Preaching the Bible in the Congregation

PREACHING THE BIBLE IN THE CHURCH

Erland Waltner^§

→315^# Biblical scholarship and biblical preaching are not two things, but one. The biblical scholar is a preacher or he is no true scholar – he has not understood his own subject.

My purpose in this paper is to call attention to a particular setting in the congregation and an identifiable form of communication which we call “preaching” and to reflect on how this is related to hermeneutical issues. I perceive this relationship in at least two ways, namely (1) that hermeneutical issues must become the concern of responsibly informed preachers who serve in Mennonite pulpits or their equivalent, and (2) that preaching experience, broadly understood, may itself make a significant contribution to the larger hermeneutical process.

When I speak of preaching, I have in mind biblical preaching. A definition developed through several years of “teaching” preaching, which reflects my commitment to biblically grounded proclamation, is as follows:

Biblical preaching is the proclamation of the Living Word (Jesus Christ), as known according to the Written Word (the Bible), communicated by means of the Spoken Word (the Sermon), in the context of the community of the Word (the Church), as a dimension of its ministry in the world (the Mission).

Biblical preaching finds its source and shape in a careful study of the Bible. It is Christocentric because Jesus Christ is also the Lord of the Bible. It is deeply relevant to real human need, speaking to the lostness and the longings, the hopes and the fears, the questions and the meanings of human life. It is both prophetic and redemptive in its purpose, proclaiming Jesus Christ as the One through whom man’s personal and corporate salvation is found. It calls for a response, a verdict, a commitment, an act of obedience.

When I speak of preaching, I do not distinguish this sharply from teaching in the congregation. →316 While recognizing a basic validity of C. H. Dodd’s distinction between kerygma and didache in the patterns of communication used in the early church, my further study of the New Testament and my experiences with both preaching and teaching in congregational settings have moved me to agree more with Robert C. Worley in Preaching and Teaching in the Earliest Church (1967). He challenges some implications of Dodd’s analysis and pleads that in application to the life and ministry of congregations, it is not appropriate that sharp distinctions between preaching and teaching be maintained, either conceptually or functionally. Much of what I say then could be read as teaching-preaching, although my focus here is deliberately on “pulpit ministry” or its equivalent.

I. THE POSSIBILITIES OF PREACHING

1. Preaching is still valued by most congregations. In spite of the criticisms of preaching and of preachers, congregations continue to give good preaching a high rating in their desires and expectations of those who would minister among them. This word comes from those who work administratively with the “placement” of ministers, from congregational “pastoral search committees ,” and from impressionistic surveys. One such survey which some seminary colleagues and I made recently as part of an AMBS study on “Preaching in AMBS Theology and Curriculum” yielded as a first observation that: The clearest affirmation made by the responses (181 out of a total of 249) is that preaching is viewed as essential to congregational life and that it should happen every week.

Fifty seven considered it a “traditional option of continuing value;” twelve considered it “occasionally helpful but diminishing in value,” while only four out of the total considered it “antiquated, un-Anabaptist, or irrelevant.” Whatever our own personal judgments on the matter may be, most of those with whom we at AMBS work consider preaching important.

2. Preaching as opportunity for community building. Pulpit ministry, whether preaching or teaching or exhortation, continues to provide a setting in which it is possible for a whole larger →317 congregation of persons to assemble to “hear the Word” as articulated by one or more “preachers.” This larger congregation is generally inter-generational, including the children and possibly the grandparents. It thus serves as a common setting and provides a common listening experience for younger and older persons and so should serve, ideally at least, to unite rather than divide the family. It becomes an occasion when the Word, though spoken in human words, may address persons in the totality of their being, cognitively, affectively, and volitionally.

It is a situation in which church can really be church, crossing the human boundaries commonly set by age, sex, race, occupation, education, economic status, disposition, etc. It is a moment of opportunity scarcely duplicated anywhere else in our society.

