Jesus? Yes please – just hold the Sermons
Young people are flocking back to church - but do they need yet another interpretation?
I love New York.
It was in New York City that I first saw a Gutenberg Bible — in the archives of the grand library on 5th Avenue.
The year was 2014.
My friends Cynthia and Evan were getting married and a few of us had flown out from L.A. to attend. Since I’m not the target demographic of Sex and The City I had no idea the NY Library was such a perfect setting to get hitched.
The NY Public Library is impressive, and walking up that marble staircase between the two lions (named Patience and Fortitude if you wanted to know) guarding the entry and featured in so many films — leads you up and into Astor Hall, a setting both intimate and holy, as a library should feel I suppose.
The day after the wedding we were all given a special tour of the library and, among the many cool architectural details and facts I’ve long forgotten, was a special book under glass, one of 48 in existence:
A Gutenberg Bible.
When Johannes Gutenberg mastered movable type on his mechanical printing press and completed the first printed Bible in the mid-15th century, only 9% of Germans could read.
Nein!
And it wasn’t even printed in German — it was in Latin.
That means that to hear the Ten Commandments or the teachings of Jesus read aloud in the 15th century, almost every person alive had no other choice but to go where there was someone who could read.
Latin.
And who could interpret this holy collection of books — into a common application.
Monasteries and churches then were not just holy structures, they were the very sources of the history of the Israelite people, and the New Testament message of Salvation via Jesus’ death, to be passed from the Priests to the commoners.
From the few to the many.
Because knowledge and inspiration in written form was simply not available to the masses.
I don’t need to tell you how much knowledge is available to the masses today.
It’s enough to desecrate the very meaning of those words.
Tim Keller
When popular Manhattan pastor Tim Keller died in 2023 I began sharing my thoughts on the declining need for sermons, but truthfully my doubts had been percolating for about 10 years.
My handful of pastor friends didn’t exactly embrace my ‘theory.’
Was I being heretical or just early?
After all, traditions and habits are hard to break. And student loans to Bible colleges are still being paid off.
Keller’s death, combined with the totally predictable post-pandemic hunger for community, brought my hunches to a head.
Lord knows after being force-fed so much fear and non-stop information during 2020-21, the last thing we all need is more information!
Especially today when much of it isn’t even true.
So how does this portend less preaching?
It seems to combat this chaos of modernity and over-stimulation we should have more preaching right Alden?
More clarification, more knowledge, more truth - not less!
Wait Alden — are you implying truth and wisdom only come verbally? Or that The Gospel message only travels through mans’ interpretation of the Bible?
Of course not.
I hope you’re not implying that either.
Because if you’ve had a child or spent time with an elderly person unable to speak you already know the answer.
Words are not the only way.
“But Jesus spoke to the people!” you say - “through four gospels we have so many examples!”
Yes but in short parables. A quick bite-sized lesson after feeding the crowd or before a nice walk along the seashore.
Like providing wine at a wedding. - John 1
Or fish at the seashore. - John 21
Or shelter in a storm. - Mark 4
Where in the Bible is a 40 minute sermon with three points of application declared as necessary?
Or even modeled?
“But we’re to preach the Gospel - it says so in Mark!”
And he said to them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation. - Mark 16:15
And in Acts —
And he commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one appointed by God to be judge of the living and the dead. - Acts 10:24
And what about the beautiful history of sermons in Britain Alden?
Sermons were highly influential in religious and spiritual matters, but they also played important roles in elections and politics, science and ideas, and campaigns for reform. Sermons touched the lives of ordinary people and formed a dominant part of their lives.
*from The Oxford Handbook of the British Sermon, 1689-1901
And what about Jonathan Edwards in America? What about some good ol’ fire and brimstone? Couldn’t we use some of that energy today?
If you think the world today needs the sermons of J.E. I say have at it.
You’ll probably attract a crowd and ok maybe a few converts but I still say it’s not what this generation needs.
Ditto the sermons from Britain’s golden age.
And as far as the Biblical imperatives on preaching let’s look at each verb —
Proclaim
Preach
Testify
Teach
Disciple
Offer a defense
And so on..
Nowhere does it say these actions must come through a sermon.
In fact it isn’t a stretch to interpret the opposite — that regarding teaching — less is more.
After all the Samaritan woman at the well didn’t get a sermon, she got a conversation. And compassion. (John 4)
Zacchaeus the grifting tax collector didn’t get a lecture or a sermon, he got a house guest (Jesus) and had his sins confronted. (Luke 19)
But these interactions are to non-believers Alden, what about speaking to believers?
Even harsher.
Much of Jesus’ interactions with the Pharisees involved them trying to trap him or question him about the law - on matters such as divorce (Matthew 19), or adultery — the famous “throw the first stone” passage. (John 8).
Possibly the most remembered example of his actual teaching of believers is in Matthew 22:
But when the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered themselves together. One of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?”
And He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.”
Does that sound like a sermon?
In fact many of Jesus’ responses were along the lines of — do you not know your own scriptures?
Believers today have no excuse to not know the scriptures.
After all we’ve only had written copies for over 500+ years.
But revival is coming! - How can we have a revival without sermons?
In 2023 a worship afternoon at Asbury college in Kentucky turned into a two-weeks long spiritual call out that many were declaring a revival and that even a secular nation took notice of.
People traveled from overseas to see the spectacle — which in the end may have been all it was. Or maybe a post-pandemic totally predictable refreshing community gathering.
Or it may have been real.
Complementing Asbury, the following year Lifeway publications reported a 22% increase in Bible sales in America. This contrasts with just a 1% rise in all book sales.
