1005--sermons, as a one-minute commentary

            Today, I am posting another of the one-minute Simple Church Minute transcripts that I somehow failed to post previously.  As I have said at other times, all the one-minute transcripts have numbers in the 1000’s, five-minute transcripts in the 2000’s, and two-minute versions with numbers below 1000.  If someone is interested in seeing these commentaries on a radio station in your area, contact me, as the recordings done so far all reference the metro area I live in.

1005—sermons

            My name is Tom; this is Simple Church Minute.  Why are there sermons in church?  Matthew 5, called the Sermon on the Mount, isn’t structured like a sermon, and covers way too many topics.  In Acts 17, where Paul is speaking at Mars Hill, it is clear he was doing dialogue, not monologue.  From Acts 20 verse 7 and other places, where we see someone doing something that looks like what we now call preaching, the Bible uses the word “spoke.”  Some say Second Timothy 4 verse 2 connects preaching to speaking to the church, but that context isn’t clear.  First Thessalonians 5 verse 11 tells believers to build up each other, which is nearly impossible when one person is designated to do monologue.  Romans 12 and 15, First Corinthians 14, and Colossians 3 show worship involved every member, was conversational and impromptu.  One can find out more about worship at www.simplechurch.com or locally at www.hrscn.org. You can call me at 757-735-3639.

1055--preaching in OT & NT

            This is another one minute version of the two minute commentaries I wrote in December, 2010.  This one is a shorter version of #55 on preaching in the days of the Old and New Testaments.

1055—preaching in OT & NT

            This is Simple Church Minute.  What was preaching like in the days of the Old Testament?  Prophets spoke sporadically.  False prophets also spoke. Sometimes the people apparently preferred the false prophets. The people were allowed to interrupt and ask questions.  As Israel was both an ethnicity, belief, and sometimes a nation, the king had spiritual responsibility, usually for ill. Prophets and priests spoke from the burden of their heart, but not with the rhetorical manner that the Romans would later be known for. 

Jesus also spoke in the traditional Jewish manner, even allowing for the trick questions of the religious leaders.  The early church did the same. Assuredly Jesus taught the 12, who taught the early church. At that time, preaching meant dialogue; speaking indicated oratory or at least monologue.  Oratory as status quo ritual was, though, a Roman cultural tradition that came to the church before most other ones.

  You can find out more about simple worship in this area at www.hrscn.org.

On this and many of these writings, I have taken this information from George Barna and Frank Viola’s Pagan Christianity, which, in turn, has the historical footnotes.

2063--preaching as oratory

            For anyone stumbling across this blog for the first time, the original idea of it was to post a group of two minute commentaries about simple worship of Jesus, with most of the commentaries based on the points with regard to this subject made by George Barna and Frank Viola in their book, Pagan Christianity and Wolfgang Simson in his 15 Theses for the Re-Incarnation of Church.  Those appear in a group of blogs I posted in December, 2010.  They were written for radio, but so far, I have not had the money to broadcast them.  Additionally, either one minute or five minutes are time frames more amenable to stations in my area, so I am rewriting some of the major thoughts expressed in the December postings to fit both the smaller and larger time frame.  What is below is part of this project.  The commentary below is written for a five minute time frame, and is a mixture of the commentaries numbered 55 and 63 back in December.

            My name is Tom; this is Simple Church Minute.  According to the National Teaching Laboratories in Bethel, Maine:  we retain 5% of what we hear in a lecture, 10% of what we read, 50% of what we discuss with others, and 90% of what we teach others. I think the exact percentages of that statement would be impossible to prove, but the general idea is clear—the more involved we are, the more we learn.  If that is the case, why do traditional churches rely so heavily on lecture? Particularly, when First Thessalonians chapter 5 verse 11 tells us to edify, or build up, one another, and that’s next to impossible with only one or two persons doing the lion’s share of the communication.

            In the days of the Old Covenant, prophets spoke intermittently.  False prophets also spoke.  The people were involved, and were able to interrupt and ask questions.  In many cases, the people did not accept the true prophets, and accepted the false prophets.  Since the people of Israel was an ethnicity, there was degree to which the king was also a spiritual leader, in addition to the priests and prophets, sometimes for good, more often for ill.  Prophets and priests did not speak from a script, but spoke from the burden of their heart.  Rarely, the prophet acted out his message.  There was no regular preaching in the synagogue that was like the modern sermon.

            When Jesus announced his being the fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah 61, as recorded in Luke 4, his being allowed to speak was because it was a tradition that all Jewish males were allowed to take a turn at speaking.  When Jesus began his ministry, he also did not speak regularly to the same audience, although he taught in various ways the disciples that were with him those three years, and probably taught, to a lesser degree, the seventy who he sent out in Luke 10.  His teaching took many forms, but what we have recorded is sporatic, spontaneous, informal, and oftentimes in the form of back and forth dialogue, even the trick questions of the religious leaders.  It was consistent with the tradition of the day, except that Jesus allowed women to listen to what he said, which the rabbis did not.  When one looks at the book of Acts, we see teaching that was sporatic, a dialogue, allowing for interruption and feedback, unplanned, without rhetorical structure, and delivered on special occasions to deal with special problems.  Romans 12 and 15, Colossians 3, and First Corinthians 12 and 14 indicate that ministry was by all the church for all the church.  History shows that in that day what Paul and others meant by preaching was dialogue, and monologues, as exemplified by Roman-style oratory, was referred to the Bible by “speaking” or “spoke.”

