Is the 40-Minute Sermon Passé?
00:00:00.000 | In a recent Christianity Today article titled "Flipping the 40-Minute Sermon," the author's
00:00:09.960 | argument goes like this.
00:00:12.280 | Attention spans have shriveled and what we think of as a sermonic monologue should be
00:00:16.200 | split up and pastors should actually do their main teaching online in bite-sized segments
00:00:20.900 | throughout the week and use the gathered church on Sundays as a place to foster personal interaction
00:00:26.280 | and fellowship.
00:00:28.020 | Pastor John, what do you think of flipping the 40-minute sermon, of making the sermon
00:00:31.360 | less significant or insignificant on Sundays?
00:00:34.960 | Well interesting that you should ask that because Bob Glenn, my friend out at Redeemer
00:00:39.440 | Bible Church, sent me a notice about this article.
00:00:43.720 | So I read it and he wanted to know what I thought and I had just in fact listened to
00:00:49.720 | a 40-minute, a great 40-minute message from Bob on Hosea so I could see why he was concerned
00:00:56.100 | about this.
00:00:57.100 | I wrote him, I said, "Oh Bob, this suggestion rolls around every 20 years or so.
00:01:03.440 | Oh poor sermon on life support.
00:01:06.240 | The sermon's days are numbered.
00:01:08.280 | Let's all get participatory."
00:01:10.600 | I get weary frankly of these kinds of suggestions for sermons.
00:01:16.200 | But here's the main problem.
00:01:17.720 | The author of that article I think is committing a category confusion.
00:01:24.760 | He was comparing the sermon to the lecture method of teaching in a college class compared
00:01:30.200 | to what happens in a more Socratic or participatory method.
00:01:34.720 | And I agree with that.
00:01:35.840 | I think that's exactly right.
00:01:37.200 | When I teach in college or in seminary, I don't want to mainly lecture.
00:01:41.560 | I want to teach by forcing students to ask questions, to think for themselves.
00:01:47.320 | But here's the catch.
00:01:49.320 | The sermon in the context of worship is not a lecture.
00:01:55.240 | Worship is not a classroom.
00:01:57.640 | The category for thinking about it is not pedagogical.
00:02:03.120 | It's not educative.
00:02:05.520 | Those are secondary.
00:02:07.600 | Pedagogy and education are secondary in the worship service.
00:02:12.600 | The category is supernatural encounter with the living God as the preacher worships over
00:02:20.560 | the Word and draws the people into an experience of God Almighty through His proclamation.
00:02:27.640 | That's the category.
00:02:29.040 | And if you try to just replace that category with a lecture category, then her argument
00:02:34.360 | is going to make sense.
00:02:35.360 | All we're trying to do here is improve people's understanding of some theological truths.
00:02:39.320 | Well, that's just not the main point of preaching.
00:02:43.720 | So the aim of preaching is not first education but encounter.
00:02:50.280 | Second Timothy 4.2 says to Timothy, "Preach the Word."
00:02:56.400 | And the context is one of worship there.
00:02:59.960 | It's one of the people of God, not just proclamation to the world, but the people of God.
00:03:04.760 | "Keruxon ton logon," and a kerux is not a teacher.
00:03:11.440 | A kerux is a herald, a town crier.
00:03:15.760 | So sermons are, "Hear ye, hear ye, hear ye, the King of the universe has a message.
00:03:25.280 | Everyone who bows the knee to Him will be forgiven all their sins and there will be
00:03:33.160 | a treaty and they will be free to be a part of the King's kingdom evermore."
00:03:40.800 | You announce.
00:03:41.800 | You don't first explain.
00:03:43.760 | Now, if a little child comes up to you and says, "I don't know what the word 'treaty'
00:03:49.240 | means," then you're going to explain that.
00:03:51.440 | And you might explain it in the sermon itself.
00:03:54.520 | But the explanation is secondary.
00:03:57.440 | The announcement, the heralding, the proclamation of the living God, calling His people to the
00:04:03.920 | fullest enjoyment of His kingdom is the main purpose of the sermon.
00:04:09.720 | I call it "expository exaltation."
00:04:13.320 | That's with a "u," exaltation.
00:04:15.440 | I'm exalting in God over His Word, and I'm drawing people into my exaltation over the
00:04:23.600 | truth that I'm preaching.
00:04:26.800 | And there are other times, Tony, in the church when what this author was commending is exactly
00:04:35.520 | what should happen.
00:04:36.520 | There should be lots and lots of discussion and lots of provocative back and forth and
00:04:43.640 | lots of testing and proving and wrestling and struggling.
00:04:46.880 | That's what classes are for and seminars are for and conferences are for and small groups
00:04:51.520 | are for.
00:04:52.520 | And it's just sad that anyone would suggest that this one hour or hour and a half a week
00:05:01.840 | in which we as a collective people gather to stand before the living God and lift our
00:05:08.120 | voices in praise to Him, confess our sins, and hear Him powerfully address us through
00:05:13.400 | the voice of an anointed person, that that would be replaced somehow by all the other
00:05:18.800 | good things that are happening in the church.
00:05:20.960 | So my response is, let preaching be preaching.
00:05:24.040 | Let it be expository exaltation, a profound meeting with the living God.
00:05:31.840 | Very good.
00:05:32.840 | And so does this mean that there's something missing when we listen to a 40-minute sermon
00:05:35.800 | through earbuds, through an iPhone, and we're not with the gathered local church?
00:05:41.760 | It is, but I would say this.
00:05:44.760 | The nature of that expository exaltation does not cease to be that when it's listened to
00:05:54.020 | on the internet.
00:05:55.560 | It still is that, and a person can be drawn into that kind of heralding.
00:06:02.680 | Yes, you can't reproduce the actual collection of the people of God gathered in that moment
00:06:11.760 | of worship there, but that doesn't mean that the only kind of communication that should
00:06:20.300 | happen through the internet is a more teaching or pedagogically back-and-forth kind of effort,
00:06:29.440 | because expository exaltation really is a man in a worship setting exalting, worshiping
00:06:37.420 | over a text, and that kind of encounter with the living God can come through that medium.
00:06:42.320 | Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for listening to this podcast.
00:06:45.520 | If you have questions, please email those to us at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org.
00:06:51.080 | At desiringgod.org, you'll find thousands of other free resources from John Piper.
00:06:54.480 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:06:55.480 | Thanks for listening.
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