Why Keep Preaching?
Some scholars and preachers are suggesting that preaching has run its course. They say the craft served its purpose back when we were a word-based culture, but today a monologue seems like an outdated mode of communication. The proclamation of words from one talking head to a nodding (or sleeping!) crowd for twenty or thirty minutes, or worse, forty to fifty minutes, is a bygone byproduct of a different era when words mattered. Today, we are an image-based culture. The plethora of words we encounter every day, online or print, has caused words to become meaningless. Music and other art forms have greater potential to impact people than the traditional sermon. And why should the pastor be the authority on matters of biblical interpretation? Dependence on the preacher was appropriate back when many people were uneducated and illiterate.
According to the biblical story, words matter. God did his best work through words. Through words God formed the world and everything in it. For centuries, the Old Testament prophets communicated messages from God to his people essentially through words. The primary ministry of Jesus and John the Baptist was preaching. Jesus recruited the apostles to preach, and the first-century church, according to the book of Acts, focused significant attention on the ministry of proclaiming good news. According to the Bible, words about, from, and for God proclaimed to a group of people through the anointed person will always be meaningful, relevant, and powerful even when considered passe. That is why we preach.
Lenny Luchetti, "Preaching Essentials, 2012"
Sermons - Jesus Christ
Sermons - Holy Spirit
Sermons - The Cross
Sermons - The Bible
Sermons - The Church
Sermons - Miscellanious
