(in no particular order)
1. we’re accustomed to the 30 minute sitcom that contains 7 and a half minutes of advertisements. Sitting for an extended time and engaging with a humourless monologue is hard work (against this, uni students sit through hour long lectures every day and everyone enjoys 2 hours at the cinema).
2. We have talked up the singing time in Church to the point that we have relegated preaching to a secondary and uninspiring place.
3. We’ve accepted the lie that theology is unimportant
4. We are a culture of doers not thinkers.
5. We have sat under years of boring and irrelevant preaching
6. We have hard-hearts, not wanting to hear what God has to say
1. We do like good public speakers - relevant, prepared, have some sort of point to their talk.
ReplyDelete2. We don't really like the singing either (but at least we can feel part of that)
3. It must be the peoples fault (You're bad, God's good, try harder)
4. What was the GOOD news, I wonder?
Great insights, and I like 4,5, and 6 particularly. We are a culture of does, not thinkers, mainly pragmatists.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, there's a lot of boring preaching going on, even from people who should know better. I have faced the situation, too often, that a senior preacher than me (senior in years) calls me aside and tells me how it should be done. But his sermons are death boring. I don't see any feeling about preaching the subject chosen, or passion.
And by years of only preaching to the intellect, our hearts go hard, and it's very difficult to turn this around for people like me.