I reckon that most members of the congregation get their theology from hymns,
which are very occasionally good poetry but nearly always bad theology.
Raymond Garfoot.
-----Original Message-----
From: John Barnett <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: methmins@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Mon, 9 Aug 2021 8:09
Subject: [methmins] Re: Prophetic Preaching v Pastoral Care
A lot of people in our congregations do not attend Bible study groups and
neither do they read many theological books. The main input they get about the
Christian Faith is through the Sunday sermon. There is therefore a need for
sermons to contain an element of teaching as well as exhortation. I perceive a
number of dangers in this. Sermons can easily turn into Bible studies, which
doesn't work because few people in most congregations have Bibles open in front
of them, and too many Biblical references become confusing. They can include so
much material that people lose track of what is being said and forget most of
it even before the sermon has ended. They can become so long that people switch
off. As a supernumerary who likes to think he is fairly theologically literate
I confess that sometimes the main thing I remember about a sermon is how many
minutes it lasted. As a Local Preachers' Tutor I used to advise new preachers
not to try to squeeze too much into their sermons, but to save something for
next time they were with the same congregation. When a sermon draws to a close,
people should be left sighing for more, not sighing with relief. John Barnett
On 08 August 2021 at 15:55 NEIL BISHOP <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Two thoughts occur to me.
My mentor when I trained as a local preacher back in the 1970s used to say that
he wondered whether Jesus had ever been in love and whether he had been married
- and presumably widowed - before beginning his ministry. Like Ray, he felt
these would be interesting possibilities from the point of view of incarnating
human experiences. He himself had enjoyed a brief period being in love and in a
typical marriage relationship before illness cruelly intervened, so the idea
was of special interest to him.
The other thought is that many of our listeners have not been trained to listen
to and appreciate nuanced arguments and comments. They only hear the headline
not the paragraphs or concluding sentence clauses of subtle qualification which
follow. I have heard this used as a reason to keep theology out of sermons and
I can understand that but it is of course not the right answer to the problem.
Neil Bishop
