Can preaching remain a monologue?

Some time ago, early a Sunday morn, I had a phone call. The person preaching at the service in ii hours' time was unwell, and would not exist able to preach. I was leading the service; what should I do virtually the sermon? My start thought was: what a cracking opportunity to exercise some spontaneous reflection together equally a congregation on the Bible readings. How empowering that volition be! Simply the more I thought about it, the more than I idea that that would not work well in the context of the service. The field of study was one I had been thinking most, and the readings were texts I knew well, and then in the stop I did some preparation, wrote my notes in the car on the way to church, and gave a monologue sermon.

But it raised for me over again: should sermons proceed to be monologue in our postmodern age? There are, I call up, some compelling reasons why we can no longer get away with monologue preaching.


The kickoff set of reasons relate tobiblical theology. We know that, in the first century, schools of philosophical education and Jewish rabbinical practice involved not only a monologue on the role of a instructor, only a question-and-answer class of learning. Call up of Plato's Dialogues; the inkling is in the name! Into that social context, we see Jesus' bodily exercise as recorded in the gospels. Some years agone, Jeremy Thomson wrote a provocative Grove Pastoral bookletPreaching as Dialogue: is the Sermon a Sacred Cow?He highlights what Jesus' preaching looked like as a social phenomenon:

 Much of Jesus' educational activity was given 'on the style' and involved a high caste of interaction with the audience (Mark viii.27–ten.52).  There were many occasions when information technology arose out of the question or an incident (Mark 2.eighteen–28, 7.ane–23, 9.33–37 and even 13.3ff), and information technology frequently included interaction with his hearers (Mark 8.14–21, ten.23–31, 35–45).  The culmination of Jesus preaching in a synoptic gospel took place in the temple, where he was constantly responding to ambitious questions (Mark 11.27–12.44) (p 5).

Thomson notes:

We may conclude the following about preaching or teaching as a social phenomenon in the New Attestation:

  1. It was non confined to a formal religious setting, but often took identify in homes, outdoors and on the road.
  2. As much as a planned for regular activity, preaching arose spontaneously as Jesus and the  early Christians involved themselves with the lives of others. It entailed recognising and challenging assumptions, and dealing with questions raised by others.
  3. Preaching was not confined to any particular size of group, just was addressed to individuals, families and small groups as much as to big gatherings.
  4. Only sometimes did preaching accept the format of a monologue. There were speeches, only these were oftentimes given in the context of discussion, and often included interaction with the audience.  Argument and discussion were of import as a ways of persuasive preaching.

This suggests that NT 'preaching' referred to a lot more than the particular event in a formal service on a Sunday—only the consequence we call the sermon cannot exist immune from these observations. I remember Jesus would exist amazed at the idea that nosotros deliver our master teaching or exposition of what God has done through this one upshot, delivered in this one way.


Thomson'south observations are supported by two other things we detect in the text of Scripture. Get-go, it is worth noting that what is presented as monologue by the gospel writers oft is no such thing, and fairly clearly so. For case, Matthew constructs what nosotros now call 'The Sermon on the Mount' in Matt five–seven, which looks like a monologue—but even a brief comparison with the other gospels shows that this is Matthew'south creation, rather than a transcription of a long monologue past Jesus. Information technology is function of his calendar to portray Jesus as a teacher after the pattern of Moses by grouping his instruction into v blocks through his gospel (each ending with a phrase 'When he had finished maxim these things…' or something similar, Matt vii.28, xi.one, 13.53, nineteen.1, 26.1). The variations in his sayings in other gospels (compare Luke'due south version of the Lord's Prayer) likewise suggests Jesus taught like things on more than one occasion. (If not, and so his ministry would have been very short!).

Secondly, we can see this kind of artificial construction going on at different moments. In Acts two, Luke has the crowd of onlookers at Pentecost deliver a monologue speech as if they were a Greek chorus. But we can easily see that this is Luke'southward style of capturing the content of their dialogue and discussion. Added to that, we take numerous examples in Scripture of apparently authoritative teaching beingness given in the context of actual conversations. And so, the on road to Emmaus in Luke 24, nosotros find the risen Jesus teaching the disciples 'what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself' in the context of an actual conversation. The vicar of a church I attended many years ago when working in business insisted on the authority of (monologue) preaching on the basis that 'When God asks you to jump, the only question you ask is 'How loftier?'!'. Unfortunately, many of the biblical heroes didn't follow this! Gideon isn't sure Godactually is asking him, so he sets up several tests just to make sure. Elijah finds jumping exhausting, and goes and hides in a cave. And Moses tells God that he isn't very good at jumping, that he tried it before and got into trouble, and that anyway his brother Aaron was much meliorate at jumping than him, and why didn't God ask him?

