I have a had a couple of conversations with friends recently that got me wondering about the above question. Both conversations were with two of sweetest, most stalwart Christians I know.
One friend has a had a lot of heartrending circumstances in her life recently. She said something about going to church all her life and having comfortable relationships not preparing her for a time when she moved away and had to face some hard things, rather alone.
My other friend, referred to preaching as Christian entertainment and wondered if it was doing any good.
So, here are my questions:
- Does being a part of a church prepare us for handling life? If so, how? (I realize it depends, in large part, on the particular church.)
- How does this preparation or discipleship happen?
- What is the role of preaching?
[...] Hager has a really good post today, asking if church life equips us for real life. I think I could write a sermon on that! Please go and read Glenn’s post and leave your [...]
By: Does Church Life Equip Us For Real Life? : Beyond the 4 walls on January 16, 2008
at 2:38 pm
1-no no no no no no. (at least not for me)
2- the only actual preparation I can think of is within the true friendships that may be formed as a result of church life.
3- I honestly don’t know, anymore. Most of the preaching I’ve heard, I now realize, is just that much hooey.
I know that sounds awfully cynical. I’m not even having a cynical day. I suppose your question hit a nerve!
By: cindy on January 16, 2008
at 6:39 pm
Cindy ~ Probably, you not being all that cynical, just real honest. I know all sooo well that the easiest thing in the world is to go with the flow or totally give up and I have done both at different times. I am wondering how can we believe what you expressed in your comment and still not loose heart. The future of the church lies in answering tough questions like these. What is the way forward?
By: Glenn on January 16, 2008
at 9:25 pm
1. Are we talking about church or what most people “call church” ?
2. A true communit (ie connecting church book)
3. I am not sure if preaching is necessary
By: Jeff Greathouse on January 16, 2008
at 11:07 pm
Jeff ~
Here are some more questions for you.
1. The common understanding or what most people call church.
2. A good book, but can you describe discipleship and how it happens?
3. Is there a way to salvage it? Or should it be salvaged?
By: Glenn on January 17, 2008
at 1:02 am
1. “Church life” as in living in community with other people of God – absolutely! “Church life” as in attending services and being involved in programs – maybe, maybe not.
2. Discipleship happens when two people decide to follow Jesus together.
3. The purpose of preaching should be to declare the good news about Jesus to those who do not know him. The purpose of teaching should be to help those who are following Jesus to understand and know him more.
-Alan
By: Alan Knox on January 17, 2008
at 8:36 am
Glenn:
1. In that sense, I think that you may have asked the wrong question (in my opinion). I think the question may (should) read SHOULD. The reason for this is that I think that we need to understand the purpose of church.
2. Loving God and Loving Others. I think that we make church, discipleship and much more way to complicated. I do believe that if we did “community” as described in the book – discipleship will be a guaranteed outflow.
3. I like that yoy asked both q’s in this one. Yes, there is a way to do it. Preachers must be willing to step up and do some changing though. I think it should be salvaged. I think that I disagree with Alan though (maybe the first time) on his purpose of preaching.
By: jeffgreathouse on January 17, 2008
at 9:30 am
Alan ~ I so agree with your thoughts about discipleship being connected with relationships. I think I disagree with your thoughts about preaching and teaching. Especially, in our culture and time, the best proclamation of the Gospel is usually a life in which we love people like Jesus did. I think teaching is way over rated. I am wondering, do we have any indication of Jesus teaching in what we would call a systematic manner. Did he ever preach an expository sermon? Thanks for letting me pick on you. I would like to hear more of your thoughts.
Jeff ~ Are you saying that church activity should not necessarily help us to live life?
I can’t argue with your thoughts about discipleship happening in community. What changes would you recommend for preachers? Would like to hear more your thoughts too, Jeff.
By: Glenn on January 17, 2008
at 1:06 pm
Glenn,
I don’t feel like you were picking on me. In fact, I agree with everything that you said. What I said about about “preaching” and “teaching” have very little – if anything – to do with expository sermons. I don’t think these are wrong. However, I think they offer very little benefit when it comes to “preaching” and “teaching”. We preach and we teach with our lives – which does include words at times, but usually includes loving actions toward others.
