Preaching

Preaching has got the bad name it well deserves. People do not like to be 'preached at' by those whose authority they suspect. Doctors they will listen to. Stand-up comedians they will laugh at. Politicians they will jeer. But there are hundreds of preachers in British churches who would do Christianity a favour by giving it up. Something like half a million sermons are being delieverd every Sunday to around five million churchgoers. A commercial business with such a massive evangelical outreach would expect  success. Churches are not succeeding. And one reason is because, by and large, the preaching is so poor.

Churches know this, and many of them have abandoned the traditional sermon in favour of discussion groups, visual aids, 'messy' church, and silent meditation. Good preachers, all the same, should be able to attract and keep large and growing congregations. Most preachers fail, for one or all of several reasons.

1) They preach too much. Long gone are the days when a minister was expected to preach two sermons each Sunday, with a solid Bible study during the week.The emotional and intellectual energy required for such a regime is too great.  2) They have not mastered the techniques of public speaking. Preachers have a lot to learn from 'stand up' comedians about timing, humour, voice projection and eye-contact. 3)They may not be entirely persuaded by their own arguments, and it shows. Preachers need a passion for their subject, and congregations quickly recognised insincerity.  4) They may be banging an irrelevant drum. Certain doctrines that were believable 100 years ago cannot be presented as scientific and historical objective truth now. People know too much after ten years or more of full-time education, and watching experts on television to be able to swallow as anything but glorious mythology six-day creation, a virgin birth and a bodily resurrection.

Preachng has a future, but it need to be offered by convinced and convincing Christians who know and believe what they are talking about, and have mastered basic skills of communication. There are far too few preachers about who measure up. The few we have should be celebrated and widely known. And all of us should be subjected to assessment by the kind of honest critics who report on films and TV programmes. 

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