Two minute commentary on where "sermons" don't appear in the New Testament

I recently happened to accidentally click the statistics page connected to this blog and realized that a significant percentage of pageviews to this blog come from outside the United States.  I have to admit to having not been outside the U.S. except for a short day trip across the border to Mexico, and a couple of short stays in Canada.  This doesn't help me know too much about some of the places what I have written is read in.  In many of my footnotes, I refer to George Barna and Frank Viola's book Pagan Christianity.  In that book, there is a large amount of scholarly footnotes as to where the facts behind their writing, and, therefore, my short summations of various points are.  I'd like to say that I will try to do a better job of footnoting, but sometimes my intentions are better than how I actually get things accomplished.

When I started writing, I took topics from PC and other books on non-corporation church, and broke them into one minute segments, as a radio commentary (yes, I once recorded this within a two minute time frame).

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1—sermons

My name is Tom; this is Simple Church Minute.

            Why are there sermons in church?  It’s only been in the last few years I’ve even thought of this question.  I’ve just assumed that there is scriptural reason for it.  Matthew 5 is called the Sermon on the Mount.  But, if you look at it, scripture doesn’t call it a sermon.  It covers way too many different topics in the couple of minutes it would take to read it aloud.  Also, was it really a teaching to believers, or a series of statements so radical as to turn off those who were only chasing the next big thing, and to allow the Spirit to speak to the heart of those who would follow in spirit and truth.  John chapter 6 verses 66 to 68 indicate Jesus wasn’t at all concerned about having a large number of fair weather friends.  Acts 17, where Paul speaks with those at Mars Hill, it is clear that Paul was doing dialogue, not monologue.  From Acts chapter 20 verse 7 and other places, where we do see someone doing something that appears to us as preaching, the Bible uses the word “spoke”, and these occurrences are infrequent.  Some say Second Timothy  chapter 4 verse 2 connects preaching with speaking to the church, but that context is not clear.

            The church we see in the New Testament shows itself as using speeches such as what Paul gave while visiting Troas as an exception, not the rule.  Why?  We don’t get nearly as much out of one-way communication as we do multi-way, where one can ask a question if something is unclear, or where a variety of people with various skills and experiences can paint a fuller picture of a subject.  Romans chapters 12 and 15, First Corinthians 14 and Colossians 3 show that worship involved every member, included teaching, exhortation, prophecy, singing, and admonishment, was conversational and impromptu.

            For more on organic church*, see http://www.simplechurch.com/ , or locally at (local website).  You can email me at 757757tev@gmail.com .*  

When I recorded this, I said "house churches" instead of "organic church", and there was a different email address.
Mainly from Barna and Viola, Pagan Christianity, chapter 4.

On sermons running amuck

A few days ago, my lot in life was to sit and disassemble some ancient computer equipment that I had been attempting to sell for the past few months, with no success, as they were too old for anyone to find utility in them. As disassembly is mindless work, I turned the tv in the room to one of the Christian stations on cable, which was playing soft, instrumental music. At the top of the hour, it changed to a preaching program of a well known name, who emphasizes the prosperity doctrine (to borrow a phrase from an old comedy skit, the names are changed because only one is Innocent). He was speaking on Matthew 7:13, which says, "Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it." He started off by asserting that, in this sentence, "destruction" was not referring to hell (spiritual destruction) but to various types of destruction, such as financial or other personal features, that can happen in a believer's life. He specifically states that the church has not taught that verse in that context, and, given that this is a recording of a sermon in a traditional church, he gave no intellectual evidence for it, told a story about teaching this in someone else's church, and having an elder upbraid him for this, to which he said he didn't defend his point at the time because it was in someone else's building, and told a couple of other stories to bring out a couple of lesser points he wished to make within this concept.

There was a point in my life in which I attended institutional churches that tolerated occassion prosperity teaching. This appears to be a theme that is particularly appealing to persons of significantly below average income, and an explanation of why it is incorrect is probably too complicated and uninteresting for some of my brothers and sisters in Jesus to desire to follow (online I can find that a person named Koch at Indiana U. has a dissertation that deals with that subject; I did not read it for this writing, as I am drifting off point, although, to drift even further off point, it is interesting how often truly original research, even in Christian studies, comes out of secular institutions). It does, once again, bring out the point I, quoting others, have brought up before. Participatory discussions on a Bible topic bring out more true learning, as a) one cannot just assert anything, although, as the old line says, to can find something in the Bible (out of context, of course) to defend anything, b) in a participatory study, the group can answer questions someone truly has, c) because every person in the group is considered equal before God, except as they are experienced and gifted, a person just asserting something not shown to be the line of all of scripture can be lovingly corrected, and d) if a question could possibly come up that those in the group were unsure to be correct, it would be totally normal to search the scriptures, and what other teachers have said, and come back to the topic the next time.

Conversely, the problem with traditional sermons is the exact opposite: a) one person has prepared to share everything to be shared, which leads to the temptation to defend a "party line" (such as the example above, to pick on a reletively new one with minimal organizational pressure behind it), and b) the listeners rarely know what is coming, will not get to either discuss or be tested on it (as in school). I could, I believe, come up with a number of other points in criticism, but others have, and most will be nuances of the main two above.

Finally, one learns more from preparation on a subject than one does from receiving the preparation. In a participatory Bible study, there can be the possibility that everyone involved may know the next subject and do their own preparation for the study. I say this as, at the church I am involved in, the facilitator comes from a background of fundamentalist churches and military and tech business experience, and I come from a background of Calvinistic and pentecostal/charismatic churches, secular college campus experience (as a student and some campus ministry), and retail business. If one's hearts are in the wrong place, that would engender conflict, but when our hearts are in building up everyone, the different backgrounds compliment one another. Next time, I will write on some things I have been studying for an upcoming study.

