The Context
Last week I posted a blog, Becoming A Heretic on Church Ministry. I was playing off what Seth Godin says in his new book Tribes: We Need You To Lead Us. You can find my review of the book at Leadership Network.

Godin says:

Challenging the status quo requires a committment, both public and private. It involves reaching out to others and putting yourideas on the line. (Or pinning your Ninety-five Theses to the church door). (pp. 49)

and later in the book, Godin says:

Religion and faith are often confused. Someone who opposes faith is called an atheist and widely reviled. But we don’t have a common word for someone who opposes a particular religion.

Heretic will have to do.

If faith is the foundation of a belief system, then religion is the facade and the landscaping. It’s easy to get caught up in the foibles of a corporate culture and the systems that have been built over time, but they have nothing at all to do with the faith that built the system in the first place.

Change is made by people, by leaders who are proud to be called heretics because their faith is never in question. (pp. 84)

My Thought
I wrote in that post that,

In the next several posts I would like to challenge, raise questions, debate some areas of Church ministry that need some unorthodox thinking in them. Maybe we need more heretics in our midst to help us re-think/re-imagine how the Church could be.

These are areas that I have struggled with a long time as I know many of you have, many of you are beginning to, and others will just think, well, that’s heretical thinking. I’m simply bringing them up to raise discussion and conversation, not because I have all the answers to these. That’s why I want your input.

The Sermon
And so I want to begin with The Sermon. At the time I was especially thinking about the sermon as it has traditionally taken form…a man on stage, engaged in a one way dialogue, speaking at an audience for about 30-45 minutes, without much or any participation or involvement of those in the pew.

My issue with the sermon does not lie in the sermon itself. We see very well known passages of Scripture were sermons are preached (i.e. Jesus at the Sermon on the Mount, or Peter at Pentecost, etc.). Nor are my issues just with the pastor…this is the way we were taught to preach and teach. But as a body of Christ we have also pressed upon it certain expectations–entertainment, education, passive observation, charisma, etc. We have essentially become theater goers that sit in our chair, expecting to be entertained, then afterwards giving our praise or criticism based upon the “performance.” Continue Reading…