            After the Roman Emperor’s quote unquote conversion, by the economic power of the Empire, the pagan tradition of speechmaking solidified as a practice in the church.  Many persons, male only, as it was a male dominated society, some with an honest desire to serve God, and probably a few not so much, as the government whether intentionally or not created regular gigs for orators, prompted the tradition. 

Whether one is right or wrong, for many of us it feels good to have others just stop everything and listen to us.  This works even more if they are friendly people, who won’t criticize us in public, or at all, without regard to how off track we get, and we all make mistakes.  Every person needs another person to speak words of correction in one’s life, which we know is doing so for our benefit.  That is what dictators do not do; only God is right all the time.  In our culture, many sermons do not get above new believer level.  Lastly, edifying each other works only when a group is far smaller than our culture’s traditional churches, many of which are so big no one knows everyone’s name, much less actually know all the other people.

  To contact me, you can email me at simplechurchminute@yahoo.com or phone me at 757-735-xxxx.  To read a transcript of what I just said, my blog is tevyebird.blogspot.com, and this appears as the post of July 30, 2011.  For more info about simple worship in this area, visit www.hrscn.org.

Simple Church Minute 55--preaching from Old Testament to New Testament

55-preaching from OT to NT

My name is Tom; this is Simple Church Minute

            What was preaching like in the Old Testament?  One might wonder why I am bringing up this question, given that these talks are about what scripture indicates as being correct practice for the New Covenant chosen people.  The reason:  What were people familiar with when Jesus was on earth?

            Through history, prophets spoke at intermittent times.  False prophets also spoke.  The people were involved, and were able to interrupt and ask questions.  In many cases, the people of Israel was an ethnicity, there was a degree to which the king was a spiritual leader, in addition to priests and prophets, sometimes for good, more often for ill.  Prophets and priests did not speak from a script, but spoke from the burden of their heart.  Rarely, the prophet acted out his message. There was no regular preaching in the synagogue.  None of it was like a modern sermon.

            When Jesus began his ministry, he also did not speak regularly to the same audience, although he taught in various ways the disciples that were with him those three years, and probably taught, to a lesser degree, the 70.  His teaching took many forms, but what we have recorded is sporadic, spontaneous, and informal. When one looks at the book of Acts, we see teaching that was sporadic, a dialogue, allowing for interruption and feedback, unplanned, without rhetorical structure, and delivered on special occasions and to deal with special problems. Romans 12 and 15, Colossians 3, and First Corinthians 12 and 14 indicate that ministry was by all the church for all the church.  The way it is done in most places now has no biblical precedent.

            You can email me at simplechurchminute@gmail.com.  For more info on organic church*, visit http://www.simplechurch.com/ or locally at (local website).

On the recording, at this time, it says, “house churches.”  While that phrasing is OK, to say “organic church” is better.  I comment on that in blip 94.

Simple Church Minute 39--preaching repentance

39—preaching repentance

My name is Tom; this is Simple Church Minute.

            On another day, I mentioned how what we in the current church call witnessing is close to what the early church called preaching, and what we call preaching is what they called oratory or speaking.  For instance, Acts chapter 18 verse 24 refers to Apollos speaking in the synagogue.  Further, in the early church, first believing in Jesus was a way of life.  If one was Jewish, it separated one from the Jewish community; if one was not, with faith in Jesus came accepting a morality the Gentile world found strange. Either way, repentance and baptism was not an end all, but the beginning of a new way of living.   Second Corinthians chapter 5 verse 17 referred to believers as a new species*; the world had seen nothing like it.  After a couple of centuries of the Christian faith spreading across the Roman Empire, even at a time when Christianity was still officially illegal, many of the powerful hired Christians to watch their children and money, because of their reputation for honesty.

            Shortly after the apostolic era, more and more, oratory worked into the church, as opposed to every member ministry.  Oratory preaching developed an audience-performer dynamic, which changed in some detail over the centuries, but always largely encouraged passivity among the audience.

            In the 1700’s, George Whitefield introduced an innovation to preaching—changing the emphasis from what God is doing among believers as a group to speaking specifically to those in the audience who were not believers, to guide them toward salvation.  He also originated outdoor meetings for evangelistic preaching.  Charles Wesley, John’s brother, was the first to write hymns for invitations to receive Christ.  All these changes emphasized the individual and de-emphasized the church in the sense of believers as a group.  A later evangelistic trend was pragmatism—if it seems to work, keep doing it.

            You can email me at simplechurchminute@gmail.com.  For more info on organic church*, see http://www.simplechurch.com/ or (local website).

On the recording, at this time, it says, “house churches.”  While that phrasing is OK, to say “organic church” is better.  I comment on that in blip 94.  Also, on the recording, I said, "new creation," which is the most common rendering of that phrase in English Bibles, but I have since become convinced that "new species" is both better yet, and connotes the shock value to our society that what the world saw then was experiencing.