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By Wayne Jacobsen in a continuing series on The Phenomenon of the Dones.

I SAT DOWN to lunch with a good friend of mine one Tuesday afternoon, while I was still a pastor at a local congregation. We couldn’t even get our order placed before he exploded with excitement over the sermon I had preached two days before. “That was the best sermon I’ve ever heard. It changed my life.”

I knew it had gone well. Anyone who preaches regularly knows there are times when some sermons are just okay, and other times when everything comes together—the content, the crowd, a great illustration, even a move of the Spirit—that makes it incredibly special. That had been one of those times, but I was nonetheless intrigued by his last comment.

“Really? How did it change you?”

I could immediately see my question caught him off guard. I saw his mind churning right through his eyes but nothing was coming out of his mouth except, Ahh… Ahh… Ummm…” His lips had tightened and his hand pulsated in front of his chin, but he couldn’t think of a thing to say?

I tried again. “Can you tell me one thing you took away from that sermon?”

“Let me think,” he said buying time. “Remind me again what you talked about.”

“Oh no you don’t,” I responded playfully.

“At least give me the text,” he pleaded. I shook my head. After a bit more silence, we both started to laugh. Only forty-eight hours after the best sermon he’d ever heard and he couldn’t even remember what it was about.

This was one of those wake-up moments in my life. I used to love preaching sermons and having a roomful of people hang on my every word. I thrived on their laughter to a funny story or their wetted eyes when some truth touched their heart. I knew my friend was not given to flattery for he was as apt to criticize as he was to complement. That sermon had touched him powerfully if not enduringly.

I had already grown suspicious that the Sunday sermon is one of the most ineffective ways to help people grow spiritually. I have seen good sermons go by before without having any impact on the people who heard it. I have binders full of notes from sermons and teachings I’ve heard and while I can repeat the content of some of the more memorable ones, I can’t say that any of them actually changed the trajectory of my life.

Strange, isn’t it? It’s one of the two most important reasons people go to Sunday services. One is for what many call worship, that time of singing, prayer, praise or even celebrating the Eucharist, and the sermon. Any serious Christian will have a regular dose of both, or so the prevailing thought is. But how much time did Christ spend doing either? Did he ever teach is disciples how to facilitate a good “worship” experience, or how to craft a powerful sermon?

Perhaps we’ve overplayed the sermon card.

Looking back over the Gospels I’m amazed at how few sermons he actually gave and even when he did how little impact it had on those who listened. Not one of them was ever scheduled in advance. He simply talked to whomever he was with, whether it be an afternoon with a Samaritan woman, or her friends and family later that night. It could be his disciples in a boat or 5,000 scattered on a hillside, but it was never a prepared text, a scripted lecture, or a flourishing finish with a well-thought out application for the people to go and obey.

He talked about his Father’s kingdom and how they could embrace it. He wasn’t teaching doctrine, ethics, or rituals, but helping people discover how to live with God inside the reality of their own challenges. It was no wonder the most transformative moments came in personal conversations and why our preoccupation with sermons, seminars, and classes produce a Christianity that some complain is a mile wide but only an inch deep.

Fr. Richard Rohr recently wrote, “Christians have preferred to hear something Jesus never said: ‘Worship me. Worship of Jesus is rather harmless and risk-free; following Jesus changes everything.” He went on to suggest that the Sunday teaching is “like a secret social contract between clergy and laity, as we shake hands across the sanctuary. We agree not to tell you anything that would make you uncomfortable, and you will keep coming to our services. It is a nice deal, because once the Gospel is preached, I doubt if the churches would be filled. Rather, we might be out on the streets living the message.” He called it a co-dependent relationship that actually keeps the Gospel from spreading in the world.

This is one of the major reasons the so-called “Dones” are giving up on the Sunday morning delivery system. It is proving increasingly irrelevant to their spiritual lives. They can get good teaching in other places, what they need is less a Sunday morning pep talk to try harder and more of an exchange that is relevant to their own journey. They seek a vibrant spirituality that fulfills the promises they’ve heard about in sermon after sermon. To help them discover that we need to move beyond lectures and books, to the kind of encounters with people that Jesus had.

