England, of course, is the nation that once gave us preachers the likes of Charles Simeon, Charles Spurgeon, and Martyn Lloyd-Jones. Now, with the rare and blessed exception of some faithful evangelical churches, preaching has fallen on desperate times.
Some observers of British life now estimate that in any given week Muslim attendance at mosques outnumbers Christian attendance at churches. That means that there are probably now in Britain more people who listen to imams than to preachers.
This raises an interesting question: Is the marginalization of biblical preaching in so many churches a cause or a result of the nation’s retreat from Christianity? In truth, it must be both cause and effect. In any event, there is no hope for a recovery of biblical Christianity without a preceding recovery of biblical preaching. That means preaching that is expository, textual, evangelistic, and doctrinal. In other words, preaching that will take a lot longer than ten minutes and will not masquerade as a form of entertainment.
Ten minutes is the max that people here could take at a Catholic Mass. I remember once inviting a local black Pentecostal preacher to be the preacher at Mass during the week of prayer for Christian unity. I asked if he could limit himself to 10 minutes. He laughed. ‘Ten minutes? That would be my text.’ Of course, this is the difference between a liturgical church like the Anglican, Catholic or Orthodox, and the Protestant/Evangelical tradition. Still, I do wonder whether it is necessary to be any longer. At church people want some kind of link between scripture and the life they lead. Finding that link helping it speak to the people is the homilist’s challenge. Dr Mohler’s more sustained, textual, expository approach comes of course from the Baptist tradition, and would be expected in Baptist churches. But I wonder whether in a culture in which attention spans have radically decreased whether this approach will work any more. A longish, exploratory, textual and discursive sermon is for the classroom or study group, not the Sunday sermon.
The basic question is do we let the culture i.e. short attention spans, soundbites, etc. determine what we do or invite folk to come up higher? John Henry Newman’s sermons were certainly not ten minutes long and he is the Father of Anglo-Catholicism. I’ve always said I like a Catholic at the altar and a Protestant in the pulpit. It sure is hard to fin good, robust preaching in liturgical churches.
Silly me, I thought receiving the Eucharest was the central act of worship. Preaching is not worship to me, but teaching.