3. Preaching as continuing tradition. Beginning with the prophets of the Old Testament, used by Jesus during his ministry, and much in evidence in the apostles, prophets, and teachers of the early church, and--with various levels of faithfulness—in Christian history, including the Anabaptist-Mennonite experience, preaching, moreover, has a strong continuing tradition. Menno Simons said,

The Gospel, the Word of God, preached without admixture in the power of the Spirit is the only right and proper Seed from which truly believing and obedient children of God are born.

Walter Klaassen in an article on “The Preacher and Preaching” in Anabaptism notes, “There is no doubt whatever that the Anabaptists believed preaching to be one of the priorities of those who were called by God through the church.” He quotes Pilgram Marpeck (1542),

It is undeniable and irrefutable that this is the first, through which the church came into being and still does, namely the proclamation of the Holy Gospel of Christ.

4. Preaching in the Listening Community of the Word. If the Believers’ Church is indeed to be the “Community of the Word,” and if it is to experience renewal in the best sense, then as Wilbert R. Shenk observes in his foreword to John Driver’s, Community and Commitment,

To discern God’s will for His people will require more than listening to the world’s →318 drumbeat. God’s call to His people today will be heard clearly only by a reverent and intense listening to His Word under the illumination of the Spirit.

Both the setting in which preaching usually takes place and the process which preaching at its best represents offer at least the possibility for such “reverent and intense listening.”

Without making the pulpit an idol and without pleading any kind of near infallibility for those who speak there, we would do well also in our seminary communities to give preaching continued consideration as one of the ministries through which God can work to renew people. But if what happens in Mennonite preaching is not inspired and informed by faithfulness to the Bible and is thus a proclamation of distortion rather than of faithfulness, we who criticize such preachers and such congregations from our college or seminary campuses cannot be lighthearted about the matter. The hermeneutical insights which come to us need to be shared in appropriate ways with the congregations and this will scarcely happen without our giving serious attention to preaching ministry. We may ourselves be called upon to serve in these same pulpits and we are indeed expected to help prepare persons in our schools for hermeneutically responsible preaching ministries.

II. POSSIBLE CONTRIBUTIONS OF PREACHING EXPERIENCE TO HERMENEUTICS

Whatever we may be able to contribute as theological teachers to bring new faithfulness to Mennonite preaching, we ought not overlook the contributions which the preaching experience itself can make to the shape and substance of the hermeneutical enterprise. I propose several ways in which such contributions can come.

1. The thrust of evangelism. C. K. Barrett has already reminded us that a biblical scholar will already know that the Bible needs to be “preached.” This was essentially also the posture of Karl Barth, Dietrich Ritschl, Helmut Thielicke, and Donald G. Miller and others who have written vigorously on the nature and urgency of biblical preaching.

The old question asked of the findings of biblical studies, “Will it preach?” is not altogether irrelevant. When students in the classroom keep saying (as some do), “We would never be able to say →319 these things in the churches,” they may be telling us as college and seminary professors something important. If Jesus Christ is Lord of the Bible and also Lord of the Church, then the essential truth of Jesus Christ must remain “preachable” in the most profound sense. The experience of preaching, as the sharing of the truth of Jesus Christ with other persons, is a strategic reminder of the priorities of the church’s mission in the world. The experience of preaching can be a safeguard against esoteric hermeneutics, against elitism in biblical studies, and against confusing means for ends in biblical scholarship. The biblical scholar absorbed in hermeneutics needs to keep asking, “What is the Good News (the Gospel) in the findings of this research?” Otherwise we may continue to be puzzled with James Smart over The Strange Silence of the Bible in the Church.

2. The thrust toward dialogue. Faithful preaching experience is also a movement toward responsible participation in the congregation as hermeneutic community. Reuel Howe has helped us to perceive “pastors and people” as being Partners in Preaching. The underlying premise of this, however, is that those who speak from pulpits and those who listen are engaged in authentic Christian dialogue. They are persons who not only can “say” something. They have learned to listen. This too was the awareness of Jesus when he said repeatedly, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” This too is the concern in the Word to the seven churches of Asia Minor, “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”

An important key then for hermeneutics, biblically, is to learn to listen. Such biblical listening can happen especially in the preaching experience, particularly when the “preacher” learns how to listen “reverently and intensely” to the agonizing questions and cries of his people. It can happen when the people who listened “reverently and intensely” to the sermon have opportunity to enter into dialogue with one another to ferret out the particular meanings and applications for their own life of obedience, witness, and service.