If God needed dialogue to answer questions and overcome objections, surely nosotros exercise too!


And so preaching in a monologue format does not have very much support from Scripture. Simply neither does it have much back up from our own experience .

When we reflect on our own experience of listening to sermons, I suspect nosotros would be hard-pressed to identify the things we had learned from about of the sermons we take heard. Of class, nosotros don't retrieve every meal we have eaten, and yet they have fed and sustained our bodies. But the illustration is not perfect; I would hope that, when I preach, people are not simply sustained in the curt term, but they larn something that will help them change and grow and go more faithful disciples.

One response to this might exist to draw on the notion of 'learning styles'—that different people larn in dissimilar ways, and only some will acquire by listening to a monologue, whilst others will find that ineffective every bit a way of learning. Unfortunately, the thought of learning styles has been seriously undermined, and it is not at present the ground for thinking virtually teaching and learning in many contexts. Merely that doesn't mean ignoring the realities of engagement and learning. I spent yesterday teaching for a day on the Book of Revelation—and I would not accept dreamt of spending the whole day giving a monologue. I know that people will only sustain their concentration if in that location is a modify of subject, format and delivery every few minutes, and I know that at that place needs to be a mixture of information, sense of humor, challenge and reassurance if learning is going to be effective. My listeners are much more than probable to call up things and change the style they think if they have discovered something for themselves, rather than if I requite them some data—at that place is a powerful emotional 'aha!' experience when they spot it in their own reading. Why should sermons exist any different? The idea that 'preaching' and 'teaching' are different, separate, theological categories finds no support whatsoever from Scripture, since the language of 'preaching' (kerusso) and 'teaching' (didasko) are oftentimes used together and interchangeably.


I notice this on Sundays nigh clearly when leading and speaking at all-age services. Instruction in that context has to be dynamic, interactive and kinaesthetic—there is lots going on, with different people taking function. My consequent feel has been that it was usually older men who come and tell me how much they accept enjoyed information technology—because this was a group who plant it particularly difficult to learn from sitting still in the pew listening to a monologue, and prefer to be active and engaged in their learning. It might be worth reflecting on the fact that almost of our preaching demands that our listeners sit down yet and learn passively—and most of our churches are missing that group, men and in item working men, who to the lowest degree like sitting and learning passively!

In another Grove booklet, Transforming Preaching: Communicating God's Word in a Postmodern World, Jonny Bakery points out that we no longer live in a culture which volition accept authoritative pronouncements from on high. If we are going to communicate effectively beyond the boundaries of traditional church, we demand to rethink our preaching. I think this is worth exploring farther, since our civilisation is circuitous, and the recent election appears to suggest that wedo really similar people who are authoritative and 'become things done' without too much discussion and not much accountability.

But there is another factor in civilization that is even more than important—entertainment. This was confirmed to me a couple of weeks ago, when for the first time for years I heard a sermon that was read from a script. However proficient the content, the delivery was really irksome! We are and so immersed in an entertainment culture that our boredom threshold is much higher than it has been in the past, and we just cannot get away with dull delivery, however worthy the content. The one way to guarantee dullness is to preach a monologue, as offering an entertaining monologue is so hard.

And if traditional preaching is and so constructive—how come we are doing a ameliorate job of making mature disciples within our current congregations? Research on 'ordinary theology', that is, what members of the average congregation actually believe, shows that faith in the pews is a very long way from anything resembling Christian orthodoxy. Many churchgoers don't believe that Jesus really was the second person of the Trinity, and they don't believe that his death really had atoning effectiveness.

The interview piece of work presented here indicates that atonement theology in particular is often a stumbling block for many. Indeed, the majority (those with soteriological difficulties, the exemplarists plus some of the traditionalists) take bypassed the traditional theology of the cross, judging it irrelevant to their religious needs. Their dominant theological position may be said to be 'Christianity without atonement.' (Taking Ordinary Theology Seriously,p 26)

Information technology seems to m that we urgently need to discover a ameliorate, more constructive way, to preach and teach.


So the reasons for abandoning the monologue course of preaching appear to be compelling. And nevertheless most of us still do information technology! Why? Could at that place be equally compelling reasons for retaining the monologue format and undermining the possibility of dialogue format? That will be the discipline of my adjacent post on this question—but you might like to propose your own in the comments.

(This word starting time took place in 2016, and derives from my education on preaching over ten years upward to 2013.)


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