John Meunier

A post over at Shane Raynor’s blog about small churches has touched off an interesting discussion. One comment smacked me right between the eyes:

Whether small or large if a church isn’t healthy, if it doesn’t have a clear missional call to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world, then the bishop shouldn’t be sending a pastor there.

Now, on one hand, I understand this sentiment. This is the movement speaking. John Wesley was always tossing out Methodists from the societies who did not walk the walk.

On the other hand, I’m dumbfounded by this. Aside from the Disciplinary issues – I don’t think the bishop can refuse to pastor a charge – the spirit of the comment suggests that the only imperfect people the church should be interested in are the ones outside the church. There is a kind of “grass is greener” mentality that seems to infect our thinking about church matters. Somewhere out there – we think – there is a big pile of “good Christians” just waiting for us find them.

If we can just get rid of all this dead weight holding us down, then we’ll have room for the throngs of mature disciples just waiting for someone to notice them.

There is also a kind of fatalism here. Well, these old people in our church who aren’t fantastic disciples, we can’t do much with them. They’ve had a chance, but they really can’t be reformed now. Best to pull the plug on them and their churches and get on to the future.

I missed the part where God said a bunch of gray-headed church people in a rural church are not worth the resources of the denomination. If they are not yet disciples, is that a reason to give up on them? Did God give up on them? Is it impossible with God for them to mature in their faith?

I am all for church plants and seeking out new places for people to worship. But since when is our vision of the kingdom a zero-sum game? We can’t do both/and? Since when?

This is one of those unanswerable questions: How short can a sermon be and still be a good sermon?

Tonight, I “gave the message” at a Lenten evening service. After an issue last year with a speaker who went on for 40+ minutes, the instructions were sent out – keep it 5-10 minutes.

Since the service is followed by finger food, cookies, and other goodies, the congregation is ready to go.

My message was brief. I did not time it, but it was certainly much closer to 5 minutes than 10. It was a sermon on the phrase “our citizenship is in heaven” from Philippians 3. It felt complete to me, but certainly could have been expanded or more developed in phases.

After the Lenten service I heard various reactions. Some praised the brevity for getting the point clearly across and then letting it be. Others said – or suggested – it was incomplete or more needed to be said.

Since you were not there – and I did not record it – you can’t chime in on that, but I am curious about a related question.

What is the shortest good sermon you have every heard or delivered? How long does a sermon have to be to do its job well?

Kevin Watson asks whether other churches do a better job on small groups than United Methodists do. His post touches specifically on the life groups of LifeChurch.tv.

My experience with small groups and life groups is somewhat limited, but what I have seen does not remind me of the band societies as I have read about them. Perhaps I am being too narrow in my categories here, but the band societies and class meetings of early Methodism were narrowly organized around accountability and watching over each other in love.

They were not book study or Bible study groups. They were not fellowship groups in the sense of general sharing. They were not about sharing common interests like cooking or dancing.

They were places where the state of your soul was the focus and topic of every meeting.

At every band meeting, every member was to be asked at least the following four questions:

1. What known sins have you committed sin our last meeting?
2. What temptations have you met with?
3. How were you delivered?
4. What have you thought, said, or done of which you doubt whether it be sin or not?

I have no idea whether Wesleyan bands and classes are the way Methodism should go these days, but I’d argue we should not imagine we are recreating Wesley’s methods with contemporary small groups.

I missed Craig Groeschel’s series of posts this week of suggestions for the United Methodist Church. The former UMC pastor and now megachurch pioneer has many suggestions.

Post 1, Post 2, Post 3, Post 4, Post 5, Post 6

Move the marketing budget to church plants, get rid of itinerancy, reform the ordination system, reduce apportionments on big churches, close and merge small churches, let the conservatives leave. These are Groeschel’s suggestions, which are all – for obvious reasons – predicated on the idea that his church and others like his are what the entire denomination should look like.

All the ideas he suggests have been talked about for quite some time. They continue to be worthy of conversation. In the tradition of Wesleyanism, a continuing pragmatic and practical working out of our ministerial arrangements only makes sense – so long as those arrangements are in the service of our mission.

Adam Hamilton wrote this observation on Facebook today:

I am convinced that we’re in the midst of a new reformation in the church – a reformation that is being driven by technology. How new generations engage with the church, and meet Christ, will be changing. Last Sunday 35% of our worship attendance was on our live webstream. We have people who want to join our church who live in others states. What are your thoughts?

William Willimon on Barth’s God:

For the young Barth, God is energy, motion, event, and crisis. To have faith is to be swept up in God’s movement, to say ‘yes’ to the dramatic, persistent, indomitable ‘yes’ that God speaks to us in Jesus Christ. All of our cheap human substitutes for God wilt before the wild reality of the truth of a God who is.

From The Early Preaching of Karl Barth: Fourteen Sermons with a Commentary by William H. Willimon.

Hughes Oliphant Old (any shock a guy with a name like that is a Presbyterian?) has a multi-volume study called The Reading and Preaching of the Scriptures in the Worship of the Christian Church.

I’ve picked up the first volume from the university library. The series is written with the aim of being helpful to pastors – as opposed to advancing academic conversations and debates – and looks promising. I’m not sure if I’ll make it through all six volumes, but if you can find a copy at the library, it might be worth your time.

Two bits in the introduction of the first volume caught my eye.

