The Mystery of Preaching, Part 2
This past Sunday, Pastor Todd concluded a 2 part series, The Mystery of Preaching.
In this sermon, Pastor Todd addressed issues such as: What is the listener's role in preaching? What does it mean for the listener to encounter Christ in the pew?
Click here for more information about last week's sermon.
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Benjamin Nelson on Mar 10, 2010 8:31am
Thanks for the thought provoking sermon Todd. I've chatted with quite a few people who are still thinking through it. I definitely heard some things I've never thought of before.
One question I have as a worship leader is this: If one of the main goals of the morning is to "Experience" God in that moment, how should we change the way we run our Sunday mornings to accomplish this. Should we have quiet reflection upon entering? A built in time of preparation and anticipation before singing? What can we do each Sunday morning to help us "Experience" Him more fully?
Andy Brandt on Mar 10, 2010 9:56am
I'm both convicted and relieved by the notion that the goal is to Experience God and not necessarily to learn something new.
I've encountered many who love to use the question, "What has God been teaching you lately?" as a means of starting a conversation about God or as a means to find out how the other person is doing in their relationship with God. This question has always rubbed me the wrong way because if I approached my time with the Lord with that question in mind, my focus would be more to learn new things about God or come away with some personal application. Instead I've wanted to approach my time with God seeking just to spend time with him and experience him. I'm curious what others think about this. Does what Pastor Todd preached about sermons also apply when we spend personal time with God?
Derek Taylor on Mar 10, 2010 11:20am
Benjamin, I agree with where I think you're going re: silence.
Last year I came across an excellent blog entry about this at 9Marks:
http://blog.9marks.org/2009/07/making-silence-together.html
Regarding preparation, I know from my own experience that there is a remarkable difference in my ability to absorb the message and worship if I have prayed before the meeting. If I haven't taken time to quietly reflect and pray before the service (which unfortunately happens too often), I am easily distracted and less focused.
The sermon this week reminds me of the "first fruits" principle. Whenever I approach God in a haphazard or cavalier manner, I am presenting a sacrifice not unlike Cain's. When I bring Him the first fruits or best of what I have to give, He honors the offering in a myriad of ways, not least of which is to be able to more fully "taste and see" that the Lord is good. Don't get me wrong - the Holy Spirit can break through the hardest of hearts and He blows wherever He will. But I think our preparation, as enabled by God's power and grace, is very important.
Todd Wilson on Mar 12, 2010 10:17am
Thanks, Benjamin, for your interaction with the message and your thoughtful and thought-provoking questions. Perhaps I can probe a bit further on one issue not directly raised in your questions but implied in what you said. I was careful to not use the language of "experience," but instead of "encounter." For this reason: we can come away from a Sunday morning service having experienced something quite moving and encouraging and inspiring and challenging, and yet - a truly frightening realization! - have had no genuine encounter with the living Christ. I fear that happens much more often than we think, yet we don't tend to realize it even as a possibility because we've been so accustomed to thinking about our experience of being moved or uplifted as opposed to an encounter with something outside ourselves: that is, the language of experience tends to cause us to look to the subjective impact of what happened, whereas the language of encounter tends to cause us to think about the objective Reality with which we've been surprisingly and graciously met. Do you think this is a helpful distinction?
Benjamin Nelson on Mar 12, 2010 10:31am
Todd,
I can't say I've ever thought of the difference between the two. I guess I use the term "experience" not as I experienced emotion or was moved... as much as I "experienced God"... which is basically what I think you mean by an "encounter".
As a worship leader I would be open to ideas of how we can facilitate truly encountering God and what we can do to help prepare the congregation to do so.
Derek Taylor on Mar 12, 2010 10:37am
A pastor once said something that drives this distinction between encounter and experience home. He said this:
If people leave our service and say "what a great service/sermon/worship we had today!", then we have failed.
But if people leave the service exclaiming "What a great God we have!", we have succeeded.
Derek Taylor on Mar 12, 2010 10:46am
The only caveat I would like to add is that an encounter with God is an experience. It is not merely an experience, of course, and that is the danger in seeking the gifts rather than the Giver.
We can also be so afraid of experience that we might limit our relationship with God to a very dry and impersonal and intellectual thing. The God of the Bible touches all parts of our being, which is one of the reasons why music is so central to the worship experience.