Clearly this means that a monological way of perceiving preaching is no longer tenable. It assumes that dialogical understandings and appropriate mechanisms for true dialogue prevail. →320

3. The thrust toward clarity. One of the basic criteria for effective preaching structure and style is clarity. When preaching ministry is undertaken with full seriousness, every utterance is tested by the question, “Is it clear?” or “Does it communicate what is intended?” The goal is a lofty one and not often achieved fully.

The achievement of clarity calls not only for precision in our study of the biblical texts and their meanings in their own time among God’s people then; it calls also for an examination of communication styles, vocabulary, modes of expression, and particularly for “feedback” as to what the people are hearing and perceiving, how they are made to feel and act or react, and whether purposes which are either implicit or explicit in the preacher are being actualized in the impact on and the response of the hearers. Such a concern about clarity, essential in a valid and on-going preaching experience, has implications for hermeneutics, especially for its vocabulary. A comment of the late C. S. Lewis to Norman Pittenger is apropo, “Any fool can write ‘learned’ language. The vernacular is the real test. If you can’t turn your faith into it, then either you can’t understand it or you don’t believe it.”

4. The thrust toward contextualization. Even as the biblical scholar needs to keep on reminding the preacher that in the use of Scripture s/he must give attention to literary, historical, and cultural contexts, so the preacher may remind the biblical scholar that Christian truth needs to find expression in terms that are appropriate and intelligible in the contemporary context of the congregation.

The hermeneutical community is not yet functioning holistically if it does not look seriously at its own situation in the world and seek to understand it in the light of Jesus Christ as Lord of the Bible. It follows from the very nature of the biblical message, coming as it does in particular contexts, that the context for contemporary application must be scrutinized and understood with a seriousness which is comparable to that with which we pursue the nuances of meanings of Hebrew verb forms or Greek tenses in a particular historical setting. Preaching experience can help the hermeneutic community remain “in the world” even as it proclaims that we are “not of the world.”

5. The thrust toward authenticity. For some preachers the pulpit is a place to hide. This, of →321 course, turns out to be an illusion, for few preachers succeed in hiding there very long. The pulpit is an exposed place. It reminds us eloquently of our humanity, our vulnerability, and our peccability. Once we begin to take preaching seriously, we have to take ourselves seriously. Preaching the Word, as Suzanne de Dietrich put it, is like “wielding a two-edged sword without handle, which cuts the hand of him who wields it.” So it turns out that the preacher as “sword-handler” stands there bleeding, and once the people know that s/he too is bleeding with them, the Spirit has an opening to save, reconcile, and heal. Preaching as a venture in exposure, even more than a classroom lecture, thrusts the interpreter in the direction of authenticity. This is highly significant for the hermeneutical process.

III. SOME MAJOR PROBLEMS FOR HERMENEUTICS IN PREACHING

Having begun with an affirmation that preaching in the congregation needs to be informed and shaped by a responsible hermeneutical process in the context of a “Community of the Word,” I would identify now a few of the major problems of preaching which need address. George E. Sweazey in Preaching the Good News (1976) lists some of the common ways in which preachers misuse their Bibles: (1) proof-texting out of context, (2) pre-texting (using a text to provide a phrase which then is used to talk about matters not even mentioned in the passage), (3) text stretching (sometimes called eisegesis), (4) text twisting (using the text to say something different than it intended to say), (5) text desertion (the text gets “the sermon into orbit and is then jettisoned,” as well as (6) failing to note that within Scripture certain sayings are rejected (such as those of the friends of Job), (7) allegorizing (as in the way some parables have been interpreted), (8) embellishment (by attempting to fill in too many details in the biblical record which the Spirit-led writer wisely left out). The list, obviously, could be extended. The sins of preachers are many indeed.

