This is Ryan, signing in from extremely cold room in which I spent all of the last week and will spend the duration of this one. It’s summer school and while I love the condensed look at the Scriptures (as I am currently taking Hebrews – Revelation), it causes me physical pain to sit in a padded chair for 8 hours of constant bombardment with information about the LXX, use of quotes, prophecy and everything else. It can have a negative effect if there is no interruption, but this class is broken up by short breaks for our minds and bladders. It also brings me to a place where I must reflect on the methods by which we study the Bible not only in my church, but in millions of churches across the world.
The more I think about it, the more I liken a chapter-each-Sunday approach to studying God’s Word to the standard structure of a pop song. This isn’t necessarily a critique of the 3-point sermon template, as I believe that it has value (though only when the passage is trying to tell us 3 things). In a pop song, we begin with a verse. This verse will lead to the inevitable refrain, back into another verse (sometimes with the same words as the first!), a bridge part that deviates from both the verse and chorus followed by the closing chorus. Most songs work in this fashion, but are the ideas of the songwriter truly being developed to their utmost potential?
[Incidentally, one of the only gentlemen making unconventional pop songs that are incredibly interesting is Justin Timberlake, pictured above. My sister got tickets to see him for herself, me and my fiance for our wedding. September, come quickly!]
In the same way, it seems as though we are not treated to the complete picture or complete ideas of the Scriptures when we look at the passages chapter-by-chapter, week-by-week (but O, when is it ever complete?). In traditional pop song structure (usually songs about 2:50 in length), we get about three or four musical ideas and one lyrical idea. The verse, chorus and bridge are potentially limited by their rigidity. A pop song also needs to be accessible enough for certain demographics in order to achieve any level of popularity. Do we do the same thing with the Bible when we divorce small, 10 verse sections from their whole?
I feel as though we miss out on the musical whole of a book like Hebrews when we partake of this type of biblical study. Take Hebrews 6. When we divorce the first several verses of this chapter from its whole as a book and even more so from the whole of Scripture, I would argue that we are unable to understand the passage at all. It seems as though we are settling for less for a number of different reasons (in no particular order).
1. We do not have a healthy reverence for the biblical text. (Heb. 4:11-13)
2. There is a lack of delegation in evangelical polity (in a number of denominations as well as the free-church movement), placing a disproportional burden of time on the pastor / teaching elder(s).
3. Pastors can become burned out as a result of #2 and become lazy, leaving sermon preparation until late in the week.
4. There is (in most evangelical structures / services) an expected message length that is not be exceeded for fear of all-out revolt on the part of the congregation, thereby potentially stifling the biblical text. (Kind of like with pop songs)
5. There is a lack of emphasis on personal biblical study, thereby stunting the ability for the congregation to make connections within the canon for themselves and thus must be led through each aspect of the text and its related texts.
6. Expository preaching is sometimes regarded as scattered if there is deviation from the actual passage. Each book is seen as an island.
What do you think?
It seems like a discipleship issue. Part of me wonders if the ministry of the Word ought to be relegated to preaching. If that’s the only venue that a “congregation” is going to hear the Scriptures taught by a shepherding figure, then it’s no wonder that the sermons have to accomodate to Christian infancy. People need milk because they don’t eat enough to get anywhere else. Even “personal Bible study” is a tricky one because it assumes that unguided exposure will enable congregants to make those connections when they are made in a sermon. I dunno…I was a speaker at a summer camp for a few summers (hence the overabundance of Firwood apparel), and I was surprised at how often kids would come up to me and comment on my “speech”, but that’s really what it is. I had a captive audience and I made a specific sort of speech called a sermon.
What if preaching were the giving of homework to a congregation rather than a 3-point speech? Even that seems off the mark. People need their lives touched by other lives, other people who know their names and can enter into their circumstances and influence them informally as well as formally. Yeah, I think it’s a discipleship issue.
PS – I feel like Justin Timberlake’s music is so interesting because he feels so much like Michael Jackson, both in sound and persona. I hope that JT insists on everyone calling him a different name like MJ and Prince did…though with Prince, it was a symbol and I don’t even know if it had a pronunciation.
I think when Prince did the symbol thing, it was pronounced “prince.” But that’s neither here nor there.
I don’t know, it’s just that the whole format has been so frustrating for me lately and is exacerbated by my opportunity to learn about the Bible in large chunks (which I have been drifting in and out of due to lack of energy this morning, hence the coffee and Snickers bars). The real times of biblical growth that I have experienced have been in dialogue. Now, that could be with a book, another individual, a group of individuals, et cetera. But when I first started going to my current church, that’s how things were structured and it fell flat every time.
In short, I agree with you. It is an issue of discipleship.
prince changed his name to the symbol, pronounced “the artist formerly known as prince,” so he could get out of his contract with warner bros. They had this thingy where they only allowed him to put out so much music (because they did not want to over saturate the market with his stuff) and “o–>” wanted to put out so much more music.
actually, i think it’s “o+>”