Scattered Preaching
April 24th, 2006
Preaching chair used by John Wesley (18th century). Imagine how long his sermons were!
It was the second time I tried “scattered preaching.” I first heard about this at a seminar I attended recently. Bruce Milne, author, former principal of Spurgeons College, lecturer in homiletics and pastoral care, talked about the idea that the preaching form suited for the the 21st century audience is scattered preaching. He said that the diverse needs, ethnicity, socio-economic and age groups of the modern urban congregation called for a different handling of the sermon.
Traditionally most of us preachers have been taught to have one central truth in each sermon, supported by two to four sub-points, with each subpoint developed with explanations, definitions, examples and applications, all inter-connected seamlessly to deliver the central truth. So when the hearers who heard the sermon were asked, What was the sermon about?, most of their answers would be about the same.
However Bruce suggested that we be freed from the homilectical constraints of our past training and to preach in a new way. The method he talked about permitted us to touch on different truths in a particular passage and make applications to all kinds of life situations of different people groups in the congregation- students, single-mothers, marrieds, retirees, maids, unemployed. Thus “scattered” instead of gathered! So it does not matter if all the truths shared does not seem to connect and if the people were asked what the sermon was all about they would be hard put to answer, and if they do reply, they would seem to have different ideas of what the sermon was all about. Bruce in effect said it did not matter as long as preaching helped them and the preacher was interpreting the text faithfully.
Though I had a few positive comments, I wonder if the people are ready for this new way of preaching. I’ll have to go with this for a longer period. Its fun! If I am out of a job some time next year, there is no prize for guessing why.
Any comments?
Entry Filed under: Ministry
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