Beware Tuneless Preaching...Continued from page 4
Michael J. Quicke
Tuneless preaching
The result of this separation between preaching and worship, preachers and worship leaders, has been devastating. When the sermon is divorced from worship, preaching becomes “tuneless.” Of course, biblical preaching is essential to God’s purposes. “Christian preaching, at its best, is a biblical speaking/listening/seeing/doing event that God empowers to lead and form Christ-shaped people and communities.”14
In no way do I want to downgrade its importance as God’s preferred method of saving and transforming people. But, rather I want to upgrade it to where it belongs within glorious harmonious praise as God’s people, on earth and in heaven, complemented by myriads of angelic worshipers beyond imagining, respond to God’s gift of grace. Preaching belongs within the rhythm of God’s grace that both reaches down to us with his word of life and also enables us to respond back to him. Father, Son and Holy Spirit are all involved in 360-degree preaching. Preaching is not a separate activity from worship but belongs within God’s gift of worship.
Sometimes evangelizing, rebuking, often challenging about living in Christ’s upside down kingdom, preaching always belongs resoundingly within the glorious stream of God’s returning grace, first hearing from God and, second, obediently seeking to live aright as new creation. But when preaching “does its own thing” it loses this melody, becoming tuneless, monotonous, reedy, and even discordant. Its one thin note fails to harmonize in worship. It encourages jarring preaching versus worship rather than tuneful preaching as worship.
Tuneless preaching is marked by these characteristics:
1. It has an inadequate theology of worship. It is impatient with talk of “preaching as worship,” deeming it an unnecessary complication of what it regards as the straightforward task of evangelism and teaching. Why be troubled by the doctrine of the Trinity, for example, when all that matters is effective communication and results? Tuneless preaching considers time spent on trying to understand who God is in three persons, and how the triune God is involved in preaching as worship is a luxury, at best, and time-consumingly irrelevant, at worst. So, theology is relegated as unimportant and both preachers and worship-leaders pursue agendas without trinitarian underpinning. There is no shared theological vision and task.
2. It severs itself from worship. Tuneless preaching self-consciously closes itself off in its own box and “does its own thing.” It has little concern about how a worship service is constructed. Even in liturgical settings, scant thought is given to the whole act of worship’s content and structure. Once tuneless preachers have decided on how to approach the lectionary readings, they opt out of involvement in planning the rest of the worship service. So, communication between preachers and worship leaders is minimal. Lacking a sense of shared task, there is no teamwork and only average relationships.