I got my pilot’s license when I was seventeen. While I did attend ground school and learn all the intricacies of aerodynamics, navigation, weather, air traffic control, and how to load a balanced aircraft, I never learned to fly. That took climbing into an aircraft along with an instructor who could show me what to do to actually fly a plane. That could never happen in a class; it had to happen with a tutor.

So I’m not saying that sermons have no value, only that the value is limited. They can provide valuable information and inspiration, but their impact on spiritual transformation is fairly weak and all the more so as people get used to hearing the same voice each week. They may find it informative, inspirational, even entertaining, but at the end of the day it cannot show them how to live. For that they need a more mature friend with whom they can share their experiences, questions and even doubts as they explore their own connection to God.

Listening to sermons, even taking notes and trying to live out the application is probably the worst way to discover how to live inside the love of the Father and to follow him.

I’m convinced that ninety percent of teaching and preaching occurs in a conversation where questions are being asked, doubts considered, and difficult realities contemplated. The life of Christ doesn’t flow well in three-point outlines on a topic they are not even considering until I bring it up. Christ comes to them “in life”, not far removed from it in the comfort of a sanctuary. Learning to live inside his reality is very different from learning the routines of Christianity as a religion.

Yes, I still talk to larger groups, but far less as a lecture and far more as a conversation that allows people to learn in their time and through their own experiences. What are their questions, doubts, and struggles, and how might I frame a question or observation that leads them into a wider world where God makes himself known to them? I’ve come to value the time in cars and homes with people far more than I do standing on a stage, and I see far more impact from it as well.

This kind of teaching enthralls me. Oh, it is more difficult than preparing a lecture on the topic of my choosing. It demands that I engage them, listen carefully to their story and concerns with an ear tuned to the Spirit so that I can respond not with a pat answer, but with something tailored to them in that moment. After all the life of Jesus isn’t about teaching people a set of doctrines, but assisting them in finding their way into living in the growing awareness of his life.

Sermons give the mistaken idea that there is a well-crafted answer to every question, but that’s only because we set up the question to fit our answers. They can unwittingly intimidate people from engaging others with real questions because they don’t have all the answers. The very positioning of a lecture sets up an expert in the front of the room that everyone should listen to rather than a fellow-struggler in this amazing adventure of participating in the mystery of Christ in us.

In fact it may be true that the one teaching the sermon gets the most value out of it. It usually is attached to his or her life, wrestling with content important for their journey. But if we want to serve others, wouldn’t we want to reverse that? Instead of sharing what has value in our lives, we would be teaching what most makes sense in theirs.

Studying just to share a teaching and then rush back to your closet to prepare another, doesn’t even give time for it to sink in on your own life, much less theirs. I remember sharing on many topics that were fresh to my own journey, but as soon as I taught about them I moved on to something else that interested me, without embracing the very realities about which I was teaching.

Our preoccupation with sermons is built on the underlying assumption that we grow best by hearing a truth and then applying it to our lives. That may work for writing computer code or cleaning a home, but it will not teach people how to follow him. For that they need an encounter God in their unfolding circumstances and the insight to lean into his reality. It’s not the preaching of the Scriptures we need more of, but the preaching of Christ that helps people see him in their own lives and follow him.

What we need are men and women living the life themselves, who can freely pass it on to others in conversation. Our emphasis on the Sunday sermon as the center of the local congregation and the focus for spiritual growth causes us to keep raising up generations of young men and women who academically equipped to teach sermons, but are ill-prepared to be a companion alongside someone’s spiritual journey. They can write an outline and talk with eloquence, but they have no idea how to help someone find a transformative relationship in the midst of the circumstances life throws at them.

In recent decades an old word has re-emerged to describe this approach: spiritual director. The word places a greater emphasis on professionalism and control than I like and is often only available to the wealthy or well-connected. Can you imagine of older brothers and sisters who’ve been on the journey for a while would be willing to share their encouragement and wisdom with the authority and control that so easily sidetracks it? All you have to do is come alongside someone as a friend and share your journey and insights allowing the Holy Spirit to help them see what’s best for their journey.

