ChristineES said:
I have noticed, throughout the years, that when I hear a sermon, it seems to be directed on either new Christians or at people just wondering if they should accept Christianity.
This is something I've noticed too, though perhaps not to the same extent.
ChristineES said:
Is Church for the new Christian?
Not the whole of "church" in its entirety, but perhaps the sermon. In general, I agree they're becoming this way, or perhaps they've always been this way and as I'm growing I'm finding I want more meat. I’ve found that preachers will direct their sermon to where they feel the majority of people are at, and include at least something for those who are not Christians. If you are a Christian but desire more exegesis than most of the people, you can feel left out.
There’re a lot of things to consider when preparing a sermon, two of the big ones being the audience and time constraints. There’re probably going to be varying level of intelligence amongst the audience, some people who are "baby Christians," others who measure their walk with God in centuries, some married, single, some with kids, some without kids, some earning a six figure salary, others who are unemployed, some who have grown up in a "Christian" household, others who have no clue what it’s about etc. Preaching a message with content applicable to everyone, in a manner that everyone can understand, in a limited amount of time can be difficult. The more you try to cater to one group the more you exclude another group.
There'll always be people saying they want more meat from the sermon, they've heard it all before and feel that they don't get anything out of sermons anymore. OTOH, if people are constantly hearing about typology in Genesis, a red cord through Israel's history, the differences between the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of Heaven and the Bride, oil representing gifts of the Spirit and dew representing fruit of the Spirit etc, people tend to think "that's interesting, but how does that help me live my life today?" "How does that help me in my marriage?" "How does that help me deal with my mother's upcoming funeral?" "How does that help me deal with my teenagers going off the rails?" "How does that show that God cares when everything is falling apart around me?" "How does this explain why I should convert from Islam?" etc.
I've heard a pastor once say that if you run your services like a Bible college that's what you'll turn the church into. While I think it's great that people can further their relationship with God through Bible college, I acknowledge that fewer people are saved through Bible college lectures than sermons. If one of the church's purposes is to help bring the lost to Christ, then turning the sermon into a Bible college lecture can in some ways hinder this effort. If the sermon is too much like a Bible college lecture without enough obvious application to people's everyday lives, it can quickly appear too in-depth or hard to follow to people who are new Christians, irrelevant to people who are seeking because they've not yet got the necessary foundations, and not applicable for those who don't feel they need to go so deeply. A balance has to be found, but this usually leads to at least one group of people feeling like they've been left out. In my experience, preachers would rather cater the message less to people the preachers feel can go and study for themselves, rather than leave out people who could potentially be part of a harvest, or people who could easily backslide due to a lack of foundational teaching. That said, it’s interesting what Hebrews classes as some of the “principles” of the doctrine of Christ (laying on of hands, resurrection of the dead, eternal judgement) and seeing how often these “principles” aren’t preached about.
It's usually safer and more appealing to the majority of the audience to preach something that caters for the newest/most basic "level" of Christianity, which has some obvious, immediate application for people who are Christians, and can help non-Christians move further along the "Engel scale," (although it probably won't go to the depth that some people would like it to.)
Like you, I want to go deeper into the Bible. I like finding Noah preaching a gospel in Gen 9, and finding out why Japheth is listed first, seeing Abram and Sarai receive the Holy Spirit when God changed their names, explaining that Jephthah didn't kill his daughter, seeing the Amalekites' role post salvation, explaining why David picked up five stones instead of one, lining up Solomon's altar with Romans, interpreting the valley of dry bones, explaining why Satan won't be redeemed, lining up the feeding of the 5000 with Peter, explaining the link between Melchizedek and the Syrophenician woman etc. However, it can be difficult to explain how these conclusions are reached and the application they have to individuals' everyday lives, (taking into account the various life and spiritual situations of the audience) while keeping it all within the allotted time. Pretty much all of that though is what I've gotten out of my own study, not what I've learnt sitting in a pew on a Sunday morning.
I've found that the sermons I enjoy most are the ones that are full of exegesis, explanation of types and symbols, explanations of Greek and Hebrew words, present a challenge and force me to go and do a whole lot of reading, study and prayer myself to figure it out and apply the message. I find that in doing all this study I get a better understanding of who God is, I come to know God better, have a better prayer life and am better equipped to minister to people. That's just the way I'm wired though. If I have a spare hour I prefer to spend it meditating on the word. Others would rather spend an hour in prayer, others would rather spend an hour street preaching, others would rather spend an hour writing a new worship song. Chances are that these others won't enjoy the kind of sermon that I've just described quite as much as I do, but that's ok. This has led me to becoming more of a "self-feeder." I listen to the sermon, do my best to be like the Bareans, and then usually find something in the sermon to study myself, or with a group of people who also want to go deeper.
Last week the preacher was talking about "giving" using the example of the Macedonian churches. His main point was the importance of giving one's whole self to God, as the people of those churches had. It was a good, biblically correct point, with application for everyone. It was something I've heard a lot before. What I found myself focussing on was that Paul commended the "churches," plural, of Macedonia, not the "church," singular, of Macedonia. (Although the word "ekklesia" sort of already refers to a plural, it can be used to mean one church/assembly or many, and this is defined by context, and in this case is shown to be plural.) Anyway, this got me thinking about and studying the "DNA" of churches, what we can learn from the example of the Macedonian churches and how it affects church planting today, how we ensure that in building the kingdom people have the same values and doctrines, how to avoid another Jerusalem-Antioch scenario etc.
I also find that in doing my own study I recognise more scripture in hymns etc, and when I sing them (or do whatever it actually is that I pass off as "singing,") I find myself focussing on what the words mean in the scriptures they're quoted from. When I sing about eagle's wings, I find myself not only "singing" about the wings of an eagle, and about God rescuing the Israelites out of Egypt, but also about Boaz and Ruth, about Christ and the Church. I find myself worshipping and honouring God for a lot more than I would have been, as well as occasionally coming to the conclusion that whoever wrote the song probably wasn't paying enough attention to the context of the verses they've based their lyrics on, and it may not be a good idea to sing those particular lyrics. It's amazing how many people don't know what "hallelujah" or "hosanna" mean, but they're quite happy to declare it to God on Sunday. The same people won't make a declaration of something else (eg sign a contract) without first having their solicitors go over each and every nuance of it though. With just a little bit of time and effort this could be rectified, which part of what the Sabbath used to be for. It's a shame that the church has allowed the world to steal the Sabbath from her. There was a time when people would fit their Sundays around church. Now it's usually a case of people trying to fit church into their Sundays. I'm getting off topic though... sorry.
ChristineES said:
Are there places you have been that don't preach like that?
I've found the places that don't direct their preaching to new Christians or at people who are searching are generally conferences or Bible colleges which have specified audiences and pre-warn of the topic. I once attended an elective at one such conference in which we spent two hours interpreting a couple of verses in Jeremiah. It was immensely interesting, and I felt that I much better understood what God was saying in those couple of verses at the end of it, and that I was in a much better position to apply those things to my life. The lecturer had however, assumed the audience had a certain level of Biblical knowledge and research skills (probably a little bit above the level one would assume for preparing a sermon for an audience that would most likely have some brand new Christians in it.) Taking into account the way it was presented, a "new Christian" or someone searching probably wouldn't have gotten a lot out of it. It could have easily taken a year to exegete these verses to the same level whilst trying to account for the varying life and spiritual situations of the audience.
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