The Cynic: Why Do We Preach the Way We Preach?

I believe in the sermon. I really do. But…

Sometimes sermons fall dead in the pews.  This is not me saying “WE NEED TO LISTEN TO SERMONS BETTER.”  I am wondering, why do we preach the way we preach? 

I am a veteran of sermon listening.  I’ve been going to church for the majority of my life and have been exposed to a TON of sermons.  During those sermons I have fallen asleep, I have experienced a boredom that is physically painful, I have felt an awkward pity for many preachers and have, from time to time, been fully and completely enthralled. 

Sermon’s are just something we do in churches.  We gather.  We sit.  We sing.  We pray.  We listen to someone talk for 20 – 40 minutes.  We go home.  Maybe we talk about the content of the sermon on the way home, or at the restaurant, or maybe even in care group.  But that’s it. 

I must confess.  As a veteran sermon listener and now, pastor, I spend anywhere from 10-25 hours prepping a sermon. Sometimes I come off the stage after preaching asking ‘why?’  Then the questions start piling up…

Was all the prep time worth it?  Are people really being transformed?  Did I do a good enough job?  Do people actually listen or is this a habitual ‘going through the motions’ thing? 

Sermon’s need engagement to come alive.  They need engagement by the individual, and engagement by the larger church community.  This is particularly foundational for Anabaptists.  I wonder if the way we preach facilitates a long, brutal death within the pews.

How can we engage sermons in a larger community?  How can a sermon transformative?

Carving a New Story: Of Residential Schools and First Steps

“To kill the Indian child” was aimed at severing the artery of culture that ran between generations and was the profound connection between parent and child sustaining family and community.  In the end, at he point of final assimilation, “all the Indian there is in the race should be dead.”

Professor David A. Nock, “A Victorian Missionary and Canadian Indian Policy: Cultural Synthesis vs. Cultural Replacement.”

The dark side of Canadian history which festers to this day is the continued marginalization of the First Nations people.

Starting in the 1840’s the Canadian government developed a policy called “aggressive assimilation” to be taught in church-run, government funded industrial schools which later became known as ‘Residential Schools.’  The hope was to ‘kill’ the ‘Indian’ so that ‘they’ could be better prepared for mainstream society.  The government decided that it would be easier to mould children as opposed to adults, and to put those children in a boarding school environment to reach this goal.

Brutal.

The final ‘Residential School’ closed in 1996.

There has been some mild progress in recognizing the atrocities of this time.  Yet, it is high time for our churches to make a significant effort to enter into purposeful reconciliation with our First Nations brothers and sisters.  It is not possible to say with integrity that we will engage our neighbours or neighbourhoods if we continue to be disconnected from our First Nations people.

We need to be forgiven, but before we can even ask the question of forgiveness we owe our First Nations brothers and sisters the respect and dignity of mutual human relationship where we  listen.

Our church chose to participate in a first step.  The beginning of a new story between the church and our First Nations people.

The whole weekend focused on a “Healing Pole” which is an in process totem pole.  It offered a first step in carving a new history.

The weekend was full of story, of learning to understand what the horrible impact of the Residential Schools had on countless generations of First Nations people.

One woman shared her experience. It was brutal. But as she begun she told us that her husband was waiting in the car outside because he could not bring himself to enter a church.  The pain runs deep.

A totem pole speaks to the history of a people.  As we were invited to participate in carving the “Healing Pole” we begin to shape a new story as we listen to the anger, hatred and pain that is the result of the ‘Residential Schools’ and seek a new reconciled reality for the future.  Carving of the healing pole is to work together in this special way.  We together create a new history.  I am thankful for Isador Charters, Don Klaassen and all the other collaborators for initiating this all important first step.

It was a beautiful moment for me to see my almost 3 year old son carving.  A live and living colour participant in a ritual of redemption and reconciliation.  He was not completely aware of what was going on, but to expose him to this kind of reconcilatory environment, to tell him of this moment when he is older is to remind him of Jesus Christ’s nitty gritty participation right in his backyard.

