A minister often preaches week by week, preparing alone, immersed in scripture and various books, while this dialectic with others that have studied the texts is good, I don’t think it can be a substitution for chatting through face to face about the sermon text and what it might mean for today. I have seen some great ideas for this:
- There is a facebook group called liturgy where people talk about the text coming up for Sunday and share ideas, stories, jokes and take home messages. A great on line way to not be a lone ranger!
- Meeting with other ministers within an Archdeaconry in the Anglican Church to possibly brainstorm together the upcoming Sunday readings for preaching, to share ideas, but also to pool resources e.g videos, photos, people with skills in a given subject.
- My old church had a ‘service planning group’ who brainstormed sermons 3 months at a time, planned a roster and creative ways of sharing the message – then the pastor was still involved but from a team approach, discerning with others what God might be saying to their church, rather than alone, this approaches leaves the ego at the door and involves more people and so thereby more gifting and personality types, which then illuminate the bible in several ways rather than one way.
I agree the face to face conversation is very helpful. The idea of a service plaaning meeting discussing the readings is great. We are using a team to chooose music and plan special services but I can see real value in this model for having a cohesive preaching message which encompasses a community's discernment.
ReplyDeleteI too like the idea of community involvement it means one person is not carrying the load all the time. One would hope that it would help others to expand their giftings and perhaps think about preaching.
ReplyDeleteHave you checked a project called Ten Minutes on Tuesday on the Methodist Church in New Zealand's website? It is an excellent way of interacting in producing a sermon. The minister becomes a student, a critic as well as a presenter of the sermon.
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