Sunday, October 02, 2005
Just from my gut...(2)
I left church, drove to a friend's house to watch football (I don't have cable at home, so I have to mooch off of my friends), and had some more thoughts...
I've heard some in the "emergent movement" talk about preaching in terms of jazz music. Here's the idea: instead of having a "canned" sermon, in the "jazz theory," the speaker engages actively with the audience, "riffing" on ideas as they come. The requirement is that the speaker must really know the topic/text and there's a large degree of improvisation.
On the other side, you have people like my senior pastor who believe in manuscripting -- that while the Holy Spirit can move in the moment like the jazz things, but he can also move in the same way through the preparation process.
Here's my deal -- generally for speaking on main stage I church I move towards the manuscripting idea -- the size of the crowd, the setup of the stage, etc. lends itself toward that model. At The Gathering I generally tend towards the jazz model -- improvising on an idea that I'm pretty comfortable with -- responding to the crowd, adapting to the "feel," etc.
Tonight, I was trying to play jazz to a tune that I don't necessarily know very well. Should I have manuscripted? I'm not sure...that might have been awkward. I'll have to think about this for next week.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
there are so many "no one can bat a thousand" things to say here, but two things stick out.
1. you're preaching on something more informational than spiritual. we're not on a journey to learn muslim or islam or judism. we're on a path God has set before us. this was just an interesting talk on things that we know we got right as Christians. (since most of the other religions believe the same ideaology)
2. i know i found the talk at nexus interesting... but i may have gotten more spiritual guidance through your blog about what you thought was an off night.
so there is good to come from God's gentle corrections.
at least they didn't throw tomatoes...
sometimes if i'm pretty sure i'm going to preach a lemon, i apologize ahead of time.
have you read preaching re-imagined? some good, some not as good. worth the read
I think I skimmed it [preaching reimagined] once. As I was obviously thinking about the act of preaching last night, I had another thought --
This is may be one of those areas where "one size doesn't fit all," nor does "one methodolgy/approach fit all audiences/environments."
What I'm trying to say is that we like to write books and teach people how to do things a certain way, but in reality, we've all got to find our own style that is appropriate for the audience we communicate to.
Charlie,
do you struggle with trying to be more than faithful? I do. I am always trying to make each message the best I have ever done... actually, maybe I am trying to make it the best they have every heard. Sometime my desire to be really good actually gets in the way of being faithful. Ultimately, we are just called to be faithful... obviously, in that case of someone gifted such as you are that means somethings more... but it is also something less that what I might imagine it to be...
brandon...you've said it well. In my worst moments I'm always trying to hit it out of the park/hit a 300 yard drive/throw a 70 yard pass (enough sports analogies!)
Seriously though...that really gets at it for me -- that I desire more to be really good than I do necessarily to be faithful. Well said.
I think part of the challenge is that we live in a world where we can weekly download guys like Rob Bell, which leads me to compare myself...which goes nowhere good in my soul!
Post a Comment