The Book of the Month Club, anybody remember those? They probably still exist out there. Books sent at a discount, whatever was currently hot? Could be top 40 (yes, I know that is music, not books), could be genre (sci-fi etc.), with the catalogues sent out? Stop the book shipping by a certain date or the assumption was that you wanted it.
We of the
Christian faith have a book that is a book of books. The Westminster Standards
list sixty-six of them. Thankfully, our sister denominations with differing
opinions do not count that as a division to be grasped.
One of the great difficulties in being a pastor has been the inability to overcome the disconnect of Scriptural literacy from many of my parishioners. What? How do we get our parishioners to read their bibles? Many do, don’t get me wrong, but Biblical literacy, or at least familiarity, used to be a cultural presumption. We could make a literary reference to the Bible and assume that it was culturally known.
But among the ordination requirements I have as a pastor is a
Biblical literacy exam. The feeling in my gut is that all church members should
be aces on that, not simply those seeking to be ordained (and there is a lot of
struggle to pass that one).
One of the fall
backs has been to lean on the Sermon to be teaching as well as preaching. I
agree with that in principle, but the weight on the ‘teaching’ in the balance has
increased in my considerations as a preacher. There is a presupposition that in
the portfolio of skills a minister brings to the church is the moniker of ‘teacher’.
Let me draw a
distinction here. There is the person who has a body of knowledge, of
information, that it is to the benefit of the community to be shared and disseminated.
Then there is a teacher. It is not the same thing. A subject area specialist is
not, by any means, an automatic teacher of said subject area.
I know this through
various personal experiences. One has been the results of the programs in the
lives of people in my church experience that I have “taught”. Another has been
in reflecting on what I call my “teaching” style compared to actual, trained
teachers who’ve been stuck trying to open my mind. Most importantly however is
the experience I have gained in being married to a highly skilled professional
teacher, whose expertise is not bound to subject matter at to learning expertise.
What that means is my wife is in special education, and her responsibility is
to bring the students outside the defined parameters of ‘normal’ to the knowledge
base and learning capacity as those in the ‘mainstream’.
It is also very possible that 'teaching' is not the right word when seeking to build heart knowledge over and against head knowledge. But its the word we have.
That’s just
the background. The foreground of the ‘teaching’ by a preacher is the moment of
the sermon. And in the context of a week, it is just a moment. Fifteen to
thirty minutes on a Sunday morning out of a time of somewhere around an hour
devoted to worship-not learning-to our God. There are different approaches to
this.
Most common
in our denomination is the lectionary, a three-year cycle of biblical readings
anchored on the synoptic gospels that draw out a huge cross section of Biblical
texts. The synoptic gospels are Matthew, Mark, and Luke. They are related in
structure and content in a way that is fundamentally different than John.
There, teaching, a lesson on gospel structures, bored yet? But it is consistent and it provides a common
platform for preaching not just across the PCUSA but among our sister churches
and denominations.
The
lectionary is not mandated by the denomination. I have followed it at various
times in my preaching career. It might very well be accurate to fault me for
not following the discipline tightly enough. But it is a version of ‘book
preaching’, which I have also done. Pick a book of the bible, start at chapter
one, verse one, and march through to the last chapter, last verse. It certainly
exposes the congregation to the long view of a book. But it is realistic to
expect someone to put together the structural identity of a book of the bible after
this long-term approach? Even if that structural component is built into the
sermon? And then comes the problem of the sermon as a teaching moment versus a moment
of worship.
I have not
even attempted to tackle the contrast and the connection between teaching and
worship.
Another way
is topical preaching. When this system is abused, topics of preference to the
pastor can lead the congregation to a particular point of view about the Bible.
But when done with respect to the Bible and its contents, it can be effective.
A sermon series on the question of Christian Stewardship is a fairly common topical
series in the calendars of church. A sermon series developed on the Sermon on
the Mount is another. Or a seasonal approach as a Lenten series on the miracles
of Jesus.
These are all
intentional methods of preaching. Without an intentional plan, the danger that
is often expressed is that the pastor will fall into a pattern of their preferred
Scripture passages, so that a very select list of Biblical passages find
expression over the career of a minister, thus the congregation is exposed to
that select list, offering a limited window to what the Bible has to offer. Unfortunately,
the ‘evidence’ for this danger is anecdotal, based on individual stories, without,
in my experience, a pattern being sought as evidence.
Regardless of
that, the question of the sermon and teaching the bible is a difficult one. The
ideal would be that a church has a robust service of worship and a robust,
well-attended adult educational system in place. I have been learning in the
faith for my entire life and I am nowhere near ‘done’. But that is not the reality
of church today. There are learners in every congregation, don’t get me wrong.
I will joyfully give a shout out to
Nelson Searcy and his integrated structure of church that lays down adult
growth and learning from its foundation. That is not here.
So, the Book of the Month approach.
Each month, a book of the Bible becomes the focus of preaching. Not the whole
book, but selected passages. Against that preaching focus, a devotional reading
guide is also provided. In this start up, the idea is to move back and forth
between the Old and New Testaments. It is a challenge because of the sheer
differences in size between various books. Philippians, for November, is 4 chapters.
Isaiah, for December, is 66 chapters long.
Isaiah is certainly not a random
choice for December but will provide a preaching focus on the Christmas
prophecies contained within its pages. Where is it going? I don’t know. But it’s
the Bible. It’s the Handbook of the faith. It is the foundational document of Jesus
Christ. It is God’s gift to us. So we shall see.
Pastor Peter
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