Pacific Highlander

Dealing with dull sermons

I worked with 25 teenagers and adults yesterday to look at ways of responding ‘when church sucks’. There’s a danger in raising this topic that our already existing tendency towards consumerism will be confirmed. However the organisers of the Summer Madness Uniting Church weekend believed that equipping young people for taking part in the Christian community needs to include dealing with disappointment, frustration and boredom. Not dealing with it has clearly led to many young people walking as soon as loyalty, family and peer pressure has worn off.

We began with an excerpt from Mr Bean goes to church. It’s the skit in which Rowan Atkinson’s character walks into church to find that the sermon is totally unintelligible. While the preacher drones on, in another language it seems, Mr Bean must deal with a runny nose and no handkerchief, drowsiness and the desire to eat a sweet without attracting attention to himself. Add to that the difficulty of navigating the hymns.

Young people in the workshop certainly related to the tiredness factor. Sunday morning is not the easiest time to stay awake for many. It’s hard to be spiritually focused when the body is not functioning well!

We drew inspiration from 101 Things to do during a Dull Sermon, by Tim Simms and Dan Pagoda (illustrator). These guys came up with a list of ideas for higher learning, diversions, games, musings and meditations, fine arts, church-er-cise, facts and figures. My favourite is church cricket. This is not listening to the cricket on the radio or using a mobile phone to check scores, great ideas that they are. It’s a competition to gain the most runs based on the gestures of the preacher and worship leader. You can earn points for a wide, four, six, bye. Leg byes are not common in church. A finger in the air indicates you’re out and it’s the next person’s turn to bat. To check out the signals see the BBC Sport Academy Guide.

Ideas from the workshop included:

1. Organise the toddlers at the back to make the service interesting…
2. Rearrange the Bibles and hymn books - by alphabet, colour…
3. Do a word search (count) in the Bible for key words
4. Pass the parcel combined with key words from the preacher
5. Phone the preacher’s mobile phone to check that it’s turned off
6. Share bluetooth photographs
7. Develop a cheer leader routine
8. Gameboy, PSP hand held games

On a more serious note, we looked at ways the preaching slot can be redeemed for young people (and a lot of adults).

1. Divide long sermons into smaller sections, using video, cartoons, discussion, interviews etc
2. Show some enthusiasm, at least once during the sermon!
3. Risk telling a joke
4. Try multiple formats - so that if people aren’t connecting with the preacher at least there’s something else to look at. Imagery (not just key points) helps with this. Photographs, art, movies…
5. Communicate with alternative forms - using drama for example
6. Mix up the preaching roster - give others a go, even for shorter slots.

So what makes preaching dull?

Preachers are sometimes in the same boat as the people in the pews - they’ve not had enough sleep. Particularly if they stayed up into the wee hours writing the sermon. I’ve heard of ministers who have fallen asleep during their own sermons! Low blood sugar level can lead to drowsiness. THe appeal from these young people was for preachers to be at their best. If need be, have an energy drink or coffee before - though that can lead to post service depression and exhaustion.

Lack of preparation, be that intellectual, emotional or spiritual, can lead to lack of clarity. I remember a minister who misplaced his notes halfway through his sermon. He confessed to the congregation that he couldn’t remember what he was going to say next. A clever member of the congregation replied, “If you can’t remember what you were going to say, how do you expect us to remember what you said?”

Relevance is a subjective thing. Young people in my workshop talked about the test of relevance being linked to why we have sermons in the first place - keeping us on track with faith in action. Will we be inspired and equipped to live out our beliefs? Most people make a call on that in the first few minutes. If there’s little hope of relevance it’s back to 101 Things to Do During A Dull Sermon.

For Comments

How have you dealt with dull sermons, as a listener or preacher?

Tags: preaching, Uniting Church, Youth Ministry

Posted in Uniting Church, Youth Ministry | 2 Comments »

When Church Sucks

I’m leading a workshop with the title, “When Church Sucks”, on Sunday with a group of young people from Uniting Church backgrounds. Church is not easy for many adults. It’s even harder for most teenagers.

Here’s a list of reasons why church sucks for different people

1. The sermons are boring.
2. The sermons are too long (usually a problem if they’re boring)
3. The people are cliquey
4. The people are unfriendly
5. The people criticize or judge me for my style in clothing and hairstyle
6. The music is bad (too old, poorly performed, poorly sung, too loud, not loud enough)
7. I don’t know the music
8. Too much revolves around singing
9. Not much evidence of faith in God
10. People are fanatical to the point of being anti intellectual
11. No sense of vision beyond running Sunday services
12. Direction of church is dominated by one person
13. Everything revolves around the pastor
14. Lack of imagination - nothing much changes
15. Lack of flexibility
16. Little sense of practical connection with real needs
17. Not connected to important issues in the world
18. Focused on narrow set of moral issues
19. Inward focused - no sense of connecting with outsiders
20. Lack of decent food and drink

In some ways these are the corollaries of a list put out by the National Church Life Survey people in Sydney - indicators of healthy congregational life.

1. Alive and growing faith
2. Vital and nurturing worship
3. Strong and growing belonging
4. Clear and owned vision
5. Inspiring and empowering leadership
6. Imaginative and flexible innovation
7. Practical and diverse service
8. Willing and effective faith sharing
9. Intentional and welcoming inclusion

The focus of the workshop will be on what young people can do about their list of complaints, ranging from 101 things to do during a dull sermon, to developing new environments in which people are welcome, to getting out more. The reality is that we can invest so many expectations in a 60 - 120 minute gathering that will always be hard to meet. Engaging in world poverty, building strong friendships, developing a sense of shared vision, are all 7 days a week activities that happen outside church buildings.

So what would you add to the list? What advice would you give a young person grappling with anything from dull to abusive church environments?

Posted in Spirituality, Uniting Church | No Comments »

Christmas Articles

I’ve just published a couple of articles in Journey, the monthly magazine published by the Uniting Church in Australia, Queensland.

Jingle All The Way focuses on the role of advertising around Christmas - how do churches respond? I look at ways in which companies have used the Christmas story - what some would call the secularization of Christmas. And then I look at how Christian organisations have used the festive season to develop a connection of good will with the wider community. My concern is that Christians can become possessive of the Christmas celebration rather than seeing an opportunity to build relationships of trust.

Cheryl Lawrie, of [Hold] This Space, has an excellent article in The Age, Melbourne’s newspaper, titled “Away with the Manger“, suggesting that churches not try and compete for popularity over Christmas.

My second article for the month told the story of our first Christmas after the death of our daughter Kristen, in 1992. Lloma and Ken Harnett, fellow grievers in Tokoroa, pulled together a team to host a Christmas Day lunch. I’ll post the article here shortly.

Tags: Christmas

Posted in Advertising, Australia, Uniting Church | No Comments »