Since my retirement from active church leadership, I have the opportunity to sit in the congregation and listen to someone else preach. This is not easy for me. Perhaps it comes from nearly 28 years of preaching every Sunday. Maybe it is an ego thing. I find sitting and listening a difficult discipline but one that has proved to be fruitful.
Since we attend a nondenominational church, I no longer find comfort in the rhythm of the liturgy. Fortunately a lot of the BCP is used, including prayers and sometimes even the confession. The value of immersing myself for all these years in the Eucharistic prayers of the Book of Common Prayer did make Sunday mornings both transcendent and familiar. It has been good to step away from that for a season and remember why it was so life giving for me.
Now my involvement at church is much different. I have preached from time to time but just attending without any expectations from others has been restorative and I have found I have grown. Yet, at first I felt like a spectator. I watched the congregation and the pastor pray. I paid attention to the pastor’s family, wondering if that is what people did to me and my family. I listened to music that I had never heard and even, from time to time, tried to sing along. But the biggest challenge has come from listening to sermons.
My style is very different from the pastor I listen to weekly. That is neither good nor bad, just different. I would call my style a sort of “pastorally-focused, practical application” of the Gospel. My focus was on attempting to help the congregation understand how relevant the Gospel is and the challenges in applying Biblical principles to everyday life. I avoided a lot of controversial topics, determined that a pastoral approach would connect me with people. I felt I was challenging but not threatening. Pastoral and not very prophetic.
Now I listen to a different sermon. The pastor’s approach is more pedagogy than proclamation. Indeed, sometimes I feel like it is more like an adult class than a sermon. His focus is on speaking prophetically into the culture. Again I am not criticizing, just noticing the difference. But the biggest contrast is in the prophetic way in which he speaks into current events. He never crosses the line into partisanship but speaks strongly about the ways the Gospel is misused by many in our society. I am impressed.
While I might have preached a series on worship, or parenting, or leadership, I now listen to sermons addressing immigration, racial divisions, and the current failure of American evangelicalism. I remember preaching about racial reconciliation a couple of years ago and the push back was palpable. So as I reflect back on my preaching history I wonder if I avoided controversial issues in order to avoid conflict? Perhaps I am too critical of myself but as I listen to the pastor preach now and note how it affects my heart and draws me more and more into the public square with a clearer understanding of the need that followers of Jesus have to speak truth to power, I wonder what my motivation was. I can only imagine the push back he receives and yet continues to prophetically speak against the systemic evils of society.
Can you teach an old pastor new tricks? Well, I am not learning any new tricks but I am being challenged in profound ways. A good friend of mine just tagged me in a post on social media about being a pastor. It said “if you want everyone to like you, don’t be a pastor. Go sell ice cream.” I pray that the church continues to find its prophetic role in our society. If not the church, who will do that? Sometimes it may cause some people to walk away but after all, not everyone found comfort in Jesus’ teaching. And notice he didn’t decide to go sell ice cream.