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The Hunt for the Good Sermon
Are American churches really suffering a crisis of bad preaching?
By John Wilson
Is
preaching in America in a particularly bad state?
Several
commentators have recently raised the question, yet it has a long history. “It
has become an impertinent Vein among People of all Sorts,” wrote Jonathan Swift
in the 1720s, “to hunt after what they call a good Sermon, as if it were a
Matter of Pastime or Diversion.”
And
often those on the hunt declare their disappointment, as when Britain’s Lord
Hugh Cecil said in the mid-20th century that “the two dangers which beset the
Church of England are good music and bad preaching.”
Today’s
complainers include Ross Douthat, whose recently published “Bad Religion: How
We Became a Nation of Heretics” describes churches whose preachers promise
prosperity to the faithful or dispense the gospel of narcissism. Others wonder
about a pulpit presence so charismatic that it draws more attention to the
preacher than to his message.
And
yet, on the basis of a lifetime of churchgoing, I have to report that week
after week, year after year, I have heard the Word of God faithfully preached.
And I am particularly skeptical of sweeping claims, as by the Barna Group’s
David Kinnaman, that the upcoming generation of churchgoers has tastes and
needs radically different from those of any previous generation in human
history.
So
what explains the recently announced million-dollar grant from the Lilly
Foundation “to cultivate excellence in preaching” at Calvin College’s Institute
of Christian Worship? Does this eye-catching grant suggest that worship is on
perilous ground?
It
doesn’t. Preaching—and worship—is in need of renewal because it is always in
need of renewal. No pastor, congregation or denomination will ever get it right
once and for all.
At
the Lilly-funded program, pastors—men and women from various denominational
backgrounds—will study together in “Micah Groups,” named for the biblical
passage that has become a touchstone for many Christians of this generation: “He
has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8).
The goal of the program, says director Mark Labberton, is “the convergence of
worship, preaching, and justice.”
“Justice”
(a notoriously elusive concept) wouldn’t have defined a comparable program in
the 1950s, especially not in evangelical circles, where the accent would have
been on saving souls. To put “preaching” and “justice” together doesn’t imply
indifference to the eternal fate of our souls, but it does propose a
corrective—a stress on realizing the Kingdom of God here and now. The history
of the church is made up of moves like this.
Consider the alleged exodus of young people
from the church. “We won’t lose students because we didn’t entertain them,”
said the dreadlocked Philadelphia activist and preacher Shane Claiborne on
Twitter. “We will lose them because we haven’t given the FULL gospel.” Mr.
Claiborne’s comment made me think of another gifted preacher, Jesus, who also
met with a mixed reception. “From that moment,” we read in the sixth chapter of
John’s gospel—after Jesus said that “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man
and drink his blood, you have no life in you”—”many of his disciples drew back
and no longer went about with him.”
Why
did some disciples draw back while others continued to follow Jesus? Why does
the church surge to life here or there, while at the same moment, across the
street or across the ocean, it seems to be increasingly moribund? Can’t we find
a method—underwritten by neuroscience and evolutionary psychology—to guarantee
successful preaching? To ask the question is to answer it.
In his memoir “The Pastor” (2011), Eugene Peterson
identifies one of the most serious threats to biblical preaching—a “pragmatic
vocational embrace of American technology and consumerism that promised to
rescue congregations from ineffective obscurity” but that “violated
everything—scriptural, theological, experiential—that had formed my identity as
a follower of Jesus and a pastor.”
The
obsession with measurable “results,” the rebranded promise of some technique or
strategy: Preachers are bombarded with this stuff every day (four keys to
success, six marks of a healthy church, seven principles of growth). Many
ignore it and get on with their work in “scripture, sermon, and sacrament.”
Praise God for that.
Mr.
Wilson is the editor of Books & Culture, a bimonthly review.
A
version of this article appeared June 1, 2012, on page A11 in the U.S. edition
of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: The Hunt for the Good Sermon.
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