Recently I posted on some of the difficulties I have with the modern evangelical church scene. Today I will focus on another difficulty I see, that of the modern evangelical sermon. What do I mean?
Typically, the sermon will be aimed at what a friend of mine calls “Level One”. The sermon is aimed at getting people to ‘Trust in Jesus.’ A big thing in the evangelical movement is being ‘missional’, and one of the things this seems to mean is ensuring the church service is relatable to the unbeliever in the midst. In practice, this seems to mean that each sermon is a 30-40 minute gospel presentation based on Scripture. This brings new meaning to preaching to the choir. Why are we doing this? Why are we preaching to people every week that they need to come to Christ when most of them have already done so? Many good Christians are sitting there thinking, “Ok, yes done that, check…so what’s next?”
Now after a certain time in the church and being fed this, one of two things are likely to happen. The believer either assumes this is the way things are meant to be and taking this as given, deals with it. The sermon is not for me, except perhaps to remind me to keep holding on to Christ, which is a good thing, but mainly I need to get my friends along to hear this so they too can join the church and then repeat the process. Alternatively, they will switch off, bored with the constant formulaic repetition and then feel guilty that they are somehow a second-rate Christian for having these feelings.
Some at this point will object. But evangelicals do apply the gospel to the believer! It’s just that they want there to be a word to the unbelievers in their midst too. Firstly, I do not believe our application of Scripture to the believer is anything to celebrate. Most applications are sufficiently vague to cause no real challenge to any particular believer, unless they are on the topic of money, and then things can get fairly specific! Nevertheless, for the most part, applications tend to be fairly broad: let Christ impact all of your life, trust Him with your difficult period, make sure you are not deluded about whether you are a true follower of Christ. We don’t tend to hear sermons that help us apply truth to life more specifically. Who has heard a sermon about women, work and the family? What about the mandate for parents to train up their children and what this means for secular education? What about “How should I participate as a Christian in the political process?”
Others will object saying, “Of course the sermon should essentially be a gospel presentation. That’s how people get saved!” That’s the core mission of the church! Is it? Christ’s commission to his apostles was to go into all the world and make disciples, teaching them to obey all that he taught them. Isn’t that a little bit more than getting ‘souls saved’? Doesn’t that require more than a ‘gospel sermon’ every week?
Where does this thinking come from? Why do we consider this normal practice? Perhaps it comes from our evangelical history. We take things like altar calls for granted, but we are perhaps unaware of the history of the great awakenings and the impact they have had on church life. Nancy Pearcey has some thoughtful commentary on this in her book Total Truth which I may outline in a future post.
Secondly, we may have become confused about what Paul himself means in I Corinthians where he says that when he came to them he, “decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” Some may see in this an explicit reason to have every sermon aimed at bringing an unbeliever to conversion, but I am not sure this is the case. To begin with, Paul was speaking about his time setting up a new church. Of course he would have been talking about Christ and his atoning death and resurrection. Furthermore, the phrase itself does not just mean ‘talking to the church about Jesus death’. It seems likely to me that since Paul sees the crucifixion resurrection and ascension event as the key event in history, he is saying that he focused his message on the implications of this key event to his hearers. Clearly, the letter of I Corinthians lends credence to this idea, because he deals with quite a few issues, that while they wouldn’t be part of a simple gospel presentation, are certainly implications for Christian living if Christ is indeed the resurrected king.
Again, don’t get me wrong. I love the enthusiasm that evangelical churches tend to have for seeing the lost come to faith in Christ. What I would love to see, is some of that enthusiasm channelled into creating disciples: men and women who are developing a Christian worldview and actively applying it to every aspect of their lives. Educated pastors who were able to do this would multiply the impact of the gospel in our culture significantly. This would be an example of long term thinking.