Preaching Across the Pulpit/Pew Divide: Possibilities for Preaching in the Next 500 Years by Dr. Casey Thornburgh Sigmon

We have systemic problems, which is to say the problems

facing the church and all of humanity are a series of

interconnected, interanimating, and interdependent problems.[i]

 

Five hundred years ago, a movement ignited in the church that would forever alter the landscape of Christianity.

One of the rallying cries in the movement was “the priesthood of all believers,” a radical hierarchical shift from how the church was structured in 1517:

• Pope at the top as Christ’s specially selected emissary.
• Priests throughout the Catholic Empire serving as emissaries of the Pope.
• Lay people connected to God through a series of mediators, but had no direct line to God.

Imagine, then, the radicalism of “the priesthood of all believers” as it beckoned the church to consider the notion that there is no spiritual divide between Christians who have been baptized. In the sight of God, said the movement, all are considered priests with connection to God.

Martin Luther is credited for the phrase, “priesthood of all believers,” though we do not have any one piece of writing to cite as the originating source of this phrase. Luther’s idea of the universal priesthood emerged from his reading of 1 Peter 2:9, “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (NRSV).

Of course, things got complicated when it came to the notion that proclamation was a task for “y’all” rather than for a “you” of one. Luther had 95 problems, but the pulpit wasn’t one.

Although Luther offered this challenge to the church, neither Luther, nor the rest of us, fully lived into this vision for bridging the divide between clergy and laity. Luther himself restructured the church in such a way that the Word of God would become the center of power, meaning in practice that the one ordained to preach that word would ultimately be the emissary of the living word. Every worship space would have one ornate pulpit, and settled beneath it, rows upon rows of pews. But only the priest preached—meaning that the one who benefitted the most from daily wrestling with the scriptures and the public theologizing from that wrestling was still the priest/pastor.

Luther’s discomfort with a preaching-hood of all believers is revealed especially in his disputes with the Radical Reformation and its Anabaptist leaders. Here is Luther on the anarchy of Anabaptist preaching:

First one layman would stand up and disagree with the preacher, then another would shout down the first. Soon all the men would be shouting among themselves, and even the women would demand a say and tell the man to be silent. The services would sound more like the annual fair than a church.[ii]

Luther complained that in the communal preaching of the Anabaptists, no evidence of the “simple believer delivering the sermon itself” was to be found.[iii] According to the Church Order of 1527 or 1529, “only one speaker should be heard at a time” so that “the audience” would “pay careful attention.”[iv]

Were people really talking over each other and ignoring the common rules of conversation, or was Luther uncomfortable with the notion that the priesthood of all believers meant all could participate in the preaching office?

Luther tried in vain to bring the Anabaptists back into the state churches. When he inquired as to why they would not worship with the Reformed Church, the Anabaptist reply was that if there is not space for “interactive response” or “mutual admonition” in and around preaching, and, according to the Anabaptists, the church was not Christian order as taught by Paul in 1 Corinthians 14:26b-33a.[v]

When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. Let all things be done for building up. If anyone speaks in a tongue, let there be only two or at most three, and each in turn; and let one interpret. But if there is no one to interpret, let them be silent in church and speak to themselves and to God. Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others weigh what is said.  If a revelation is made to someone else sitting nearby, let the first person be silent. For you can all prophesy one by one, so that all may learn and all be encouraged.  And the spirits of prophets are subject to the prophets, for God is a God not of disorder but of peace.

The Anabaptist thread of communal preaching practice is woven through the last 500 years of preaching history, a prophetic whisper of the Reformation’s rallying cry. In practice, however, the dominant form of preaching is the form of a pulpit for one speaking to rows of pews.

Preaching as a practice has thus contributed to the spiritual divide between clergy and laypeople. The architecture of our worship spaces reinforces this divide, be it in a neo-gothic Episcopal church with its pulpit or a non-denominational megachurch with its music stand on center stage. As Christianity in the United States cross-pollinated with the cult of personality, the rising star system of Hollywood, and consumerism, preacher celebrities found fertile ground to grow large audiences—both in the mega-sanctuary and through evolving broadcast mediums that brought the preacher into the homes and on the big screens of Christians everywhere.

And so, the divide between preacher and people grew. And in many ways, the divide was amplified by the new media of each age (radio and then television). On a related note, I perceive one of the greatest divides in the United States to be between an older generation accustomed to and satisfied by mass media (ecclesiologically reflected in traditional churches, as well as megachurch and satellite church ecclesiologies) and a younger generation suspicious of mass media, seeking instead greater collaboration, conversation, and participation.

