- Sound doctrine is important. Doctrine is roughly equivalent one's charts while navigating a boat. If the charts are bad, the journey may continue uneventfully for a while, but eventually the reef, sandbars, or rocky coast will get you.
- There is such a thing as a bad teachers. Even those with sound doctrine can't necessarily communicate clearly and effectively with others.
- There is such a thing as a bad student. Often when I don't get something out of a sermon, it is because I won't take the time to sit down and ponder it. I also tend to forget that I've been working on another issue for a month and don't really need another can of worms. I certainly won't sit down to a cup of coffee with a close friend and ask "You know, my pastor talked today about pride and arrogance. I'm having a really hard time figuring out how to apply the sermon to my own life - where do you really see me struggling in these areas?"
- I'm not clear that sermons should communicate significant new information to those who have been around church for many years. Newer is not better in matters of teaching: In general, novelty is heresy, not progress. I'm easily tickled by learning a cool idea, but the goal of teaching is that people may live holy lives. Paul writes
"It was he [Jesus] who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God's people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ."Teachers are given so that the laity may be prepared. Evangelists are given not to reach the lost, but to prepare the laity. Pastors are given to prepare the laity. The purpose of the preparation is that the laity may become like Christ.
- I'm not clear that the target audience of a church should be it's mature members. When the apostles started teaching the 3,000 converts to Christianity after Pentecost, I doubt much information was new to those who had faithfully followed Jesus for three years.
- If a church intends to reach the unchurched (that whole "go and make disciples of all the nations" bit), it probably needs to be able to answer the question: How do we expect our converts to learn the basics of the faith? If the expectation is that the converts will simply hang around until they pick it up, I'm worried. The analogy of new converts is of babies - and babies usually don't thrive being left at the dinner table until they figure out how to eat the scraps of dinner.
- Sermons are not designed to communicate massive amounts of information in and of themselves anyway. 50 Sundays a year with perhaps 45 minutes of teaching each about 38 hours of teaching - or roughly a semester long 3-credit college course. And there are no homework or tests to remind you of the information. This fact is not a bad thing as sermons serve many other (good) purposes, but it does mean that the expectation that sermons are the primary source of doctrinal teaching for a church is probably weak.
I tend to feel pretty defensive when people comment that they aren't getting much out of the sermons. I think my defensiveness largely due to the set of expectations people seem to bring to the table - that the sermon should fit them, their style, and their stage of life. (This goal gets harder, of course, when you get married and both you and your spouse expect the sermon to consistently speak to both of you. And then when the children start attending...)
There's some truth to the issue, of course - church sermons which no one finds relevant aren't very useful. And some sermons are just, well, bad. But I wonder if those of us who have been around the church a long, long time need to encourage sermons which the strangers to the faith find relevant while we seek to apply our greater knowledge more urgently to knowing God, serving him, and being holy.
Here's my desperation list when I really need something to apply in my life:
The "search me" Prayer: God, is there any way in me that is displeasing to you? Search me, O Lord, and cleanse me. (Caution: God does not take this prayer lightly, and tends to respond. There is a parable about counting the costs before embarking on a project...)
Taking a friend out for coffee and asking him what character issues he sees in my life.
Going salsa dancing - or otherwise getting out of my comfort zone.
Spend a night praying about the habits of others that really irritate me (like not getting anything out of sermons) and see if I am doing the same thing to others.
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