Are Sermons a Waste?

It’s a day for questions! Ben Myers has a guest post by Aaron Ghiloni titled On sermons: a rant. Basically, he doesn’t like sermons. Really doesn’t like them.

So as I sometimes do I brought this up with my wife as I was driving her to work. (Since I work at home we live with one car, and I do the grocery shopping on Fridays.) We started to list preachers whose preaching we liked.

Now these preachers don’t demonstrate all the nasty characteristics listed in this post. In fact, in each case, we could name sermons by them that we really liked, and could definitely remember.

When I say “really liked” I don’t necessarily mean that they made us feel warm and fuzzy. Very often, my favorite sermons when considered from a time well after, are sermons that annoyed me and more importantly convicted me when I first heard them.

As we listed preachers and sermons, we noticed that there were very few things we could say these preachers had in common. I’m not going to list names, but we mentioned names of people with no graduate degrees and folks with doctorates, charismatics, liberals, and evangelicals, fiery exhorters and classroom lecturers.

While my time in seminary was spent studying things like Akkadian and Middle Egyptian, not homiletics, I can gauage a sermon pretty well, and would say we included sermons that would have garnered seminary grades from A to C.

So what did the good sermons and preachers have in common? The people preaching them are transparent and real. They are expressing things that God has convicted them of first. What you see is what you get.

It’s interesting that I read two preachers this week who were open and transparent. This is so important. The notion that the preacher must be somehow spiritually above everyone else is destructive both to the congregation and to the pastor. When people who are acknowledged as leaders demonstrate transparency, it encourages others to do so as well.

So my thanks to C. Michael Patton and David Alan Black (search for April 30 and then 8:27 AM) for being transparent. I share many of the difficulties they list.

But then read this quote from Dave Black (May 1):

… I have tried to live up to that example and have failed again and again. Listen, Dave, to the message of Mark’s Gospel. Hear it above the mockery that surrounds your failures. Hear it louder than your screaming fears about the impossible task. Hear it over and above your weaknesses and inadequacies. Jesus, at your word, I will follow you! At your word I will let down my net. At your word I will love as you love. At your word I will run again with your message. At your word I will dare to be your disciple. At your word I will keep on climbing!

(If you want the full context, you’ll have to go read it on Dave Black’s blog.)
While we’re transparent about our weaknesses, when we’re weak, he is strong.