Beware Tuneless Preaching...Continued from page 2

Secondly, different use of Scripture. Significantly, preachers and worship leaders are also likely to use Scripture differently. A preacher’s choice of the Scripture text or theme for the next worship service is often the main (sometimes the only) point of contact with worship leaders.

Biblical preachers find in the chosen text not only the content of the sermon’s message but also the shape of the sermon. Recent interest in narrative preaching, for example in Kent Edwards: Effective First-Person Biblical Preaching, has emphasized how the literary nature of a Scripture passage influences sermon design.⁵ Narrative passages encourage narrative-shaped sermons, parables suggest parabolic sermons, didactic passages lead to systematic teaching. Of course, the shape of any Scripture text is not prescriptive. Narrative passages, for example, can be legitimately preached in many ways, as can other kinds of texts. But the discipline of “creating sermons in the shape of Scripture” (the subtitle of Don Wardlaw’s book Preaching Biblically), has become a familiar responsibility to many preachers. Of course, this is preaching at its best because sometimes we recognize that sermons may have little or no relationship with a text, but float free at the preacher’s whim.

Yet if preachers allow the Scripture text to influence the shape of their sermons, how does the worship leader respond? At best, many worship leaders try to fit worship around elements of the chosen Scripture text. In more contemporary contexts, “praise worship” usually begins the worship service, (which often seems to comprise a limited number of re-cycled favorite hymns and songs). Perhaps the leader plans for the chosen Scripture passage to be carefully read, even with an accompanying Old or New Testament text. Music choices around the sermon are likely to be carefully chosen, especially immediately after the sermon. Further, some churches may use drama, video and testimony to support the preaching.

However, rarely does the Scripture text influence the whole structure of worship. Scripture is fitted into the worship structure rather than shaping the whole service event. It is a bit player rather than the mover and shaker of worship. Indeed, some worship services appear to be a collection of assorted elements lacking any overall purpose.

Provocatively, Sally Morgenthaler describes such contemporary worship as nonworship services that are counterfeits because “interaction with God is either nonexistent or so low it cannot be measured.”⁶ Part of this low interaction with God is caused by a failure to “worship in the shape of Scripture.”⁷ Both preacher and worship leader have profound responsibility to submit to God’s word in their respective preparation tasks.

Three, failure to practice adequate theology. Michael Pasquarello claims: “For most of Christian history the practice of preaching was believed to have taken place in, with, and through the initiative and presence of the Triune God.”⁸ He argues convincingly for a trinitarian theology of preaching, and criticizes much current preaching as pursuing pragmatic ends of teaching individuals and building up congregational numbers.⁹