Lost Preaching

On Saturday I attended Towards a Kiwi Made Preaching (TKMP) an event organised by Paul Windsor in his new role as associate director of preaching for Langham Partnership. I came away from the event once again saddened and frustrated by the lack of creativity and imagination in the NZ Church. I was deeply upset by the lack of will among older people to really engage with generational issues and to shift from their modern mindset into something that will reach post-moderns.

Now before I go on I must offer the following things to take into consideration. Firstly the organisers recommended that I stay for the full day as they envisaged progression and flow throughout the day and I unfortunately had to leave at lunch time. Secondly I chose topics I was interested in, this meant that I had already done reading and thinking about the area and was several steps ahead of most of the participants. Thirdly engaging post-moderns is my passion, it’s what gets me out of bed in the morning and it’s the lens through which I view the world, the church and the world. I have to acknowledge that this is not everyone’s call and focus.

Paul Windsor started the day by bringing to our attention the many different words used for ‘to preach’ in the New Testament and the wide variety of methods of communication, and the variety of places that communication occurred. I found that encouraging and challenging. We then went into a wide variety of electives (so my experience will not be everyone’s experience). In contrast to Paul’s initial session, in the electives that I attended, the predominant preaching paradigm that seemed to be in people’s minds was a man, standing at the front, offering a monologue to a church filled with Christians. One of my disappointments (shared by some others I spoke to) was that TKMP was advertised as a forum, a place for ‘synergies to flow’ ‘to probe questions’ and ‘to explore’. However it was actually a regular seminar format, with a short time for questions at the end, and not a lot of encouragement to engage with each other. In fact all the rooms were set up in rows with the presenter at the front, which did not facilitate easy interaction between participants at all.

So if my experience was that frustrating why did I go at all? Well deep down I am committed to a Kiwi-made Biblical preaching, it is just that my idea of what that looks like is very different to what it looks like for the majority of those that attended. Going into analogies I long to see preaching like Lost, whereas what I am mostly seeing (and hearing discussed) is preaching like a 1960’s news broadcast.
Lost is a current TV series (that I don’t actually watch so feel free to jump in with corrections dear readers), it follows the lives of plane crash survivors who are struggling through life on an island. Both the current lives of the characters on the island are followed as well as storylines from their lives before the crash. It is one of those series that you don’t really know what is going on, little by little more of the plot is revealed. Watchers are drawn into the story, they are engaged in figuring out what is happening, they gather to watch the series in pubs. Watchers discuss the plot with friends in an attempt to figure out what is happening and they watch reruns in order to increase their ability to predict what will happen. There is a gradual unfolding over time (5 series), with drama and suspense, it makes you feel clever when you work out some of the mystery, and as a watcher you have a sense of ownership and involvement in the story.

Contrast that with an old-fashioned TV News (who watches the news anymore? Not post-moderns who prefer to get their news with the immediacy provided by the internet) broadcast. You have a single (male) anchor, in order to increase his trust and respectability he wears a suit. He presents the news as a series of statements or propositions. The anchor expresses very little of his personality and none of his life or opinion, there is no engagement with what he presents. The news is presented in one 60 minute slot, all there is to be told is said in that time frame. The preaching I see again and again and that was the predominant image in participants minds on saturday reminds me of this.

We need more lost preaching - Can you imagine, people engaged with the gradual revelation of God’ story? Discussing it with their friends (and in online forums)? Exploring the mystery with their friends? Caught by the suspense and drama? Presenters who are excited, involved and caught by God’ story and share the awareness that it is their story?
What would it take to uncover more Lost Preaching? What would it look like in our churches? what would it look like in out lives?