Worship Weblog

Strathroy Book Group – Third Meeting

Posted by cicw

Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009

Book Groups

We invited 34 book groups across the U.S. and Canada to meet and discuss The Church of All Ages and its implications for their worship, and to share their notes here.
Learn more

Key Concept: Authenticity is a key ingredient to effective intergenerational preaching.

Group participants previously decided that preaching would be the main topic for discussion at our third meeting. We agreed to re-read chapters 6 and 7 in The Church of All Ages and to come prepared to discuss the joys and challenges of preaching sermons that effectively reach people across the generational spectrum. We began by reflecting on the actual delivery of the sermon, and took note of the following quote found on pages 121-122:
Sermons prepared and preached with a wide intergenerational gathering in view will most likely be preached without notes and with a pretty loose relationship to a pulpit or lectern. Notes, manuscripts, and lecterns are all signs of a highly literate culture and will have limited intergenerational appeal.

As we talked about this assessment, the following points of agreement and disagreement were raised:

• Preaching in the context of a predominantly visual and not literate culture presents clear challenges to preachers. Effective communication of the gospel, especially as it pertains to children and young people, requires deliberate focus and strategy on the part of preachers. Preachers should deliver their sermon with as little dependence on a manuscript as possible.

• Some preachers have been uniquely gifted for preaching without notes, or with a loose relationship to a pulpit. Its effectiveness notwithstanding, this model for preaching does not fit the personality or gifts of every preacher. Some preachers, who have made preaching without notes an end in itself, have abandoned the discipline of preparing a manuscript in pursuit of what they believe to be more effective communication. For some preachers, more attention to preparing a manuscript would in fact enhance the sermon’s effectiveness.

• Regardless of how a sermon is actually communicated, in order to be effective preachers must be authentic. This means that preachers must endeavor to be themselves when they preach, and not try to emulate other “successful” preachers, or pursue a model for preaching that is not in line with their own gifts and personality.

We expanded on the third bullet point by discussing how pertinent authenticity is for members of younger generations. Young people are particularly sensitive to anything that seems disingenuous or inauthentic. For this reason the evaluation that young people give to preaching is particularly necessary and important. We discussed specific ways preachers could pursue greater authenticity in their preaching and identified the following:

1. Preachers should incorporate humor in the sermon—especially as it relates to the preacher’s willingness and ability to laugh at himself/herself.

2. Preachers should craft illustrations that come from their own experiences of the Christian life (doubt, trust, temptation, etc.) and not settle for artificial or “canned” illustrations.

3. Preachers should foster greater passion for God by immersing themselves in the regular disciplines of prayer, Bible reading, silence, interaction with fellow believers, etc. The level of passion in preaching will always be directly related to the level of passion in the preacher.

4. The slogan “less is more” does not apply to the sermon’s application. Listeners to sermons (especially younger listeners) crave hearing how the gospel is actually lived out in a believer’s life. Authentic preaching points out the ways the gospel is put into action in the context of a congregation’s ministry, and it also signals ways it should be done better. Again, the preacher’s sharing of his/her own experiences is invaluable for effective application.

5. Authentic preaching is not content to dwell exclusively in the realms of behavior and belief. The prophetic call to “rend hearts and not garments” reminds preachers of the importance of preaching directly to the hearts of listeners. Young people’s ultra sensitivity to hypocrisy suggests they are particularly interested in hearing about the entrapments of moralism.

Tags: bgstrathroy, Book Groups 2009, intergenerational