Indeed, it seems the new media of this age (Twitter, smart phones, Facebook Live, etc.) are luring the church into novel ways of breaking down the divide between professional Christians and lay Christians. Digital spaces have nurtured preaching that reflects Luther’s priesthood of all believers.

I have had many opportunities to participate in @TheSlateProject’s weekly TweetChat known as #SlateSpeak.  Every Thursday, for one hour starting at 9pm EST, communal preaching in the style of lament, confession, conversation, questioning, and imagination takes place among a network of lay and ordained pastors seeking renewal for the church and accountability in their walks with God.

The way the TweetChat operates is a bounded time and space for a guided conversation around a particular theme, question, event, or text. Each week, a different moderator selects the centering-subject. They will introduce themselves leading up to the start time and share ahead of time what the topic may be. As participants enter the chat on Thursday evening they will often offer short introductions, especially those who are new to the gathering. Then the moderator will offer an introductory prayer tweet to open the preaching event.

The moderator likely has a series of 5-6 guiding questions in mind before the start of the chat, likely each one building on anticipated comments from the previous question. They will throw out the first question and wait as participants begin to respond. Strong moderators model dialogue by commenting on the comments of others, tagging participants in comments and connecting threads to one another. Once the first question seems to have reached an end of energy, another question is introduced and so on until the hour is through. At that point the moderator may summarize, call for prayer requests, and then close out the event with a benediction. Some may stay and continue the TweetChat but most leave and return the following week.

TweetChats only scratch the surface of novel ways of communal preaching made possible with social media. But is The Slate Project a church? It studies the Bible together, breaks bread, and share life together through regular gatherings. It does not fit into the concrete definition of church gatherings that rely upon the pulpit and pew binary, yet it exists and has s strong core of regular participants who thank God weekly for the space created by this ministry for those who feel on the margins of church.

There are glimpses of this change in non-digital spaces as well. And they are found in non-traditional spaces where imaginations can run wild. Dinner churches gathered around round tables, pub churches gathered far from the pew. The spatial organization, without clear boundaries between the preacher and the people, reflects the preaching style—truly conversational, organic, subject-centered rather than preacher centered, exploratory rather than deductive.

Certainly, this sort of communal paradigm for preaching is, well, scary. Why? What if no one speaks up? Or what if too many want to talk? Will we be done in an hour? What if someone sputters off utter nonsense or bad theology? Who will police the preaching?

Of course, far too many of us know that even preachers preach audacious theology from time to time. And depending on the polity of the congregation, there will be policing or there will be a grin and bear it response. Such fearful questions also reveal underlying beliefs that lay Christians do not have the discernment, wisdom, and experience of the preacher. But do pastors really believe that? If so, what does that say about our skills as educators and equippers of the Body of Christ?

There are rewards for this sort of shift. For one, it nourishes communities of proclamation in which everyone takes responsibility for theologizing, or talking about God. It is proven in communications studies that we learn best by being able to respond immediately to information that is offered, rather than sitting and passively receiving it. Knowledge of God and world is shared and spread throughout the community. Congregations increase participation. Everyday Christians find their voice.

And there are rewards for pastors who witness this communal event. They hear the hearts of their congregations. They hear the hopes and fears rather than sitting in offices and imagining what those may be. The leader is thus given guidance on how best to lead the congregation and where to go. The divide between preacher and people crumbles, as lines of communication are open both ways now. And the possibilities for proclamation, spoken and embodied, are endless.

 

[i] Dwight J. Friesen, Thy Kingdom Connected: What the Church Can Learn from Facebook, the Internet, and Other Networks (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2009), 22.

[ii] D. Jonathan Grieser, Mennonite Quarterly Review 71 (October 1997): 535.

[iii] Leo Hartshorn, Interpretation and Preaching As Communal and Dialogical Practices: An Anabaptist Perspective (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2006), 37.

[iv] Ibid.

[v] Ibid.

 

The Rev. Dr. Casey Thornburgh Sigmon graduated from Vanderbilt University with a PhD in Homiletics and Liturgics in May 2017. Her dissertation, Engaging the Gadfly: A Process Homilecclesiology for a Digital Age, explores the practice of preaching beyond the pulpit and the pew, even beyond the Sunday morning service.