Preaching in the Emerging Culture

I'm preparing my first sermon as Assistant Pastor at BCC at the moment. I'm enjoying my preparation so far - been swimming in the text through some Lectio Divina and using the online labyrinth to guide my meditation. Highly recommend both.

There's a sticking point though. I grew up with a style of preaching (which was excellently done Dad!) very much rooted in the logical reasoning, linear thought and rhetorical style of the modern world, and profoundly influenced by the church structures that accompanied it (or did the preaching shape the church? - more on that in a sec), for example a centralised message (the pastor does all the talking while the rest of us sit and listen).

Now that my world has changed, and I see the church very differently, how am I to preach?

This is the question bouncing in my head as I prepare for next Sunday. Gibbs and Bolger, in Emerging Churches, describe the contextual mandate excellently:

"The church continues to communicate a verbal, linear, and abstract message [I would add 'centralised' - JD] to a culture whose primary language consists of sound, visual images, and experience, in addition to words. Meaningful activity assumes the convergence of sound, sight, and touch through activities, rituals, and stories. Current patterns and styles of preaching communicate with diminishing impact. Pastors must understand the comprehensive nature of language to be heard by the culture." (p. 20)

I just read Doug Pagitt's excellent book Preaching Re-Imagined, which is a great start at asking the tough questions about our cherished preaching style (which he calls "speaching"). Certainly, the question of cultural relevance is at the heart of the book. But a more central issue being the kind of communities formed by such a style. Briefly, he argues that preaching is "a socializing force and a formative practise in a community" (p. 25) and that a centralised, controlling preaching style produces communities of people who are disempowered and consumerist. The Biblical notion of the "priesthood of all believers" (1 Pet 2:9) is not put into practise in our preaching (the Reformers tried to get this important truth back into the church, but 500 years on we're still not there).

[I would add our worship into this same equation - just look at how we sit in rows like an audience, singing along but generally being consumers of worship experiences rather than worshippers.]

Pagitt provocatively calls this kind of one-way speech-preaching "an act of relational violence" (p. 26) He's not advocating an end to preaching in emerging churches, and nor am I. But how should we preach?