The Ever-Changing Pulpit
During Lent as Christendom inches towards its commemoration of Jesus' triumphant death, burial, and resurrection, I have been reflecting on this moment in history when the spatial and ideological context of the pulpit has changed so drastically. There are challenges and blessings contained in that reality, but it all no doubt makes the preaching task more interesting, and that is putting it lightly.
There are many debates today about preaching. Is the Bible irrelevant, not to mention those who proclaim its truths? Is the pulpit (or, more generally, the worship edifice) sacred, secular, or both?[1] Has the Church lost its eschatological voice in favor of more seeker-sensitive proclamation?[2] Can pastors and preachers be moral leaders if they continue to fail miserably in upholding a higher, godly standard of morality?[3] Maybe Phillips Brooks is right--"The truest truth, the most authoritative statement of God's will, communicated in any other way than through the personality of brother man to men is not preached truth."[4] The disputations go on and on.
Like never before we are attempting to communicate biblical insight to an increasingly biblically illiterate culture. Perhaps their parents or grandparents were entrenched, genuinely or artificially, in the life of the church, but today's generations--through no diabolical fault of their own, I don't believe--largely weren't reared in overtly Christian circles. A Christian ethic, as flawed a construction as it very may have been, didn't permeate the television shows they watched as children. Quasi-Christian marriage and family values weren't spoon-fed to them like they were to their baby boom parents. They were bred to value options and individuality. With a nonexistent or, at best, weak catechesis it should be no wonder that their strongest exposure to evangelism and Christian education may come from episodes of Veggie Tales.
Consider the preaching moment from the preacher's perspective. The space between those called to preach and those called to active listening has indeed changed, and changed greatly in a relatively short period of time. Preaching has always been a communicatory method abounding with equal potential to spark excitement or slumber amongst the hearer. Today, however, the distractions are more plentiful, complex, and multi-faceted than ever before.
Let me take you on a brief journey through the preacher's eyes in this contemporary melodrama. From the pulpit, in a burgeoning metropolitan congregation, you look out into the sea of worshippers, and notice the homeless crowd sitting in the back of the sanctuary. This is no surprise, however, for you are an astute pastor who reaches out in service to everyone. You know many of them by name and are as much their student as you are their teacher. Many of them attend the free breakfast that is served downstairs Sunday mornings before service. Nevertheless, on this morning some are fidgeting in their pews preparing for a regularly scheduled nap, which interestingly enough starts with the beginning of your sermon. A few others, thankfully, are engaged in the service, yet on a few more you can't help but observe a bright blue light. You momentarily get lost in reflections on being dragged to Kmart by your mother as a child for those Blue Light Special sales, but then realize that this blinking light is indicative of the infamous Bluetooth earpiece.
As a matter of fact, Bill, whose multiple personality disorder flares up when he doesn't take his meds, appears to be talking to himself with rising volume. You don't know if he is on the phone, during worship no less--which could very well be the case knowing Bill--or if one personality is speaking to another. Nonetheless, you have a sermon to deliver. In the middle of your message at the key juncture of what you think to be a powerful illustration you notice Jan, the recently divorced lawyer whose daughter is away at boarding school. She is sitting in the fourth row from the front pounding away at her Blackberry, maybe responding to an urgent e-mail about a client deposition or transferring money from one bank account to another. Then again, she could just simply be checking her Facebook account. Your money is on Facebook.[5]
Not technology, but how we use it has, in part, further complicated the communicatory ethos between preacher and parishioner. One now contends for attention to the biblical text with attention to text-messages, cell phones that allow you to remotely program TiVo recordings, and a worship space that may look more like a Christian attempt at a rock concert or lounge cafe. Many sanctuaries that I have attended provide coffee and pastries to worshipers. Oh, there is nothing like the refrain of coffee being sipped while you are trying to convey the complexities of faith.
It has almost become standard issue for sanctuaries today to be outfitted with projectors, large flat-panel television screens, and professional multimedia capabilities. Arguably, church today has gone Hollywood. In 2001 for $22.5 million Faithful Central Bible Church purchased The Great Western Forum, the 17,500-seat former arena of the NBA's Los Angeles Lakers.[6] Then, there is, of course, Lakewood Church who purchased the 16,000-seat Compaq Center some years ago, which used to belong to the Houston Rockets.[7] These and a plethora of other churches of different sizes, denominations, and theological stances are establishing a concert-like atmosphere--complete with the necessary marketing, administrative, and financial muscle--in modern worship, and the spaces in which preachers are charged to preach from.