Todd Wilson on Mar 12, 2010 11:15am
Yes, I assumed that encounter was contained in your use of the language of experience, Benjamin. But perhaps a more consistent use of that language as opposed to the language of experience would effect a helpful though subtle mindset shift and thus address Derek's point about what people would ideally say upon leaving a service.
The other thing that that notion of encounter underscores more clearly than does experience is that God is not simply "there" to be experienced like going outside on a sunny day; he is always free and sovereign and shows up in the midst of his people when and where and how he wants. The notion of encounter honors that point, I think, better than experience; it captures the sovereignty of God in causing an encounter; it captures the element of surprise; it underscores that God's in control of the service and not us.
As to your great question about what a worship leader might do to help facilitate an encounter with the living God, I wonder if the four points in the first sermon might just as equally apply to what you and others do in leading in song and praise. (1) Pray earnestly for the empowering of the Holy Spirit to rest upon your leading, (2) Proclaim Christ with clarity and conviction in all that you do and say from up front, (3) Pursue greater freedom in leading so as to be under the immediate guidance of the Holy Spirit, (4) Focus your gaze and the congregations, not upon the mere words of the songs or the melodies of the tunes, but upon the realities to which the songs and the music are intended to point.
Furthermore, I wonder if the congregation might be helped in the pew as they sing if they were to apply the four points from the second sermon as well: (1) recognize the importance of the event of corporate worship itself, (2) pray earnestly that God would enable you to hear and honor him in song and other acts of praise, (3) surrender yourself over entirely to the acts of praise and other elements of the service, not to do something with them, but to allow them to do something to you, and (4) anticipate being with the people of God and lifting up joyful praise to God all week long.
What do you - or others - think?
Gregory Miller on Mar 12, 2010 5:47pm
I think that too much can be made of the notion of "experiencing" God, if one thinks of that experience as something that has a finite duration. Does the experience last only as long as the service?
I would hope that the goal is that we will leave Sunday morning changed, in some permanent way. I want to walk out of a service realizing that deep down I am never going to be the same again... perhaps I've seen something in a new way that I never thought of before, perhaps I've been convicted of something that I didn't realize I needed to deal with, etc.
That has happened to me many times during music, during sermons, during prayers in worship services. Several times it has been such a profound change for me that I can recall the specific moments years later (a sermon on David and Bathsheba in 1995, a sermon on Naaman in 1997, a conference talk on Romans 8 in 1994, a music set at conference in 2001, and so on) but there have been many smaller incremental changes along the way, as well.
I want to point out that these are different than the times I felt most "close" to God! There have been any number of times when I felt like I was mostly closely walking with God or experiencing his presence but, for me at least, those have been different than the times when I felt my eyes were opened (so to speak) and my life was transformed in a permanent way, regardless of how "close" to God I felt ahead of time.
Back to the transformative moments, I can't provide any "environmental" factor that helped me be particularly ready to encounter God. In at least one case, I was sweaty and tired following an afternoon in Central Park, wearing shorts and a t-shirt (as was a common custom for the evening services at that church).
I arrived just expecting God to take hold of my mind/heart at any moment. That was easy to do for me because it had already been proven to me repeatedly that this was likely to happen to me at this church. I didn't need any "thing"--silence or a prelude, an organ or a guitar, coffee or abstention--to affect my attitude of approach.
What I find most disconcerting about the past two sermons is trying to posit--ahead of time--what it is that is needed to be "done" at Calvary in order to create an environment where people will be changed during the services (or to encounter God, if those are equivalent thoughts). I'll even challenge you, Todd, about the notion of not sticking to a scripted sermon as being more likely to result in an encounter with God (did DMLJones do that?); that smacks of an anti-intellectualism that I had hoped we'd moved on from in the past few years.
I'll show my theological bias here, but for me it is simply coming back to the gospel over and over and over again. Every bit of every song is, in some way, about Jesus. Every passage in the Bible is, in some way, about Jesus. Finding a way to have every service every week continually point to Jesus and his salvation--and the countless ways that gospel can/should change our hearts and minds!--is what changes lives. And when people are able to come to Calvary and expect their lives to be changed, such expectation becomes self-fulfilling... if they surrender/empty themselves in expectation of being filled by the gospel, and if the church continually presents the gospel to fill them up... I think God honors and blesses that.