-Alan
By: Alan Knox on January 17, 2008
at 1:38 pm
I went through a phase in Bible college in each of my preaching classes where I wondered whether or not preaching was necessary… and now that it’s part of my profession I’m sure that I’m a little biased, however I believe that no matter how ridiculous or entertainment filled a sermon may or may not be something mystical and mysterious happens during the preaching moment. It’s something that I cannot truly put into words but it is something that I truly “feel” while delivering a sermon and it’s something that gets reaffirmed time and again when other people talk with me weeks and months down the road. I’ve bombed my fair share of preaching moments–maybe moreso than I realize or would like to admit–but it always blows my mind when someone comes up to me years later and recalls something that was said in a sermon whether I remember it or not and says, “that changed my life” or “that changed my perspective”. It’s truly a humbling position.
I think that our current understanding of preaching needs to change–we’ve certainly lost the value in it and maybe it’s because of how we’re using it… but I don’t think it’s a dead art… it’s just not being understood as an art and maybe that’s more of the problem than anything.
By: monts on January 18, 2008
at 12:06 pm
Alan ~ Beautifully said!
Monts ~ I have that same conviction that it is art. It is part scholarship, part acting, part informing, part inter-personal relating, part inspiration. The inspiration part seems to be what preaching is good for. Yet, I think it over-rated and too much emphasis has been placed on it. We need to get back to relational ministry.
By: Glenn on January 18, 2008
at 3:39 pm
I agree, yet I think that there can be a part of preaching that is relational… it’s all in the communicative form that it takes. As a listener, there is a certain relational connect that takes place between the preacher and the hearer through the medium of preaching that we shouldn’t overlook, yet is experienced on a deeper, sub-conscious level. Again, I’m not sure how or why or what that looks like, just speaking from my own experience and what I’ve heard from others.
I think preaching gets a bad name because of how it’s been and continues to be distorted by many in the church–yet ironically those distortions are still being effective in some manner.
By: monts on January 18, 2008
at 4:01 pm
Monts~ What kind of “modifications” do you think are in order for preaching? Is there a better way of inspiring people to join in the kingdom?
By: Glenn on January 18, 2008
at 7:15 pm
OK, here are my thoughts.
1) Does being a part of a church prepare us for handling life? If so, how?
Like you wrote, the answer for this probably does depend on the church. In general I would say no. I became a Chrisitian whilst at college, and I feel I was prepared me for life “outside” of the walls, if that makes sense. I sometimes hear statements/judgements from Christians and think “you really have no idea about …. do you?” Sunday preaching, home groups etc etc rarely touch on anything other than spiritual life, imo.
However, church as in a group of Christians coming together and living life together, then I think you can have a different story. Life is more explored and talked about.
I think it comes down to relationships Glenn.
2) How does this preparation or discipleship happen?
Discipleship happens naturally when you have true relationships and you explore life together, you are real together, they are no pretences. I think it happens outside of the building. Think about the apostles, they lived together, ate together, learned together, mourned together etc. I think this is how Christian life should be. Discipleship therefore falls naturally into this way of life.
Discipleship within church walls is just another program, which to be honest, from experience I’d have to say it doesn’t really happen in a lot of churches.
What is the role of preaching?
I think preaching has the real potential to be a very different experience for most within church. If I’m honest most Sunday’s I don’t remember a lot about the sermon. It’s usually long – 40 mins plus. Generally after ten minutes I feel the preacher has got their point across, and could quite easily end, leaving people with something to think about. The longer it goes on, the more my mind then starts to wander, and if I’m honest I start to think “when are you going to end” I feel bad about thinking this, but if you look around on a Sunday during the preach, after a while some people are whispering to their neighbor, others looking through the bible, some have their eyes shut, whilst others have a glare in their eye which suggests their minds are off daydreaming somewhere.
I would love to see an open floor on a Sunday. The “preacher” brings a short 5 – 10 minute word and then it’s open for interaction from the congregation – people can share through an open mic thoughts they have had on the particular passage in question, how God has maybe spoken to them through the passage, etc. Like an interactive learning experience – learning about life together.
However, the greatest teaching we can give people, as has already been said in the comments section, is teaching with our lives, how we live them, through loving others, giving of ourselves, being vulnerable and so forth.
By: Lyn on January 19, 2008
at 3:59 am
Lyn ~ Thank you for your comment! Some common elements are coming out of this conversation. Relationships and the natural rythms of life are the context for growth and discipleship. The preaching/teaching element in church life needs to move from monologue or program to conversation. I see so much hope for the church if the distingtion between church life and real life is obliterated and we freely and creatively move in the direction of the suggestion you made.
