Sounding Symbols
Paul Gregory Alms on Sermons That Survive by the Grace of God
Who, among the X-Box children and Fox News parents in our pews, can be expected to sit still for twenty minutes to watch and listen to someone . . . just stand there . . . and talk . . . about God? So many other ways to “share the gospel” seem better suited than the sermon to reach the visually minded, relationship-oriented citizens of the digital age. We have no expectation that they will be able to profit from a rhetorical discipline already ancient by the time of Augustine and Chrysostom.
“Shock and awe” Jesus campaigns that assault every sense organ with overwhelming data are the order of the day. The experts on “sharing the gospel” advise emotional appeals, humor, entertainment, practicality. Denominational headquarters peddle such things. Large churches routinely replace the sermon with skits, and small churches scurry to keep up by turning the preacher into a performer.
Yet in countless churches this coming Sunday, near the middle of the service, someone will stand up to talk, soberly, even didactically and exegetically, about and for God.
Talking for God
But one never knows exactly what is going to be said. If the sermon is losing its grip on the imagination of the church, it is not because “experts” and technology have surpassed it. It is mainly because preachers are not preaching well.
Preachers are often the first to lose faith in the sermon as a tool of the church’s mission. Some lose faith because they are bored. They are bored with the Bible, with the church, and therefore with having to climb into the pulpit week after week. Their sermons devolve into semi-religious talks on subjects ranging from funny anecdotes, the news, the weather, some email the preacher received, to the goodness of human nature or the importance of doing good.
Some preachers feel the “outdatedness” of the sermon acutely and so drag in videos clips or PowerPoint or object lessons to grab the people’s attention. Others turn the sermon into a time of personality fulfillment. The congregation is berated; the latest push from denominational headquarters is hyped; the next great program is employed to revitalize the parish. The ego of the preacher is pumped up by his fishing for laughs or sympathy.
Many preachers will do almost anything to lessen the dreadful weight attached to speaking God’s word from the pulpit, to get out from actually preaching the gospel, what someone once called “the power of God for salvation.” They string together a generic batch of religious words to get to Monday as quickly as possible.
The people sit in the pews, impassively mostly, laughing on cue, squirming now and then, daydreaming, while a dutiful few compliment the preacher on the sermon week after week. But they must share the blame for the evisceration of the spoken word in the church.
Attention spans shrink almost weekly; demands grow louder for changes; and people, like preachers, get bored. The TV and Internet, high-speed and high-definition all of it, do not prime us well to simply listen. Our ears are very itchy, and mere words do not scratch deep.
Paul Gregory Alms (paulgregoryalms.blogspot.com) is pastor of Redeemer Lutheran Church (LCMS) in Catawba, North Carolina. He is a graduate of Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, Indiana, with both MDiv and STM degrees. He has written extensively for journals such as First Things, Concordia Theological Journal, Lutheran Witness, Lutheran Forum, The Cresset, and others. He is married and the father of four girls.
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