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.

2038--oration

            This is another of my five minute commentaries about various institutions of traditional churches that have a problem with regard to congruence with scripture.  This one is about oration/speeches/sermons in church, and is based on the same material as I used in my two minute commentaries posted in December, 2010 numbered 3, 6, and 38.

2038—oration

            My name is Tom; this is Simple Church Minute.  You know how death metal bands describe things in their music that, if they had really done those things, they would be in jail or a mental institution?  Why are some people attracted to that?  At the very least, it’s a strange, in comparison to everyday life, and antisocial emotional charge.  Back in the time of Christ, in the Roman Empire, a rough equivalent was some orators.  The man would come in and give the crowd an experience through their words.  There were various types.  Like some musicians, attorneys, politicians, and actors today, the orator may not have believed what he was saying, and there were times that some, of even all, of the crowd knew it.  But the good ones could inspire, or excite, or give some other emotional charge through their talent and skill with the use of words, the inflection, the hand gestures, the timing.

            The church of Jesus was affected by this piece of society.  The Bible records that Apollos was an orator before his conversion to faith in Christ, and Paul grew up in Tarsus, the city of philosophers, as it was known at the time.  Within the Jewish people, while it was allowable for any Jewish male to stand up before the congregation and speak, clearly some rabbis spoke regularly, as we know they were behind a speaking method known as pearl stringing, which flopped over into the Christian church.  We know, though, that on the Pharisaic side of Judaism, which was the only side that survived after the revolt against Rome in 130 A.D., the teaching was that all rabbis were to have a skill, in case the people turning away from God made it difficult to live.  There is indication that if an apostle visited a church, the visitor might speak, as Acts 20 describes Paul visiting Troas and describing to the believers there the things he had seen.  Still, some of our versions call that speaking, and the Greek word behind speaking or preaching in verses 7 and 9 is the word we get our modern word “dialogue” from.  There is no indication that Paul’s speaking had the fine touches of a modern sermon or the rhetoric of his day.  Conversely, there is every indication that the early church usually did not have speeches or oration or, as we say today, sermons.  Every indication is that Jesus taught the disciples, and the apostles taught the early church, to have informal gatherings, as opposed to ritualistic services, in which people knew each other; everyone could teach or speak as the Spirit guided them. 

            Where, then, did the sermon come from?  Roman/Greek culture.  In about the fifth century B.C., history credits a group of teachers called sophists for inventing rhetoric—the art of persuasive speaking.  The sophists taught another generation this skill, and delivered speeches for money.  Many made a good living, as it became an entertainment form.  We might imagine that some of them may have been the equivalent to our novelists today, serving a culture where literacy was much lower.  Some became experts at debate, and at using emotional appeals, and by the use of cleaver language.  They also added to it by physical appearance.  They came to wear special clothes to indicate their position.  Over time, style, form, and skill were prized over factual accuracy.  Given all that, it should be of little surprise that some did not live their lives according to the ideas they spoke of.  In some ways, this sounds like some of today’s entertainers, minus the music, and recording equipment.  Some traveled and appeared from place to place, and others appeared at the same time and place, according to schedule. Some would walk in to their appearance wearing a robe called a pulpit gown. Some would quote the writings of Homer, and knew passages by heart.  Some would encourage their audience to clap.  Some came to live at the public expense, and became the celebrities of their day. 

            In the church, the apostles taught that all believers were kings and priests of God, as it says in Revelation chapter 1 verse 6, and all were important in the building up of each other.  Still, a few persons skilled in oratory came to be believers, and brought their skill into the church to the degree that we can see that it was an influence in some places by the second century.  History shows that converted orators spoke in a style similar to before their conversion, substituting scripture for Homer.  Orators called their speeches homilies, the term used to this day in the Catholic Church.  The legalization of Christianity, with the institution of buildings and organization led to an influx of orators quote unquote converting, and taking the new speaking jobs. By the time of the Reformation, it was taken for granted that the sermon was how “lay people”, another concept foreign to the early believers, learned the Christian faith.  Of course, by the early middle ages, non-professionals did not have access to the Bible to know whether what they were being taught was true.

              You can contact me at simplechurchminute@yahoo.com or 757-735-xxxx.  If you wish to review what I just said again at your own pace, a transcript is available on my blog, tevyebird.blogspot.com, at the entry dated September 4, 2011.  For more info about organic church in this area, visit www.hrscn.org.

            A lot of this information comes from George Barna and Frank Viola, Pagan Christianity, chapters 4 and 6, which have plentiful footnotes. 

Simple Church Minute (one minute version)--sermons

            In December 2010, I posted one hundred two minute commentaries written for radio (I have a specific station and demographic in mind) which I titled “Simple Church Minute.”  Now, these have not been broadcast for two reasons.  First, that station doesn’t do two minute time frames, and, more importantly, I haven’t had the money.  Be that as it may, I am working on one minute versions of the same subjects.  Below is a shortened version of what in December was designated Simple Church Minute #1.  By the way, if you would be interested in doing something with this idea, email me at 757757tev@gmail.com.  The email address I have in the two minute version has a practical problem which I will correct before finally getting to use these scripts—my computer doesn’t like having two Gmail accounts coming into it.

1005—sermons

            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 preaching, the Bible uses the word “spoke.”  Some say 2 Timothy 4 verse 2 connects preaching to speaking to the church, but that context isn’t clear.  1 Thessalonians 5 verse 11 tells the believers to build up each other, which is nearly impossible when one person is designated to do monologue.  Romans 12 and 15, 1 Corinthians 14, and Colossians 3 show worship involved every member, was conversational, and impromptu.  One can find out more about organic worship at www.simplechurch.com and locally at (local site).

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.