Are there any new emerging proposals for preaching? Jim Belcher, in Deep Church: A Third Way Beyond Emerging and Traditional
examines the theory of Doug Pagitt. (I blogged about that book with Doug when it came out, and since then I've done more thinking about his proposal.)The questions I have are these: Do you think there is a problem with preaching in the traditional model? (We need to hear from you.) What are the problems? Is it what Pagitt calls "speaching"? Is there a way forward? What needs to be done?
Do you think Doug Pagitt's preaching proposals are typical or uncommon or rare among emerging types? Or is it unique to Doug and Solomon's Porch? What proposals are you hearing about emerging preaching?
But this post is about Belcher's proposal for preaching a Third Way. Belcher criticizes traditional preaching through a few stereotypes: he calls it "moralistic preaching" and it produces either Pharisees or or dispirited dropouts.
Pagitt's model emerges from a hermeneutic of community: the community, with the Bible (as one voice), discerns God's will for that community. It is a relational-set hermeneutic instead of a bounded-set or a centered-set. Belcher wonders aloud if Pagitt's ideas have rejected the Great Tradition. So Pagitt's model of preaching is "progressional dialogue" where the preacher and the community progress in their discernment of God's will.
Belcher trots out DeYoung and Kluck's critique of Pagitt, and in the footnotes to this chp Pagitt is subjected to more critique.
Belcher's model of preaching focuses on privileging grace and the drama of the gospel plot for each sermon. He likes Eugene Lowry's book: The Homiletical Plot: The Sermon As Narrative Art Form
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RJS and Patrick,
I share all your sentiments. It is why I think of church (ekklesia) as a collection of gatherings for mutual edification. More discussion on that here:
http://peelingdragonskin.wordpress.com/2009/07/06/the-biblical-teaching-about-ekklesia/
I tend to think we need more than one small group. One kind is for anyone and everyone in the church. Another kind can be smaller and more focused based on level of maturity, common interests, etc. This discussion online that we are having now is a small group of sorts. If typing is a drag, there is no reason people cannot set up a conference call to discuss various topics.
Is the relational-hermeuneutic a problem for Jim mainly because the scriptures don't recieve primacy in that model?
It seems that other principles of the relational hermeneutic are articulated in other ways from other writers and thinkers where the community is primsl and yet a high view of scrripture is also espoused.
For example, I am thinking perhaps of Newbigin's claim that the church (community of God's people) is the hermeneutic of the Gospel.
Or Stanley Grenz, among others who speak about the Trinity as the communal Godhead, thus giving primacy to the place of community because God in the scriptures estasblishes such a community of people both in Isreal and the Church.
Also Scot I wonder how or if the relational hermeneutic is complementary to your ideas about reading with tradition (and sometimes against it), God speaking his word in our days and in our ways, and in such a community if there is openesss or room for disagreement among the top tier "doctrines" (views of atonement, views of hell, nuances of the Trinity, ect)
It seems to me that a relational hermeneutic seen with these things in mind could perhaps be a useful way of being the church.
Does Jim to easily dismiss a relational-hermeneutic? Or do the examples I mention describe something else completely or are unrelated to the relational-hermeneutic Jim speaks of (or Doug for that matter)in this chapter and book?
I've been reading the Jesus Creed blog since a mentor of mine from college mentioned it to me.
As a soon to be 32 year old lay person, I'd have to agree with the intellectual snobbery (for lack of a better term) of the need for seminary.
To be truthful I should probably grab a dictionary and attempt to reread many of the comments (not that I want anyone to simplify the discussion for me).
Being in the military, I've been in quite a few churches. Until recently the ones we've attended were the traditional preaching. In fact, it is the good teaching of the Bible that I look for from the Sunday sermon.
The difficulty for me lies in that while I yearn to be mentored like I was in college it seems there are few opportunities for a slightly more educated lay person to receive teaching or deeper discussions.
In small groups I would have to agree with RJS, PDS, and Patrick. I have led a participated in small groups (Sunday School Classes but that was the idea). In general they provide milk at best, and most of the time that milk is watered down. When I have led small groups and attempted to create dialogue, the classes inevitably got smaller as members saught out a second sermon versus learning for themselves.
Hopefully this post is better than the rant it feels to be.
Before I can talk with someone about there homiletic, I need to know their view of scripture (infallible, inerrant, etc.) and from that would flow there hermeneutic, and only then could we begin to have a good dialog about homiletic.
This is because I think our view of scripture will place boundaries on an acceptable hermeneutic and then this derived hermeneutic will place boundaries on our homiletic style.
I love the way many emerging church leaders communicate and I don't like the way many expositors preach. So I'm not voting against innovation and exploration in the area of homiletics, I just don't want to put what I think is the "cart before the horse".
Really appreciated what you said in summary here Jim;
"I think the key to all of this is preaching/teaching/dialoging with what the Apostle Paul calls "sound Words," which is another way of saying that our teaching/preaching should bring health and wholeness to our people. That means that whatever method or technique we employ the goal is shalom--peace with God, with others, with ourselves and with creation. If this is happening then Sound Words are being communicated and biblical teaching/discipleship is happening."
Preaching is not an island unto itself in the life and worship of the community. Its good to be reminded of that.
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