The Disciple Making Preacher, Part 1
“I believe I am not mistaken in saying that Christianity is a demanding and serious religion. When it is delivered as easy and amusing, it is another kind of religion altogether.” - Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985)
A disciple making pastor is a disciple making preacher because the first and most important step in making disciples in the church is the sermon. When the two are disconnected, however, what happens is debilitating to the disciple making cause. Because the pastor, the preacher, is to be a leader of a disciple making movement. What this looks like has much to do with the context and the times. Church growth experts tend to put numbers to the definition and historians look at overall cultural impact. There is both ignorance and argument as to what constitutes a disciple making movement. Those who claim to have experienced them quantify them to fit their work. Those who do not experience movement type results tend to discount them.
The media-star-celebrity culture in which we work creates preaching specialists who have been trained to think of big crowds as success. Great preaching excuses the big number preacher from the accountability to lead a disciple making movement. The congregation normally plays along because everyone is now off the hook to do the hard stuff. This is an example of the statement; nothing fails like success. Disembodied sermons separated from a connection to the body life of the congregation will create disciples who don’t believe in discipleship. This is why so many preaching pastors are looking for disciple makers for hire, people who will take less money and prestige in order to take what the pastor says and make it work in the church. This is not always the case, but one of the hardest lists to make is the one of lead pastors who are great preachers and disciple makers.
[We are talking now about product and process] Most of them think it means to organize people into small groups so they can talk about the sermons. But this would be to confuse form with function. The function is to make disciples, the form could include small groups but they are not the same. This is ambiguous at best; ambiguity is our enemy, specificity is our friend. If you don’t know with specificity what your product is you won’t have a clue as to whether you are doing it right.
A sermon can be included in making disciples. Whether it is or not depends on what the preacher is like, his or her understanding, what they have in mind when they picture a disciple, and if they possess personal convictions about the discipleship process. What are they modeling in their personal lives? Have they acquired habits and a schedule that reflect their spoken priorities? Often, let’s say too often, the preachers think of themselves as a cheerleader for the staff or lay leadership who do “the work of ministry.”
The present environment creates a major challenge to how the gospel is preached to the congregations we face. As Neil Postman’s statement says, “I believe I am not mistaken in saying that Christianity is a demanding and serious religion. When it is delivered as easy and amusing, it is another kind of religion altogether.”
When the call to follow Christ is turned into a convenient transaction it is being “delivered as easy and amusing”. It ceases to be the gospel and the message that Jesus commissioned us to spread through the entire earth.
It seems to me that there are several commandments followed very closely by contemporary sermon makers. Neal Postman @ 2371 digital:
1. Thou shalt have no prerequisites.
No previous knowledge needed. Learning is not hierarchical; you can enter at any point without prejudice. In television, every program stands alone with no warning stating, “unless you have seen previous shows do not watch”. Sequence and continuity are out.
2. Thou shalt induce no perplexity.
Nothing has to be studied, remembered, or applied.
3. Thou shalt avoid exposition like the ten plagues visited upon Egypt.
Arguments, hypotheses, discussions, reasons, cross examination … television is all storytelling conducted through dynamic images and supported by music. It is entertainment – some call it infotainment.
Sermons become second rate television shows - sound bites, clichés. The television commercial is the single most powerful mode of communication in present society. I have some additional commandments:
4. Thou shall not be allowed to talk about anything that you have not at least attempted yourself.
5. Thou shall not recommend anything that you have not provided the training and learning infrastructure to make reachable to your congregation.
6. Thou shall not measure your success by how many are listening, but how many have joined the mission and are living and loving like Jesus because of your preaching.
Be sure to listen to The Bonhoeffer Show for a two-part episode on The Disciple Making Preacher starting on Tuesday, March 10, 2020.
Bill and Brandon will get serious about what preaching is and what a disciple making pastor looks like in an age of entertainment.