The church in the west is not withering for lack of knowledge, but for a lack of knowing him and being transformed by him. We teach Christ as a religion to follow that is empty and futile, rather than helping people live it with freedom. The early church had the same problem. Paul wanted them to learn that it wasn’t. His admonishment in Colossians 2 is as applicable today as it was to his listeners:

My counsel for you is simple and straightforward: Just go ahead with what you’ve been given. You received Christ Jesus, the Master; now live him. You’re deeply rooted in him. You’re well constructed upon him. You know your way around the faith. Now do what you’ve been taught. School’s out; quit studying the subject and start living it! And let your living spill over into thanksgiving.

Watch out for people who try to dazzle you with big words and intellectual double-talk. They want to drag you off into endless arguments that never amount to anything. They spread their ideas through the empty traditions of human beings and the empty superstitions of spirit beings. But that’s not the way of Christ. Everything of God gets expressed in him, so you can see and hear him clearly.

The power of the Gospel is demonstrated not in our programs or lectures, but in a transformed life living freely in the world. We are the sermon the world needs, and the sermon that can help others grow to know him. It’s our living in him that makes the difference, not just talking about.

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This is part 17 in a series on The Phenomenon of the Dones by Wayne Jacobsen who is the author of Finding Church and host of a podcast at TheGodJourney.com.  You can read the first half here and subsequent parts below:

• Part 8: Five Factors Contributing to the Decline in “Church Attendance”
• Part 9: An Invitation Not An Imposition
• Part 10: The Conversations that Matter Most
• Part 11:  Monetizing Ministry
• Part 12: Handling the Truth
• Part 13: Do You Have Community?
• Part 14: Reaching Across the Divide
• Part 15: Waiting for Revival
• Part 16: How Much Did Paul Get it Wrong? 

If you’d like to subscribe to this blog and receive future posts by email you can sign up at the top of the right-hand column of our home page.

By Wayne Jacobsen in a continuing series on The Phenomenon of the Dones.

The sunshine was brilliant as we gathered in a field along the English coast with some of our friends from throughout Europe. I sat down next to Dave, a former South African now residing in Ireland. As we got reacquainted he asked with just a touch of mischief in his voice, “Do you know what I’ve been thinking about these days?”

Of course I did! I know Dave can be playful, but he is a serious follower of Jesus and a provocative thinker.

He leaned over and in a surreptitious whisper and said, “I’ve been wondering just how much Paul got it wrong.”

I just shook my head chuckling wondering where this would lead. It was a loaded question to be sure though our ensuing conversation helped clarify that he was less focused on what Paul got wrong as he was how we wrongly we interpret Paul. We read his letters as if he wrote them last week to the denominations and mega-churches of the 21^st century. The early believers he was writing to, however, were not organized into efficient institutions with complicated political and economic structures. We mistakenly assume when Paul wrote about worship he was referring to the songs and prayers we use to start a service, teaching as a lecture to a room of passive listeners, or that elders were the business leaders who made financial decisions for the corporation or even pastor-preneurs carving out a niche in the religious landscape for themselves.

We forget that the early believers didn’t do anything that resembled the way most congregations meet today and when we co-opt the same terminology to justify our structures, we get Paul entirely wrong. For the most part the new believers comprised informal networks of those who gathered around specific households. While those in Corinth gathered on the first day of the week, we don’t know that every one else did. Paul even wrote to the Romans that some might consider a specific day special and others all the same and there was freedom in Christ for that.

But we are certain those believers didn’t sit in pews watching a production on stage, nor that they allowed a single person to dominate the life of the congregation. When that happened in Ephesus, John called out Diotrephes as evil (3 John 9-11) for lording it over the others. At the same time he affirms Demetrius for the quality of his life. Do we really imagine that these two were pitted against each other in board meeting for control of the congregation? They were not that centralized until later as human leaders wanted the same kind of control over the faithful that Diotrephes held.