By: Glenn on January 19, 2008
at 3:41 pm
It’s some interesting questions. My own view is that we are experiencing a collapse of church into our “personal life space” – in other words church is becoming irrevelant to many people as its seen as getting in the way of my life and what happens within it.
I’ve got some thoughts on the boil at the mo where i’ll be arguing that the thrust of church has been to play to our individuality, unsurprising in our western philophical and societal shaped context. The upshot of that i would argue is that why need church when my relationship can be direct with Jesus and I can go and live without all the perceicved drawbacks of a church – like it just hasn’t prepared me for life (reflecting again the thrust of our individualistic centred way of perception).
For me though i think we need to rediscover the practice of church, the inconvenience of church, the interuption into our life of a space and a place where we can get confronted with a different reality to base our lives on – the reality of Jesus. We come together as a community and place our stories into the one story and context that really matters. Church as a place where we gather and then go back out into life, where we have space to practice serving each other, praying for each other, learning to lose our voice and to practice surrendering our power of choice which we exercise without thinking for the rest of the week.
For me part of that is breaking down on individual silos and discovering church as a communal experience, church as caring about the other rather than just about me and what i get out it. I think that certainly prepares me for life, life lived on a different reality where i want to be about giving not getting. Everything else in my life screams do what makes you happy, get what you want, when you want and church is the one space where i get to stop, look, listen and then offer myself and recommit myself to something other than my own selfish shallowness.
I think the key preparation of discipleship is that of learning to do life together – we’ve done the life of an individual disciple very well and this is important too. But i certainly appreciate learning to love people at their best and worst, to submit to church as a means of grace where i rapidly run out of patience, love, kindness, generousity etc with all the idiots that go to to church and realise that everyone else is experiencing the same with me – i am no doubt many people’s biggest pains and source of experiencing more grace! I am passionate about this being a reality check, that church is an imperfect place with imperfect people but also a place where we can encourage each other and be there for each other.
For me the ultimate prepartion for a life centred on the reality of following Jesus is practicing life together with others who also share that desire – doing it on my own just does not work. Doing it from a space within the rest of my life does not work – the rest of my life is quite happy to have Jesus on board but it is only in the space of church where i am challenged as to whether individually and communally we’ll let him drive.
As for preaching – well i think the arguement for me is not for more preaching or less preaching but better preaching – i appreciate having someone take the threads of our communal life and our context and weave them together to help guide us and challenge us a community. In our reality we have other ways of also telling the christian story, such as following the church calender and finding creative ways of sharing it and having folks sharing storties from the wider life of the church as well.
By: Paul on January 20, 2008
at 4:40 am
Paul ~ Thanks for jumping in. You’re right, for some people church just takes time away from their life and they feel it is not necessary to follow Christ. Yet, there is also a multitude of people who have found too much of church life irrelevant, but who want to be in community with other Christ followers. I suppose I feel a little tension between seeing church as a pulling away to be recharged for life and something that happens in the middle of life where friends gather to to engage in conversation about how to live life in the way of Jesus, support one another , and have a group impact upon their community. Isn’t communal life about giving and getting? It’s not wrong to be blessed by others, but a problem when it is a motivation. I love your vision of community, but realize that there is an individual aspect to walking with God too. Your thoughts on preaching are broader that what most have experienced and would be a breath of fresh air. Thanks, Paul.
By: Glenn on January 20, 2008
at 2:09 pm
No worries Glenn, i think that is the tension of course as a lot of church life is irrelevant to me but you can’t have a lot of irrelevance and not be in a community with others – that for me is the prid quo.
Fundamentally if we are about giving then we did to do so in our communal settings and i think we often marginalise the practice of church in doing so, as a place to practice that. I often find hanging out with people outside church a lot easier as i get to chose the who and what we do – for me that requires little challenge.
I am lucky on the preaching front
By: Paul on January 20, 2008
at 7:01 pm
[...] Glenn Hager’s post from last week “Does Church Life Equip Us For Real Life” and Jason Clark’s “I Love Church” Paul has written a post called [...]
By: Church Thoughts : Beyond the 4 walls on January 21, 2008
at 5:15 pm
[...] has been a pretty good discussion stimulated by the post, Does Church Equip You For Real Life? It spilled over to Lyn’s blog and [...]
By: Your Turn « re-dreaming the dream on January 22, 2008
at 12:11 pm