• Missional Preaching Part 3: Preaching as a Call for Response

    February 21, 2010

    This is the third and final post in a brief series on the practice of preaching in missional communities.  I’ve already argued that preaching in missional churches is a communal activity and that it aims at the proclamation of biblical truth.  Lastly, I want to suggest that missional preaching calls for and invites a real response from its hearers.

    It is a travesty of (quite literally) biblical proportions that we would gather as the Body of Christ, hear from the Scriptures, and not be called – in a meaningful and accountable way – to respond. This is where the theological rubber meets the ecclesial road.  When the theological vision of a church is adapted to meet an individualistic and consumer-driven society, the practice of preaching is bound to the fate illustrated by the cartoon above.  However, where and when a church embraces a missional theology, it sees little point in the practice of preaching if it doesn’t lead to a meaningful and accountable means of response. By this I don’t mean that we have some nugget of wisdom to try and apply to our lives once we leave, I mean right then and there, we respond.  All of us.  Not, “Respond if you want to get saved,” but “Here’s God’s truth for all of us to which we are all called to respond.  Do it!

    Typically, at Life on the Vine, we do this through spoken prayer.  The preacher will guide us in a way to respond to the truth and everyone has an opportunity to do so.  For instance, this summer I preached from Genesis 49 and proclaimed the truth that, “Our hope in the promises of God rests on God’s character, not ours.  We all responded to this by praying, “Lord, though I am/have _________, you are/have ___________ and so I pray, __________.”  Those who pray conclude with the words, “Lord, in your mercy,” and the entire congregation, if they can, affirms the prayer by saying, “Amen!”

    Because our community is an accessible and sustainable size, these responses are quite public, making them all the more meaningful.

    Responding to the truth of the text for the morning doesn’t end on Sunday.  At the center of our community are what we call “Missional Orders,” groups of couples and singles who are trying to share life and serve together.  These missional orders carry the truth with them throughout the week and when we gather we continue to respond to one another by noting the effect the sermon is having on us.

    Any thoughts on this?  Are there aspects to the way preaching is practices in your church community that get at this vision or embody something different?  Are there implications of a missional theology/ecclesiology for preaching that you’re thinking of that I haven’t mentioned here?

    Related Posts

    1. Missional Preaching Part 2: Preaching as the Proclamation of Biblical Truth
    2. Missional Preaching Part 1: Preaching as a Communal Activity
    3. Preaching in the Missional Church

    Posted in: church, community, corporate worship, liturgy, LOV, post-christendom, preaching/teaching, theology

Recent Comments

  • Ben Sternke said...

    1

    Great thoughts, JR, and I am in agreement. We do something very similar in our community.

    One thought that Dallas Willard gave last week at the Ecclesia National Gathering helps to round out what you wrote, I think. He seemed to imply that the MEANS of discipleship were close to useless without the VISION and INTENTION on the part of the people to be disciples of Jesus.

    So I would just add that what you wrote above probably works fairly well for those who have reached a certain minimum level of spiritual maturity, but perhaps for new Christians or "stuck" Christians there needs to be a further (additional?) aspect that offers a compelling vision of what it looks like to follow Jesus, and invites people to make a tangible commitment to really start doing it.

    Otherwise we can inadvertently lead people into a kind of therapeutic deism, where they are led into claiming the promises of God without actively following Jesus, which is like trying to cash a check that isn't written out to them (and I think I am paraphrasing Willard there, too).

    02/22/10 2:58 AM | Comment Link

  • jrrozko said...

    2

    Great stuff. I am reminded that often the truth which we proclaim is an invitation for people to embrace the VISION and INTENTION that Willard was speaking of. In this way, no pre-determined amount of spiritual maturity is necessary. The life of the community then functions as a context in which the responses to proclaimed truths are rooted and lived out. Without this (and most churches indeed function without this), you're absolutely right, we have no way to orient and direct how people are interpreting and responding to what is being preached.

    02/22/10 5:53 PM | Comment Link

  • wess said...

    3

    Thanks for the series JR. Good stuff and I like how you're working with prayer here.

    02/24/10 2:35 PM | Comment Link

  • jrrozko said...

    4

    You betcha – fun stuff to write about.

    02/24/10 2:39 PM | Comment Link

  • chris said...

    5

    Thanks for this series on preaching, JR. This is helping me to think through issues related to re-imagining preaching for my church community, which is trying to move in a more intentionally missional direction. We have been experimenting with some prayer-response type of actions and it's gone pretty well. It's great to hear about how others are doing this, so thanks for sharing it.

    02/25/10 2:15 AM | Comment Link

  • jrrozko said...

    6

    Thanks for the comment Chris. If any of this has been helpful, I'm thrilled, so thanks for saying so. I didn't mention it in these posts, but one of the most formative aspects of our liturgy, which often tie into the sermon, are "Stories of Wonder." This is when people from the community get to speak of what God is doing in and through them in correspondence to the missional vision of our church. This practice is invaluable in terms of giving feet to missional formation.

    02/25/10 3:45 AM | Comment Link

  • JoshGarrington said...

    7

    This is the aspect of preaching I struggle with most. Makes me think I'd be a better lecturer than preacher.__My main struggle is that I have sat through too many emotionally manipulative sermon's and alter-calls in my life. I have developed a passionate hate for that sort of thing. As a result, I over-compensate the other way and end up not articulating the response well. Every sermon critique I've gotten reminds me of that.

    03/3/10 7:33 PM | Comment Link

  • jrrozko said...

    8

    Yeah, that's where the role of the broader community comes in. We need others to help us discern between the manipulation of our emotions and the authentic, on-going, life-rooted work of the Spirit in our lives. Between the popularity of charasmatic speakers and our own less-than-redeemed proclivities, we can't do without one another.

    03/3/10 9:21 PM | Comment Link

Leave A Comment

Mail (will not be published) (required)