No, I don’t think Paul got it wrong. I appreciate everything he wrote and the invitation he gave to live in a vibrant relationship with Jesus rather than get sucked into living by law, or in submitted compliance to so-called leaders who want people to follow them instead of following Christ. Many mistakenly think that Paul’s writings are our guide for right faith and practice, completely ignoring Jesus’ words that he would send us his Spirit and that he would guide us into all truth. Jesus never even mentioned that a collection of writings would one day come together to make following his Spirit obsolete. Even Paul would abhor much of how we apply his writings today. He wrote to encourage people to follow the Spirit rather than to craft a New Testament code of ethics or set up a hierarchy of leadership to guide us.

I believe the Bible is a God-inspired collection of writings to give us the truth about God and how he revealed himself in the world, but it is designed to equip us to live a life in the Spirit, not to replace him or his touch in our lives. You can tell when someone is interpreting Paul with the blinders of their religious institutions when they use his quotes to justify the religious systems they seek to employ. Their conclusions will reflect far more the management styles of the world than they do the vibrant community of the new creation. While Paul uses similar words as pastor and elder, what he means by them is markedly different than how we use them today. He was talking about older brothers and sisters with character who can discern between true and false living while encouraging younger believers to a more genuine faith, not about those with a seminary pedigree and the charisma to draw a crowd.

One of the glaring differences when you read Paul and look at how most people think of church today, it moved from being a “we” to being an “it.” It lost its vitality as a community of the redeemed sharing their joy and gifts, and became an institution that seeks control over Christ’s followers. I appeared on a radio discussion not long ago on the topic, “Is Church Attendance Mandatory?” I was asked to explain why so many people are leaving traditional Christian institutions and whether or not they could still be considered followers of Christ. The discussion was amiable enough but as my host signed off she used a well-known quote from Cyprian, the Bishop of Carthage in the middle of the third century. “He can no longer have God for his Father who has not the church for his mother.” Her conclusion was clear, you cannot be a follower of Christ if you’re outside a local, sanctioned institution. I would love to see how Paul would respond to that!

The quote is silly on the face of it. If we as God’s children comprise the church then how can we be our own mother? We are siblings with God as Father and Christ our Head. As far as I know Cyprian’s statement is one of the first that redefined the church from a “we” to an “it.” And this “it” is a mother demanding our obedience and conformity. In doing so the early bishops quite intentionally exalted themselves above the family and inserted themselves as mediators between Jesus and his followers. You follow him by following “it.”

Less than 250 years after Christ died and Paul wrote his letters, the freedom of the new creation had been fully crushed by the institution that calls itself “church.” And it is even more distressing that a Protestant in our day would appeal to such a quote, since Cyprian’s context was that of the Chair of Peter specifically. My host was already out of compliance to the mandatory allegiance to which she referred. The irony was perhaps lost to her since Protestants claim the same fidelity to their systems that the early bishops demanded of theirs.

Isn’t this when things went horribly wrong? People no longer were invited to follow Christ; they had their bishop to follow or rituals to observe, mostly based on someone’s interpretations of Paul’s writings. I’ve always wondered how one can know God as Father and end up so far afield? And why would they be so convinced of it that they would damn any who disagree with them? If you don’t attend our meetings, participate in our rituals, join our membership, or sign our covenant, you are excluded from Christ and his salvation.

And I do understand the concerns today. Many who claim to follow Jesus are only following their own self-interest and stumble off into error. It’s easy to think that the institutional control of “more mature” brothers and sisters would fix that problem. But it doesn’t; it only shifts the problem. It stagnates the spiritual growth of more sincere people by taking their eyes off of Jesus and when the size of any institution grows it easily seduces those who lead it to serve their own self interest, especially where income and ego are involved.

The only way to guarantee the future of a corporation is to make people dependent on it by making it mandatory for salvation. I remember the things I used to defend when my income directly benefited from my theology. It obscures our thinking more than we know. But to double-down on the mandatory card is to ignore the reality of the Incarnation, the nature of the new creation, and the identity of his church growing in the world. Jesus came to be with us, not just while he was in the flesh, but now by the power of the Spirit.