1. The Problem of Archaizing. In a somewhat broader framework, I would identify as a first major problem the danger of archaizing the biblical message by becoming unduly preoccupied in preparation and in preaching with the “then and there” elements in biblical interpretation at the expense of giving →322 adequate attention to the contemporary meaning and application. This, as James Smart laments is a pitfall of historical-critical studies which, with all their skill in analyzing the make-up and background of a biblical text, are not yet able to identify contemporary relevance. Unless balanced with other approaches and concerns, this turns biblical study eventually into antiquarianism and biblical preaching into a kind of museum lecture. Eventually this leads to silence in the pulpit and emptiness in the pew.

2. The Problem of Modernizing. Another major danger is the consequent “modernizing” of the biblical message in such a way that the historical biblical roots are ignored or lost. For those who follow this approach, whether in the classroom or in the pulpit, the Bible eventually becomes unimportant. “Biblical Seminaries” turn into “Divinity Schools.” The pulpit becomes a platform for the best in current religious thought, an opportunity for the preacher to vent his/her most recent inspiration, or an occasion to celebrate whatever is “interesting, exciting” or “creative and innovative.” The fact that these adjectives are so prevalent in our current vocabulary in describing what is happening in our congregations may in itself serve as a signal that we may no longer be as serious about discerning a biblical Word for our lives when we gather for worship as were our forefathers who were unashamed “biblicists.” For them the Bible was really present while for some modern congregations it seems to be optional. This direction, too then, can be a distortion of the hermeneutics of the pulpit in our congregations through which the biblical Word, though not completely silenced, virtually ceases to be proclaimed or heard as such.

3. The Problem of Dichotomizing. A third major problem I would identify is closely related to the preceding, namely the dichotomizing of biblical theology and Christian ethics. While we have been warned about this as a danger and as a distortion of faithful biblical hermeneutics, it appears to be an ever-present temptation. In a recent series of studies on Ephesians, I made a special presentation on how Ephesians 2 speaks in vs. 1-10 of “The New Person in Christ” and in vs. 11-22 of “The New Community in Christ.” I noted that this may represent two polarities of concern in our congregations. I spoke of how we tend to choose up →323 sides in the matter, deciding which part of Ephesians we want to emphasize. On the one hand we may champion a strong doctrine of sin, a great doctrine of grace, and a proclamation that we are saved by grace through faith, usually applying this to ourselves as individual persons. On the other hand we may champion the tragedy of human estrangement, the need for reconciliation, and the glory and joy of the new community in Christ who is our peace. The result is a dichotomy in our thinking and a polarization in our congregations.

My appeal is to read biblical materials in their wholeness, to see how kerygma and didache are inextricably intertwined, how the gospel applies to the person and also to the community. Strange as it may seem to us, an amazing number of persons said they had never seen Bible reading and Bible study in that way before. It is possible that they had been told this many times, but had not really grasped the concept of the wholeness of the biblical materials.

IV. SOME POSSIBLE CONSTRUCTIVE STEPS

Having identified some of the practical problems for hermeneutics in helping to renew and reshape pulpit ministries, I conclude with a few suggestions which I trust may bring to mind still others.

1. Collegial Concern about Preaching. The basic constructive impact on the pulpit ministries in Mennonite congregations should be coming from our teaching of biblical/theological/ and ethical studies in our college and seminary classrooms. Normally there should be a discernible relationship between what is taught in these classes and what is preached from the pulpits, an assumption which I as a “teacher of preaching” no longer take for granted. I am grateful for colleagues in theological faculties who indicate to me that they encourage their students to develop special study projects in which biblical materials are prepared for teaching and preaching ministries in the congregations. In this area even closer partnership among those of us who have hermeneutical concerns needs to be developed. In this way the “teaching of preaching” becomes the concern of an entire faculty and not only the specialty of a person or a small group of persons.