If one is concerned with preaching as worship, there are a number of questions that follow quite logically. There is the question of how preaching relates to the public reading of Scripture. The whole matter of the way one understands the authority of Scripture becomes much clearer once one sees its function in worship. When we see how central the reading of Scripture is to worship, then we recognize its real authority.

He points out two more questions that follow from his view of preaching as worship, but the part that got me to pull out my notebook was what I quoted above.

First, I’m sure there are some who do not make this “preaching is worship” claim. Preaching is often spoken of as a set of tools for building or assembling this thing called a Christian community. I find it helpful and gives me a set of words to explain why I like to have extended Scripture reading in worship services.

Second, I find it most helpful to make questions about the authority of Scripture a question about worship. Scripture’s authority is derived from its place in the worship of the church. Questions about it authority are only meaningful within this context.

The other bit from the intro that I found interesting was Old’s identification of five genres of preaching. He notes that there are some kinds of sermons that do not fit neatly in one of his five genres, but the vast majority will as far as Old is concerned.

Expository – the systematic explanation, often line-by-line, of Scripture, often preached straight through an entire book.

Evangelistic - preaching repentance and good news; preaching predicated on Jesus’ declaration that the time has been fulfilled; it is aimed at gathering in people to the body of Christ; it is closely tied to baptismal concerns

Catechetical – outline and teaching of basic Christian doctrine or principles, including content of creeds, the Lord’s Prayer, the 10 Commandments, the meaning of the sacraments; much moral and “life application” teaching falls into this category

Festal - explains a theme for holy or feast days; one form includes sermons of praise or presentation of the qualities of an honored person or God himself; Scripture quoted to explain the theme or day rather than making the sermon an exposition of some piece of Scripture

Prophetic – God’s particular word or a particular time and place

I have not thought enough about these categories to have a strong opinion about them. I certainly found them interesting enough to take notes about them.

Since I’ve read Adam Hamilton recently, I think of his purposes of a sermon, which include fishing expedition, discipleship, equipping and sending, pastoral care, and institutional development. (I think that is correct, I do not have his book with me.)

Hamilton’s five purposes of a sermon are different from Old’s five genres. They do not map elegantly onto each other. Many of Hamilton’s sermons would fall into the realm of moral or life catechetical preaching in Old’s analysis. They are designed to teach and impart principles for a deeper Christian life. Hamilton sees himself as a teacher as much as preacher, so that makes perfect sense.

For those of you who are more practical, these musing may not lead anywhere. I find them helpful as I try to find my way through the jungle of the preaching event from week to week and year to year.

From time to time in John Wesley’s journals, he recounts a failure. He preaches law and gospel to a crowd of sinners and none are moved. After these moments, he will record something about his duty being satisfied.

Wesley believed that he was on the hook himself if he did not offer the gospel to all he encountered. He believed that as a preacher he would be held to account for all the souls he did not attempt to show the way to salvation.

I was reminded of this while watching a Mark Driscoll snippet at Out of Ur. In it, Driscoll speaks in a similar vein.

And I find myself wondering if I have the same sense of accountability for the souls of those I encounter. Many Methodists do not embrace a Wesleyan understanding of Hell and eternal judgment, but that should not let us off the hook.

We speak of accountability quite a bit, but do we feel personally accountable for sharing the gospel? Do we have any sense that failing to offer the gospel is itself a failure of our office? Do we think God will hold us accountable for that sin? Do we confess it as such and seek forgiveness?

Check out the sermon illustration scorecard to see how well your sermonating rates.

A couple of my favorites:

17. Sermon illustration is clearly about one particular person in the church, but the pastor thinks that by saying “someone told me recently” that he has provided an adequate blanket of anonymity for the now greatly embarrassed person. = – 4 points

25. Sermon illustration contains one of the following phrases: “my only option was to fight the cobra with my bare hands,” “and that’s when I knew there were too many ninjas on that boat,” or “so that’s when I decided to buy cotton candy for the whole congregation.” = +5 points

I’m still waiting to find a way to work the cobra fighting reference into one of my sermons. No luck so far.

I was listening to a video/sermon on the Internet by a fellow who has a big following on Facebook. What struck me about it was how much his message connected up with what you typically expect to find in young adults – questioning “old” ways of doing things, conspiratorial about “people” who impose expectations, concerns about identity, conviction that their experience is novel, wondering where they fit in.

It seemed like a wonderful message, but one that spoke so clearly to a generation’s life stage that I found it hard to listen to. It just was not – to use a common word – relevant to me.

Of course, I know there are many who see the traditional church as doing exactly the same thing but with and for an older generation. You get the church where every sermon is about mid-life issues or holding on to the good old days.

So, I’m not trying to single out young adults here.

But I do wonder if this is a side effect of the “felt needs” style of preaching. Is it possible to speak to or from the felt needs of a congregation without creating a rather narrow conception of the congregation? By the topics you select and the needs you touch upon, you are going to define who is “in” at this particular church. Maybe you overcome this by consciously moving around a lot and trying to speak to different needs and life concerns.

I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a spiffy church ad for a hot new series on coping with illness, disability, and old age. Maybe I’ve just missed it. I don’t know how many series I’ve seen advertised that were about being hungry or poor.

How do you make the central thrust of the message the “needs” of the congregation without falling into the trap of preaching within the limits of human need rather than out of the abundance of an unbounded God?