The Future of Preaching. Geoffrey Stevenson

Robert P., 1988, An Introduction to the Homily, Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press.

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      Preaching and Liturgy

      An Anglican Perspective

      roger spiller

      The primary ecclesial context of preaching in the Church of England is that of public worship, and ‘a sermon should normally be preached at every liturgical celebration’.1 Thus the pattern of worship influences and conditions the character and practice of preaching itself. In the last three decades or so the largely uniform and ‘common’ pattern of worship that could be found in every Anglican parish church, with minor variations, has been replaced by a wide diversity of worship and preaching styles. Cultural and aesthetic, as well as theological and liturgical, pressures in the 1960s ushered in a period of great liturgical creativity and experimentation that culminated in Common Worship, published in 2000. This prayer book authorizes alternative worship material and discretion in the use of local practice. Common Worship does not in practice, however, circumscribe the increasingly diverse patterns of worship that seek to match changing lifestyle patterns and especially the new initiatives that attempt to connect with the unchurched. It may be the destiny of liturgists to be latecomers, offering shape and coherence to local liturgical innovativeness that tries to respond to the fast-changing local missional landscape.

      Since the 1960s, in the wake of the Parish Communion movement, the Eucharist has become the main Sunday act of worship in most churches, replacing the Prayer Book service of Matins. This has usually meant the reduction in the sermon time or, conversely in some churches, reducing the ministry of the sacrament to an addendum to the service. When, however, the dramatic character of the Eucharist is recognized and brought to life it reinforces the preaching through song and sign and action offering what Calvin called the visible preaching alongside the audible Eucharist. Typically the preaching is addressed to the Confirmed member and reflects the lectionary readings and church seasons. However, to provide greater accessibility for those who are unchurched, many churches now provide a Service of the Word in addition to, or instead of, the eucharistic worship. This gives scope for more extended and creative preaching. Typically in evangelical churches an extended, expository, propositional and ‘teaching’ sermon will be the centrepiece of the worship. It provides its hearers with a solid grounding in the biblical text, although it can be less willing to engage with the features of the human context that seem to defy the solution of the gospel. Churches that are clumsily regarded as ‘middle of the road’ usually take their preaching cue from the intractable issues that confront the human condition, but in trying to avoid any trivializing or triumphalist tendencies, they risk confining the gospel to what their hearers already experience and understand. Churches with a catholic character recognize the Word made flesh in the eucharistic celebration and the community which is re-membered around it. This can lead to an impatience with extended biblical exposition and explanation, and the marginalizing of preaching itself. This inevitably crude summation of Anglican preaching traditions is intended to suggest that for a future, healthy development of preaching, churches will benefit from engaging with the insights witnessed to by other preaching styles within the Anglican Communion.

      Different preaching styles

      Common Worship affirms that ‘the “sermon” can be done in many different and adventurous ways’ (2005, p. 21) and proposes that this ‘includes less formal exposition, the use of drama, interviews, discussion, audio-visuals and the insertion of hymns or other sections of the service between parts of the sermon’ (note 7, p. 27). This rubric will continue to remain largely overlooked, except by liturgical nerds, unless explicit attention is drawn to it by church leaders. Its significance is that it provides the mandate for the whole Church to be ‘adventurous’ in seeking to communicate the Christian gospel. It may include, as for some younger preachers, using lyrics, clips from films, sports events, soaps, adverts, phone-in discussions not merely to excite interest or to illustrate the gospel but as reference points of modern culture that force us to engage with fundamental theological questions (Lynch, 2008). Common Worship, too, characterizes preaching as ‘story’. Few could doubt the reach, power and fascination of story. We relate to one another through story; we are transformed by story. Story, moreover, as Jesus demonstrated, is not merely the preferred vehicle but the intrinsic shape and content of the gospel. It enlists the primary religious faculty of the imagination, in order to access the alternative world of the gospel that God is creating, which cannot be accessed in any other way. Story, as we see in the dominical parables, creates space for hearers to be active, responsible participants as they locate themselves within the plots, trajectories and characters of the story. The future for preaching is likely to depend upon the rebirth of the story. It has the potential to capture the imagination of a generation who have been turned off by rarefied theological argument. Story, of course, may be augmented by sensory resources. One preacher, speaking on ‘the bread of life’, secreted a bread-making machine under the pews and an unsuspecting member of the congregation remarked that the preaching was so vivid that she could almost smell the bread. I myself was preaching on the theme of ‘the great cloud of witness’ while an over-zealous dry-ice machine operator allowed the entire chapel to be permeated by cloud so that the whole congregation disappeared from view. Preachers will need to be resourceful if they are to enable their hearers to inhabit the Gospel stories. Preaching as story is a model and catalyst to the hearers to rehearse the interweaving of their stories within the divine story of redemption and help the local church to be ‘a storytelling community of imagination’ (Wells and Coakley, 2008, pp. 81, 84). Preachers who know the power of story from its use in all-age and child-centred worship can still be reluctant to launch into the now respectable pedigree of story or narrative preaching, uncertain of the response they may receive. The future vitality of preaching is likely to be dependent upon a boldness to be ‘adventurous’ in the use of ‘story’ in order to connect with a generation who will hear the story with the surprise and newness as of the first hearers in first-century Palestine.

      Opportunities for preaching

      As ‘the Church by Law established’, it is estimated that the Church of England is in contact with some 85 per cent of the nation (Barley, 2006). The shape of the contact we have will often involve some form of preaching. At times of national significance or crisis, the Church will be expected not merely to articulate the public mood but to locate it within a transcendent frame of reference. Anniversaries of luminous figures, as diverse as Wilberforce, Handel, Milton, Darwin, and events that mark human achievement provide a ‘secular’ calendar that deserves, arguably, a recognition similar to that we give to the calendar of saints. The centenary of the discovery of the electron did not escape the vigilant eye of a cathedral dean, who saw the opportunity to engage with the physicists in the city.2 This is but an example of the ingenuity that is required if the Church is to initiate a focused engagement with the ‘secular’ events, artefacts, activities and anniversaries that shape our corporate life. The Church of England is particularly well placed to occupy this contested ground in our national life.

      Demands for the ‘occasional offices’, although reduced in number, are still significant. There is evidence from a study of church marriages that those for whom their marriage may be the only contact with the Church wish for a more extended relationship with the Church’s worshipping community than clergy either expect or offer.3This intimates the need for a more extensive marking of the human lifestyle, and the great archetypal transitions, than the Church has traditionally provided. The future for preaching will reckon with what has been called ‘inventive new personalised ritual’ (MacCulloch, 2009, p. 1013). Wedding vow renewal services, Valentine’s Day services on relationships and services of remembrance for the bereaved are only part of what could form an accessible and comprehensive liturgical cycle and the basis of