Concerning Sermons: Hearing with Heart (2): Mentolatry

Senior Pastors from mega churches of the Alliance and Evangelical Free denominations all committed a cardinal mistake. Cardinal, because it sets the wrong path for many sermons to follow.

It has nothing to do with the style of delivery, whether it is conversational or lecture-like.
Nor does it have anything to do with the type, whether it is topical, expository or devotional.

The deadly flaw is putting an unwarranted amount of significance on a scheme that lends easily to preaching to the mind, rather than heart.
That’s why the flaw is so cardinal.
It is like setting the first step on the wrong foot.It is like straight-jacketing oneself, or even more damaging, one’s church sermon programmes.

The scheme is expository preaching.
But first a clarification is in order: it is not that this type of preaching is wrong; it certainly isn’t that bad. Where it went awry was placing a weight on it beyond its original design and capability to bear.

The predictable outcome is squeezing out the “art” of speaking for the monopolised benefit of “science”.

The epitome of the folly is the idolatry that expository preaching attains its purest form when it draws its lesson from the text, down to its iotas.
And more.
It draws its unsustainable corollary that expository preaching should cover the entire book, in its literary structure, and in its sequence!
“Churches can’t cater to congregations yearnings. Let them come to the text and meet God.”
So spiritual!

Some even argue for following its rhetorical structure! But all who have read even skimpily that rhetorical structure definition approaches pageantry in its subjectivity.

Some pastors and churches are poisoned to a point where the mechanical preaching over the entire book in sequence is tacitly ascribed miraculous and mysterious power.
For those who grew up in churches that employ the use of lectionary arrangement of scripture reading, it is eerily similar.

It’s as if nothing would go wrong if the preacher follows the structure—even from prescript to postscript!
Blessed is the senior pastor who gets to select portions for preaching assignment.
Woe to the junior pastor who draws the short draw and ends up having to preach the beginning or closing verses.
Dead or alive, these verses must be preached, in their orders! As if they should carry the same argumentative and devotional force as the main thrust of a letter or drama!

The results are varied but could be summed up in a word.
Artificial.

It doesn’t imply deceit.
It just reflects incompetence.
And worse, it begets a mental exercise that shows itself in the preacher straining to convince himself/herself in the mind! Though they think it is actually convincing the hearers.

It’s all about the mind.
The heart can wait.
The hurts don’t even matter.
Nor do the yearnings.

There lies the tragedy.
Sermons on the prescript emphasising “grace and peace”, and those on the postscript stressing “grace and peace” repeat themselves. There is no place for “how are you”, or “so long for now”.
No humans are allowed in the Sacred Scriptures.

Dehumanised.
Gone also are human longing to the hearing of “Comfort, comfort my people”.

Tragedy on show, every Sunday.