If whatever we call “church” is not as engaging as Jesus was on the planet, then maybe we’re not talking about his church. It certainly wasn’t what Paul was describing, nor the reality he wrote to. Whether we belong to Jesus or not is demonstrated not by our attendance at a weekly meeting, but by his character taking shape in us and how we love those around us.

Paul said this was a freedom worth fighting for. He warned about people “cutting in” on them with rules and obligations, of being robbed of their freedom, and told them not “Let anyone tell you what you should do…” He made no exceptions for bishops or pastors. He wanted people following Christ as he made himself known, not substituting any one or anything for that vibrancy of life in him.

The life of the church will never be found in accountability to people or systems, but in the love of Christ taking root in our lives. For that it needs a growing number of people who take following Christ seriously and themselves less so. It is worth risking the anger and judgment of those who seek to steal that freedom and learn how to recognize his work in you. You follow Jesus, by actually following Jesus not by living up to the expectations of those who set themselves up as leaders.

That is such a foreign concept to people, that when many leave a congregation they feel lost for a time. The most often question I get from them is, “Now, what should I do?” The worst indictment of the failure of our institutions is that people no longer have any idea how to follow Christ without rituals and guidelines from the outside. Instead of being equipped to follow Jesus they were lulled to spiritual passivity by a well-planned program. This more than anything accounts for the emptiness people feel and why they go look for something else. But even then they will naturally seek a strategy of activities to sustain them.

The response I give them is, “Follow him!” It’s the best counsel ever! Even if they don’t know how to yet, they are now going to get to learn. The most important questions become not what should I do, but how do I get to know him? What is he revealing in my life? How is his love shaping me to live more freely in the world? Who is he asking me to walk alongside now, both those who help me and those I can help?

Some people find connection in other established groups. If they do, I encourage them to go for the relationships not the program. Any structure is helpful only to the degree that it equips people to live in the Spirit and to share community. When it subverts either mission, ignore it. Others will find connection more informally with friends, neighbors and co-workers who share their journey of faith together in an ongoing conversation.

Our faith was meant to be an adventure of waking up in him each day and asking him to lead us. As he nudges your heart to connect with someone or do something in the world follow him. Don’t overly spiritualize it. If it feels right in your heart do it. See if it bears the fruit of his kingdom. If not, consider what else he might have before you. As you follow those nudges, love freely the people that cross your path, and follow up on any leads toward others who might be hungering for more of a family connection, it will eventually become clear how Father is knitting you into his family.

In that adventure, Paul’s writings become so much more powerful. You’ll begin to see that worship is not about singing songs, but living our lives in Father’s reality. As we let him live his life through us gratitude will rise in our hearts and in the lives of others we touch. We’ll discover that ninety percent of teaching happens in a conversation where someone asks a question or makes an observation that causes lights to go on inside and draws others closer to Jesus. Elders are seasoned saints whose life and character back up the theology they espouse and they freely offer their time to help others learn to live inside the life and freedom of Jesus.

So when you read Paul, check your biases. Is he referring to the church as a collection of hundreds of thousands of institutions who often have very little to do with each other, or is he talking about a family who are learning to love each other the way Jesus loves them? When he talks about the church of Jesus Christ as the bride being prepared for his Son, don’t be tempted to think that he’s referring to an institution with a cute contemporary name, with a mandatory meeting designed to keep people on the straight and narrow. Paul would have never seen it that way. Instead he would be seeing a vibrant community of men and women faithfully following Jesus as they connected locally sharing that journey with endearing friendships.

_________

This is part 16 in a series on The Phenomenon of the Dones by Wayne Jacobsen who is the author of Finding Church and host of a podcast at TheGodJourney.com.  You can read the first half here and subsequent parts below:

• Part 8: Five Factors Contributing to the Decline in “Church Attendance”
• Part 9: An Invitation Not An Imposition
• Part 10: The Conversations that Matter Most
• Part 11:  Monetizing Ministry
• Part 12: Handling the Truth
• Part 13: Do You Have Community?
• Part 14: Reaching Across the Divide
• Part 15: Waiting for Revival

If you’d like to subscribe to this blog and receive future posts by email you can sign up at the top of the right-hand column of our home page.