Hey Kirsty, this is a great question and I’m glad you asked. In fact, this is a question that almost anyone involved in any type of content creation should be asking. Take, for example, newspapers. Did you know they collect huge amounts of data on readability and try to hit their desired reading age in every article? For example, the Guardian shoots for age 14 whilst the Sun aims for age 8. And if you’re interested, the average reading age here in the UK is 9! As you can see, two different types of national papers, but they’ve both made a deliberate choice over where they are going to ‘pitch’ their readability!
As elders and as a preaching team we’ve talked, on a number of occasions, about how we ‘pitch’ things. What’s our desired ‘listening age’ (if there is such a thing)? Does the fact that we preach as a team make any difference? How should we even go about tackling this question?
So, Kirsty, you’ve asked a great question! Here are a few thoughts that hopefully will help you and others to mardle a little more around this subject:
The ‘subject’ of our preaching stretches any and every form of communication to the limit (and then beyond)
What do I mean by this? The centre of all theology (or preaching) is God. How do we communicate about the mysteries of God in a way that doesn’t, on the one hand, diminish them (and by default we end up creating a God in our own image) or we use such complex words that we might end up being unintelligible (which cuts against the God who has revealed himself to us)? This is the tension we face, every time we open our Bibles, sing songs, pray and yes … preach.
Take for example the idea, “God is love”. This is factually and biblically true (see 1 John 4:7). However, when we then try to describe what we mean by love or to illustrate how this God-love impacts our lives, we’ve got to use a whole lot more words if we’re going to do justice to the world-shaping and humanity-redeeming love of God. In fact, no poet, scientist or theologian will ever be able to reach around the love of God, in words and ideas, and say “nailed it”. Let me illustrate: To better understand God’s love we need to grapple with the mysteries of the cosmos, covenantal theology, propitiation, expiation, apocalyptic writings, poetic love songs, metaphor, and metaphysics to name just a few things. And yes these are complicated words that screw with our brains! So how do we come to know the God of the Bible without having to gain a PhD? This leads to my next point:
Sermon’s our much more like gardening than Mastermind
Think of sermons as the process of putting good manure into the soil of the church community. Nothing very dramatic happens at first (like most sermons), but over time (months and years), and the repeated process of enriching the soil of the church (through more sermons) we grow and mature. I think this is a helpful way of thinking about sermons. Maybe there is a chunk of last Sunday’s sermon you didn’t get. Don’t worry too much, that hopefully was helping someone else. What did you learn? Are you embracing the challenges you were confronted with? Are you prayerfully talking to God about how the focus of this sermon can be ‘dug’ into the heart of your life? Now, imagine this process for months, and months and months. Isn’t that the process of discipleship? We might even want to call this ‘manure-like’ preaching (but that’s not very attractive is it?)
Sermons don’t have to be the end of the learning process
When the person who is preaching leaves the platform, that doesn’t have to be the end of the process of learning! If there are some words that you think… hmm… I don’t think I know what that means, write them down (in a notebook or on your phone) and then go and talk with the person who was preaching. This has two benefits. You will continue to learn and it will make the person who is preaching sensitised to some words that might be problematic. As an aside, I’ve got three long documents on my computer. One is theological words/ideas that I don’t think I’ve fully grasped; the second is philosophical concepts that I’m struggling with (I’m currently doing an MA that deals with lots of philosophy). Then I’ve got my final list of questions about God and theology and passages in the Bible that I don’t understand! Some of these questions have been in this document for years! I guess my encouragement would be to embrace and enjoy the life of an eternal learner because we will never run out of aspects of the nature of God that will puzzle, startle and stun us. For all of eternity, you Kirsty, (and me) are going to be learning about God!
As preachers, we need to always be challenging ourselves to keep it clear
Finally, I’m sorry – for any time I’ve unnecessarily complicated things. Sorry for any time the rest of the team tripped you up with words that didn’t make sense. As preachers, we need to keep challenging ourselves to make things as clear as possible. Honestly, we’re all learning and all trying to serve the church as well as we can, but we haven’t and won’t get it right every week. Will you be patient with us?
Thanks again for the question and if anyone else has something you would like to mardle about then email me on mardle@wearekingsgate.org