We live in an era of seemingly unprecedented relativism. Ultimate truth is increasingly viewed as relative; that is, perpetually unsettled and up for debate. Today's pervasive thought contends that the past is passé, the future is fragile, and to look for encouragement or ethical guidelines from the Bible, of all places, is lame. Exclusively concerned with the economy of now, we are unapologetically consumed with "me, myself and I."[8] According to Christian ethicist and theologian Stanley Grenz, postmodernism "...affirms that whatever we accept as truth and even the way we envision truth are dependent on the community in which we participate...[it] affirms that this relativity extends beyond our perceptions of truth to its essence: there is no absolute truth; rather, truth is relative to the community in which we participate."[9] Postmodernism asserts that whatever you believe to be true must be for you, and what I believe to be true must be true for me. This creates a distinct challenge to preachers in effectively communicating the gospel to today's generations.[10] Still, Elizabeth R. Achtemeier's reflection rings truer than ever:
Either we preachers preach the Bible's message, through which there speaks the voice of the living God, or we might as well give up our pulpits and sell insurance. We have no authority, no worthwhile opinion, no special insight into the ways of God and the world apart from the Word of God. That word comes to us from outside of ourselves, from the Scriptures, and we are its servants. We cannot create it out of our own hearts and minds, much less out of our own experience.[11]
Clearly the space between secular and sacred has become blurred. That development is a blessing, I think, but also with it come unique challenges that we must prayerfully work through. The preacher is constantly reminded that he/she is speaking to unique communities with complex circumstances, all interwoven with the ills and benefits of technology. This, however, isn't necessarily a bad development. It creates the need for a missional ministry focus and challenges preachers to live up to the power of the gospel that they proclaim each Sunday. "The church can choose to bury its head in the sand or, equally disastrous, attempt to turn back the clock to the good old days. Neither option works. The former is unadvisable and the latter impossible."[12]
[1] See Nancy DeMott, Tim Shapiro, Brent Bill, Holy Places: Matching Sacred Space with Mission and Message (Herndon, VA: The Alban Institute, 2007).
[2] Thomas G. Long, "Imagine There's No Heaven: The Loss of Eschatology in American Preaching," Journal for Preachers 30 (Advent 2006): 21-28.
[3] William Turner, "Ministerial Ethics and Etiquette: A Biblical Perspective," Journal of Religious Thought 51 (Summer-Fall 1994): 99-105.
[4] Phillips Brooks, Lectures on Preaching: Delivered before the Divinity School of Yale College in January and February, 1877 (Cambridge, MA: E.P. Dutton, 1877), 5. See Phillips Brooks, The Joy of Preaching (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregal, 1989).
[5] See Jesse Rice, The Church of Facebook: How the Hyperconnected Are Redefining Community (Colorado Springs, CO: David C. Cook Publisher, 2009).
[6] Paula M. White, "New Player at the Forum," Black Enterprise 31 (April 2001): 18.
[7] Jason Byassee, "Be Happy: The Health and Wealth Gospel," Christian Century 122 (July 12, 2005): 20-23.
[8] De La Soul, "Me, Myself and I," 3 Feet High and Rising (Tommy Boy, 1989), compact disc.
[9] Stanley J. Grenz, A Primer on Postmodernism (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1996), 8.
[10] For homiletical considerations of how postmodernism has affected preaching see Ronald J. Allen, Barbara S. Blaisdell, Scott B. Johnston, Theology for Preaching: Authority, Truth, and Knowledge of God in a Postmodern Ethos (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1997).
[11] From Elizabeth R. Achtemeier's chapter, "Canons of Sermon Construction," in Barry L. Callen, ed., Sharing Heaven's Music: The Heart of Christian Preaching: Essays in Honor of James Earl Massey (Nashville: Abingdon, 1995), 57.
[12] Graham Johnston, Preaching to a Postmodern World: A Guide to Reaching Twenty-First Century Listeners (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2006).