Much more is to be done.  Much more.  But these kinds of relationships and rituals which point us to divine redemptive realities are a place to start.  This “Healing Pole” will be headed to other churches in the province.

May we continue to pursue relationships with our neighbours in humility, compassion and may it be grounded in Christ.

How can you and your community build relationship with First Nations people in your neighbourhood?  In what other ways can we pursue forgiveness?  What other rituals can we create?

For those interested, Mennonite Church Manitoba is collaborating and creating long term partnerships between Mennonite congregations and First Nations people in Northern Manitoba. They are simply building relationships. Check out one example here.

The Seminary is Important

I have been fortunate enough to participate in fruitful discussions both online and in person regarding the relevance of seminary education for a post Christian (Post Christendom) context.  Over the course of these conversations a few important points have been illuminated for me about some very positive things that ‘the seminary’ as an institution is doing.  While I currently don’t think the following outweigh my own concerns, the dream and hope would be to in some way address the concerns and blend them with some of the very positive things that go on in the seminary context.  I carry this hope because I believe ‘the seminary’ is extremely important.

Intentional & Structured Learning – Intentionally sitting with a group of students engaging a particular topic is a very fruitful exercise in any learning context.  During my undergraduate degree I wrestled with many interesting topics such as the existence of Satan, non-violence, post-modernity and the Missio Dei (Mission of God) with other students.  Collaborative learning like this is extremely important to the further understanding of biblical texts and their engagement in each our own particular time and place.

Professors - The good folks who facilitate discussions or lecture in classes are very important people for the church.  Many of the most important theological works in our history were written by professors.  A good professor will hopefully stretch you academically and spiritually.

Networking - Seminaries offer a place to connect with an existing network of people.  I have seen the benefits of this in my experience with my undergraduate studies.  Many of the people I studied with, prof’s included, are now colleagues or people with whom I connect with on a regular basis.  They are my brothers and sisters on this journey.

The seminary is important.  I believe that seminaries are and will continue to shape the leaders of the current and future church.  For this reason we need to take a good hard look at what we do and how we do it.

What do our seminaries do well?  What would it look like to re-imagine our future seminary in light of its current strengths and weaknesses?

Why I may not go to seminary

I have been wrestling with this question forever!

I had a wonderful experience working towards my undergraduate degree at Canadian Mennonite University.  I met a wonderful network of people who I still depend on today.  Through a few select classes it helped create a skill set that has significantly shaped me as a ministering person.  Yet upon graduation the question kept coming at me, “are you going to seminary?” to which my response was always, “I want to get some ministry experience before I do.”  So, I’ve been a full-time pastor for the past 5 years and I still find myself hesitant to go to seminary.  Here are a few reasons why:

Debt - I racked up so much student debt merely getting my undergraduate degree.  I cringe at the thought of more debt.  I have a wife and a son whom depend on me to put a roof over their head, and food on the table.  Sure, there are options for assistance most of which make me exhausted just thinking of all that I will need to juggle just to make it happen.  Certainly in a post-Christendom (post Christian) world, where institutional church budgets shrink, full-time pastor jobs gradually becoming fewer and fewer I wonder if the debt load is becoming too much for many folks.  It certainly could be that for us.

‘Higher’ Education - Does a seminary degree perpetuate an institutional ‘higher than’ authority that the believers church seemingly stands against?  This is a new’ish’ thing for me.  This is merely something I worry about.  Thoughts?

Place & Courses : The Disconnect - There is a big difference between the street and the classroom.  As I reflect on my years as a pastor a lot of my learning has been within my context ‘on the job.’  In my opinion, if seminaries were serious about creating ministering people, they would be requiring their students to be saturated within their contexts.  This would mean not creating people to be pastors or missionaries as if they can be unwrapped ‘out of the box’ pastors and placed anywhere.  I long for seminaries to create a structured learning experience that facilitates full on the job learning.  As this would happen, I have a suspicion that the ‘classes’ offered would look significantly different.

What do you think?  Is seminary education important?  Do we need to re-think what our ‘seminaries’ look like?