Derek Taylor on Mar 13, 2010 9:33am
Greg,
re: transcripts and anti-intellectualism
Let’s remember that Pastor Todd was mentored by John Piper and Kent Hughes. He studied apologetics at Wheaton College and has a Ph.D. from Cambridge University. Transcript or no transcript, I don't think he could eliminate intellectual rigor from his pastoral DNA if he wanted to (and he doesn’t).
Intellectual gifting needs to be cultivated, encouraged and embraced. But it also needs to be channelled.
Why?
Well, at least two reasons that I can think of.
First, Calvary is not only made up of people with graduate degrees. We are single parent moms and garbage collectors and kids too. A diverse body with even many educated folks whose second or third language is English.
Secondly, even supposing we were a church of Ph.D’s, there are many blunt truths of the Gospel that practically defy our intellect, such as “feed my sheep”, “look after widows and orphans”, “repent” and “trust and obey”. Many, many people and churches have used their great intellectual powers to obfuscate, de-emphasize or just dismiss these truths and commands away using technical terminology, expounding greatly on tertiary truths and using theological frameworks (which are not bad things if applied in proper context). We shouldn't pretend that we aren't capable of falling into this trap ourselves.
So Pastor Todd is not engaged in an anti-intellectual campaign here at Calvary. What he is doing is taking some measures to channel his intellectual training and gifting. He is in effect saying, “Holy Spirit, take my study and preparation and use it for your glory. I give you permission to override my words and take control of the service and sermon”.
I could be wrong Greg, but I’m pretty sure that your former pastor Dr. Tim Keller would wholeheartedly agree with this approach and sensitivity.
Brother, I hope my response here was helpful and not argumentative. I can assure you that was my intent. :)
Gregory Miller on Mar 13, 2010 10:41pm
@Derek, I wrote 8 paragraphs (perhaps too many) and you've chosen to expound upon one sentence without view to the context of those around it? I'm a person who is regularly up front speaking, so you know how I approach worship services, yet you make arguments to me as if you think I'd carry on some post-doc lecture class if given the chance? I do not understand the degree of passion in the response.
I will apologize, however, for the comment. My challenge to Todd perhaps should have been private and more rigorously explained though that is too late to correct now. It was an aside in a larger discussion which seems to have distracted from other points.
So... let's say I'd edited that sentence out before posting. What did you think of the rest of the discussion?
I believe that my thoughts about pointing back to the gospel as the central feature of every service are in agreement with 1 Cor 2:1-5. Man's wisdom would not come up with gospel on its own; those without a relationship with God will view the gospel as "foolishness" (1 Cor 1:18, just a few paragraphs earlier), and the gospel is the central exposition of God's power.
Derek Taylor on Mar 14, 2010 3:40pm
Greg,
I spent some time on the particular point because Pastor Todd's background as a scholar has provoked many discussions just like the one we're having now and whenever that happens, there are going to be dividing lines within the church. Please don't misunderstand me, I'm not suggesting there is schism. But Todd acknowledged that his biggest strength can also be his biggest weakness and I really appreciate a) his willingness to discuss this and b) that he is calibrating his approach and channel his giftings/strengths in the best way possible.
I do feel that we have to be very cautious about singling out individual actions that he is taking, e.g. no transcripts. Pastor Todd can defend himself far better than I can, so I hope I'm not out of bounds here - but to me, this criticism falls into the category of "micromanagement". I think he should have the freedom to prepare his sermons however he wants without speculation on motive. So the anti-intellectual comment did fire me up a bit, I admit. But maybe I misunderstood that part of what you were saying - are you saying that Todd is doing this because he is being pressured by "anti-intellectual" voices? I'm truly sorry if my response was off base or out of proportion - that definitely wasn't my intention.
I totally agree with your overall point. We shouldn't be issuing our worship leaders a big "to-do" checklist packed with environmental procedures that you have to implemented. You shouldn't be micromanaged, either. We don't need complex formulas. We don't need formulas period, unless the formula is as you described, a collective body of surrendered hearts. Also totally agree with your connection between the Gospel as centerpiece and I Cor 1, 2.
Re: silence. I hope my comment there doesn't come off as nitpicking. Maybe I've done exactly what I've accused you of. :) Some periods of silence can be very helpful to me to reflect and pray about what I've just sung, yet I frequently feel as though we're being rushed into the next song. But I totally understand that this falls into the category of preferences. As far as I know, I'm the only one who feels this way. So please have freedom to be led by the Holy Spirit, brother.