2. Developing a Dialogical Approach. To develop this kind of preaching, it is time to abandon the monological concept and move into a dialogical →324 concept of the relation between the “pulpit and the pew.” Some of us are working on this vigorously by changing our methodology in the teaching of preaching to a program in which we supervise students in their ministry of preaching rather than having them hear lectures on preaching, read books about preaching, or make sermon outlines on biblical passages. These students preach to congregations but as part of the process, they must carry on dialogue about their preaching before they deliver their “sermon,” and afterward must learn to listen to representative members of the congregation give honest and concerned “feedback” to help the student recognize what has been heard. This is only the beginning of dialogue but it can be an important step.

In the process of what happens even during a short semester, it is striking to observe the growth of awareness about what goes on in the preaching process, how “seminary concepts and vocabulary” are not always understood correctly in the congregations, and how the preacher has to begin to listen to the “sermon-listeners” as well as to the seminary professors and the learned commentaries.

3. Longer-Range Planning of Preaching. It could also be helpful to give more attention to the longer-range planning of preaching, giving attention to continuity, appropriate sequence, and an over-all movement toward considered and articulated goals. Some who emphasize the immediacy of the Holy Spirit’s guidance may resist this emphasis on planning, but why do we limit the guiding ministry of the Holy Spirit to the immediate situation?

One common form of “planned preaching” which I still find challenging and appreciated is to use Bible “books” as the basis for a series of messages, a method long appreciated, once very common, but now apparently appreciated even more because it is not so often used.

4. Holistic Congregational Curriculum. A fourth suggestion comes from Gerald Studer, a pastor and writer, who in a recent vigorous dialogue on the renewal of preaching shared how useful he found the pattern of relating his preaching directly to the Christian Education curriculum used in his congregation. Rather than finding himself “in competition” with his church school leaders, he entered into a “team relationship” with them and coordinated his own preaching plans with the purpose and objectives of the church’s educational program. →325 This proved to be a giant step forward in the unification of congregational goals and ministries and deserves serious attention elsewhere.

5. Institutional Teachers in the Congregations. A fifth suggestion which has come repeatedly is that college and seminary teachers, in whatever discipline they serve, should frequently also be involved in preaching and other congregational ministries. This likely happens in most of our schools. However, the proposal persists that more of us should spend “sabbatical study time” in congregational settings. We are told that congregations would be willing to let us concentrate on our on-going studies but they would like to hear us on Sundays and otherwise in their pulpits sharing with them and their pastors how we are reading the Scriptures and what they are saying to us about God’s will for our time. Is it possible that a kind of “professionalism” in our roles as college and seminary teachers keeps us from heeding this call to our congregations?

6. The Work of the Holy Spirit. Finally, however, our hermeneutical concerns will find embodiment in renewed pulpit ministries only as the work of God’s Holy Spirit is recognized and becomes more operative among us and in our congregations. The concluding lines of James Smart in The Interpretation of Scripture are still appropriate. Having spoken of how finally the true interpretation of Scripture is not the product of painstaking processes and skills alone, he says,

So also today when we fail to understand Scripture, not just in the Christian congregation but also in our Christian scholarship, the difficulty may not be in our hermeneutics but in ourselves, that like our predecessors in Israel we are not unconditionally open toward a God who kills in order to make alive and who roots up what we have planted and tears down what we have built, theologically as well as practically, in order that he may clear the ground for a planting and building of his own.

This is the mystery and the challenge, at once the frustration and the glory, of both hermeneutics and the preaching ministry.

Notes

§ This essay was published in Essays in Biblical Interpretation: Anabaptist-Mennonite Perspectives, ed. Willard M. Swartley (Elkhart, IN: Institute of Mennonite Studies, 1984), pp. 315-325. Copyright © 1984 Institute of Mennonite Studies. All rights reserved. Published online by permission of Institute of Mennonite Studies.

# These numerical notations indicate the page breaks in the published book. When citing this essay, please cite the appropriate page number(s) in the published book.