In a post last month I raised the issue of Third Way preaching, and this is what I said:
A genuine Third Way will get beyond the Sunday morning sermon as the primary form of spiritual formation and education in a local church, and neither Belcher nor Pagitt seem to approach preaching through the lens of a larger formational program with clearly defined outcomes. A genuine Third Way will form a well-rounded and adaptable formation program that guides all sermons, all teaching, and all activities in the church. Sermons will be seen as one part of the formational ministry of the church. In other words, Third Way preaching is rooted in the overall outcomes of the church.
I'd like to address this issue this month in a weekly series of outcome-based preaching. Today's post addresses the big idea of outcome based education and how it can impact churches.
The focus shifts from what the pastor-teacher knows and what the pastor-teacher says and how the pastor-teacher performs and that the pastor-teacher informs the congregation to each person in the congregation being a learner whom the pastor is equipping for learning and living.
In light of Jim Belcher's response to Doug Pagitt's own proposal for "progressional dialogue," I want to weigh in with what I suggest is my own proposal for a Third Way. I have been in contact with a few persons who wanted to know what I thought about Belcher's response to Pagitt so here goes...
First this: I will critique both Belcher and Pagitt for what they have not said, and I infer from what they have not said to the conclusion that they have not emphasized what I think needs to be emphasized more (and that will be my proposal below).
I think Jim Belcher's proposal is still traditionalist, and all the terms folks find for preaching they don't like - one-way, etc - is critique of bad preaching and not critique of traditional preaching. There is an important place for public declaration; there always has been and there always will be. Jim believes this but the problem with the traditionalist approach is bad preaching, not preaching. Jim and I agree on the importance of preaching and the need to avoid bad preaching (who doesn't?), but his approach remains traditionalist (more later).
But Pagitt's proposal, which has progressive features in it and a hermeneutic that needs more definition, is also still too traditional for it is locked too much into what happens on Sunday. I take his suggestion of community discussion of a text to be a step forward, but his "progressional dialogue" model (as I recall from reading his book and blogging about it when it came out) still appears to me to be too directed at what happens in the "sermon" (call it "progressional dialogue" or something else) in one setting. Yes, he advocates participation of the church in the sermon, but it is still focused on the sermon (as far as I know).
Evangelical pastors have flipped in the last generation. 30-40 years ago what most incited excitement was a new book by the arch-pastor and expositor, John Stott, expositing a New Testament book or a J.I. Packer book on theology. Today's evangelicals pastors are enamored with the latest book on leadership, like that morsel of an idea in the book called Tribes, or the latest book on management, or the latest fad in creativity.
These are often pastors who, if we were to ask them what is in some Old Testament book or some chapter in Ephesians, to take two soundings, would not know what we were talking about.
When good pastors or good scholars come out with insightful expositions of pastoral leadership, and stick to what the Bible says or even plumb the depths of some of the great books on pastoral leadership -- like Pope Gregory, we see almost no interest.
So let me say this: (too many) evangelical leaders have become too enamored with management skills and techniques and have neglected the nitty-gritty of soaking themselves in the great texts of the Old and the New Testament.
We need a conference, at some church, devoted to one thing: two days of exposition of key biblical texts on pastoral theology and ministry. And no one can bring up a modern management or leadership expert; and no publisher or book table present can sell anything but commentaries.
Who will host it? Who wants to know what the Bible says?
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.
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John Frye's got another good one....
Here's a great blog again by John Frye....
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. His vision is for a "whole" church -- with God, God's people, the community, and the world. This book is for pastors and by a pastor who has been there: with fragmentation and the concrete steps involved in healing and bringing back to wholeness. I really liked part two:
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