need people in the pulpit who are willing to take those things and apply them to us.
Where would you suggest we glean our current relevance from, if not the workings of God over the centuries?
One thing I think the church really needs to work on is mission trips. Sure, go to Mexico or Arkansas or Louisiana for a week and help build a house or something. Just don’t pretend like it’s all for Him. It is certainly a good thing, but much of being there is about going there.
I think a real impact is better made at home. I don’t mean work in a soup kitchen with your youth group one weekend in July, but rather the whole of the church volunteer their time there once a month. Help people consistently, in different ways, and do it for the right reasons. I just think that sort of relevance is fleeting from our churches of fancy stained glass, big sound systems, vaulted ceilings, and the like. I don’t just mean rich churches either. Where are our priorities, and where should they be?
You have to see the church today and know that what many care the most about is enrollment. Is this noble? It could be, but it’s crazy to think numbers first and foremost. Be a ministry, help people, do good anonymously, teach your congregation, be genuine. The numbers will come. If I knew of a church like that, they’d have two more members.
So, today’s sermon was amongst the best I’ve heard in a long time (different pastor…). The lesson involved the “Woman at the Well,” a woman from Samaria that was something of an outcast in her culture whom Jesus talked with and ministered to.
The Lesson was read, the pastor provided historical context to explain why this was such a big deal, and then he continued to relate it to today’s world, even including references to “Star Trek” (in the Lesson, Jesus went “Where No One Had Gone Before”).
That’s the kind of sermon I’m looking for. One where a Lesson is read, some historical context is provided (rather than taking everything completely literally…), and then the story is transferred into our modern times. The pastor explained how we are called to minister to everyone, no matter how outcast they are, and moreover that no one is “shunned” from the eyes of God.
Rather than a sermon that effectively reiterated “God is good, all the time” over and over and over again, the sermon instead discussed a Biblical story that took place thousands of years ago and related it to todays world. And the context was key because that’s the kind of information I can’t necessarily find in the Bible (i.e. you can’t just say “read the Bible and you’ll find all the answers:…you have to read other things too so you understand why the writers wrote in the ways that they did…and that’s useful information that a sermon can provide…).
Today’s sermon was a textbook example of where relevance is found. 🙂
On a related note, I think mission trips are also helpful. Personally, I’ve never really agreed with the Methodist Church’s stance (or many other churches, for that matter…) toward ministry in other countries/continents. Don’t get me wrong, it is very important to do service across the world, but when the Methodist church stops supporting Wesley Houses and instead continues to send funds overseas, I see something of a disconnect. There’s quite a bit of work left to be done here at home that’s being neglected.