Two weeks of (largely) young people expressing a desperate need for faith and worship in their lives reminded us of four facets of Christianity that were practiced:
Worship
Prayer
Scripture reading
Community with fellow believers
No sermons.
I’m not implying there weren’t sermons - obviously there were - but people weren’t there to hear sermons. They didn’t fly from Europe to hear sermons.
They were there to be there.
To be where other believers were practicing the above activities, and hopefully to be where the Holy Spirit was present.
A Godless Britain no More
In the UK young people are returning - more so to the Catholic church than anywhere else - but to church nonetheless. The reasons aren’t too difficult to ascertain in my opinion, and you can read about it in The Week.
Gen Z is rejecting secularism.
At least the extremely Godless secularism we’ve witnessed the past six decades.
Maybe they’re at last rejecting the hippies and hedonism birthed in the sixties.
Going further back maybe we’re all rejecting The Enlightenment. I explored that recently in a previous post.
Either way the kids are coming back to the church.
I just don’t believe they’re coming for sermons.
The Way
But Alden if we have no sermons then what do we center church around?
Short answer?
I don’t know.
How about community?
Sharing?
Worshipping?
Praying?
In the early 1970’s Greg Laurie started a Jesus revolution - and ok it included sermons — but more importantly I believe it succeeded because of Greg.
When we lose our lives for something greater, like Jesus, people notice.
People follow.
When Southern California pastor Chuck Smith famously declared “no shoes, no problem” in the late 1960’s and welcomed the hippies and the spiritual seekers into his Calvary Chapel church, that expression of Jesus’s love made such an impression on a young Greg Laurie that it transformed his life.
Greg took the baton and ran with it.
Greg used his own artistic talents to create whimsical but honest Bible tracts to hand out - dare I say his own version of the Gutenberg Bible - ie the gospel in written form.
Tweaked for a new generation.
The Jesus movement absolutely affected Christianity in America for 20 or 30 years, but not because of sermons.
The Jesus movement spread because people gave their lives to Jesus.
And then followed him.
I mean heck even Bob Dylan converted!
Every generation is unique. And just as Chuck Smith recognized that the hippies needed welcoming over consternation, Jonathan Edwards recognized the early Americans needed black and white Biblical clarity, and Jesus knew that the pharisees needed rebuke via their own scriptures, today’s generation needs the gospel and its’ truth in their own unique cultural language.
But lest we think
just another modernization is what is needed to capture the new generation as they re-enter the church doors, we’ve already seen that.
It failed
Rob Bell and “Coldplay Christianity”
My term for the softened uber cool Christianity ushered into churches in the 2000’s, messaging that pastors hoped would slip the gospel into young people’s lives via nebulous and non-confrontational sermonettes starring Mars Hill Pastor Rob Bell, featuring minor chords and a willingness to dance close (but not into) controversial topics — all in a cool dystopian aesthetic.
At the time it felt good.
It felt right.
But it failed
It failed so badly in fact that the faith of many Christians seems to be permanently numbed.
Permanently lukewarm.
And that was even before Rob Bell declared there was probably no hell.
And now Mark Zuckerberg wants your kids to have chatbot friends.
Ugh.
Truth over politics
While I don’t pretend to have all the answers or a clear new strategy for a Jesus Revolution 2.0, I believe it’s important to state the obvious - people are hungry for truth.
Starving in fact.
Thirsty.
Desperate.
The Western church in seeking not to offend has instead become all too proficient at not taking a stand.
Any stand.
No example of the effects of an apathetic church is clearer than
the transgender movement.
Would the church’s firm preaching in the 2010’s have halted the trans movement in its tracks? Of course not.
But at least a few of the many young people drawn into this horrific and harmful social contagion would have known the church’s stance — God’s stance — that according to their Lord they absolutely were not born in the wrong body.
They would have heard that they were loved.
Instead they heard nothing.
I know because I’ve been to churches all over the United States - traveling specifically since 2011- present.
The church did not want to speak the truth for fear of losing young people. Being cancelled by Hollywood.
Now a generation is lost.
Millenials (b. 1982-2000) appear to have been the sacrificial virgin in the volcano for the smart-phone-wild-west and indirectly the transgender social contagion - that is now coming to a head via medical lawsuits across the country, and the long overdue Title IX enforcement via the current administration.
And yet the church’s silence is deafening.
The Bible speaks very clearly and honestly about a ‘Lukewarm church’ —
“And to the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write, ‘These things says the Amen, the Faithful and True Witness, the Beginning of the creation of God:
‘I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I could wish you were cold or hot. So then, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of My mouth.’ “ - Revelation 3:14-16
Obviously no pastor is hoping that describes their church, but it has to be about somebody’s church right?
I believe it will be whichever church does not stand up for the truth, or waters down the gospel to avoid offending.
I believe the Bible is speaking of the American church.
Harvest
It’s true we may be on the brink of a huge harvest of the unchurched coming in from a cold depraved world.
I hate to break it to any pastors reading, but they’re not coming for your interpretation of the Bible.
They’re coming for community.
They NEED connection.
They NEED love.
And they want Jesus.
They want truth.
Sermons are Bible truth filtered through our own biases and life experiences, which can of course point the way, but which can also dilute the message and stagger the gospel’s impact as if a slow drip through a strainer.
I say it’s time for us to let the truth flow free.
Let Jesus do the preaching.
Let the word speak for itself.
Martin Luther and the Reformers famously claim ‘sola scriptura’ - ie scripture alone.
Ok then I say, prove it.