I guess we'll be talking preaching here at the ol' bob.blog for a little while. I began it this weekend with The Ballad of the Cowardly Preacher... and while I thought I had blogged on our way of doing sundays before, I guess I haven't... or at least I can't find it, so...


The Word of God is central to what we do on Sundays. It's in and through and over the whole thing. Yes, we try to communicate in such a way as to make sense to everyone- church, unchurched, formerly churched... But that doesn't mean we cherry pick it or seeker sensitive it...

A typical morning goes like this:

A welcome by someone (often me, though I'm trying to get more people to do this- other voices are good), wherein we talk about an aspect of the community- one of our core values or something we are trying to do or be. I think this is important as it not only orients the newer folks, but reminds the old hands.

We'll have a few moments of quiet, centering prayer... often accompanied by a reading (usually the whole group, in unison) of a Psalm.

After that, the fun begins.

We generally take passages in large chunks- either whole chapters or half chapters. It's pretty rare (and usually done for contrast) that we do just a couple of verses.

We work verse by verse through the whole passage. And we talk alot. For us, the sermon is (at least this is the ideal) the work of the community. We are teaching each other. Yes, as the "Teacher" I have a role- I keep it on track. I emphasize the correct points, correct the wildly wrong points (if no one else does... often the people do this themselves, lovingly and gently) and move things along when someone says something just kind of odd. I do the majority of the speaking, but I do my darndest to get others talking to each other as well. In this way, as a community, we wrestle with the Scriptures.

It works like this for me: I tend to think of the sermon in thirds. In the first third, it's difficult to get people talking, so we begin with review or intro, orienting ourselves to where we are in the text that day. A few, easier, more closed-ended questions to get people into opening their mouths. (Newer folks really can't believe they are allowed, nay encouraged to talk in church!) The first third ends up being a pretty even balance of me and them.

The second third, I try to bring out more of the them... open ended questions, examples of where they've dealt with or struggled with the subject matter of the text, what they think about any hard, interpretive issues... The second third is less me, more them.

The last third is almost all me. This is where I get on my horse and go... where I preach. I try to get at what I've heard God saying to our community through the week, as we've discussed, as I've studied... I tend, by body language, to discourage too much talking here, as we're usually getting towards the end of our time.

It takes us the whole morning, from right after the welcome to the closing blessing to get through this process.

So where's the worship, you ask?

What a silly question. It's all worship, isn't it?

If you mean, where's the singing though, that's a different story. We don't do the start-off-with-an-upbeat-get-'em-out-of-their-seats type thing... most of our music tends towards the quieter, more contemplative. And we sprinkle it throughout the morning. We'll work through the text until we come to a point where I know "We better stop and respond to God on this, or we're gonna miss it." We may do that once in the morning, at the end or in the middle.. or we may do it two or three times throughout... it just depends.

We really ant the community to be involved, beyond just Sunday morning as well... I try to post the week's passage on our forum during the week before, so people can meditate, process, ask questions, give insights... It's still a discipline we're learning as a community. Yes, I may be "the Teacher" of the community, but it doesn't mean I'm the only one. We teach each other. And while I give the elders and others a chance at the pulpit...err... music stand often, this method allows them to teach the community- through their example of participation, through the discussion on the forum, through commenst and questions in the group on Sundays.

It's not perfect- I did have to learn new skills in facilitating discussion (read: keeping things on track, keeping comments short, handling the very rare fly ball from left field...), and I had to learn how to say less so that others could say more.
I used to walk into the pulpit with four to five pages. Now it's three.

And yeah- I manuscript. It keeps me on track, and it keeps me on time. If I tried to do this without a manuscript, we'd be an hour over every week. I don't know where Mark Driscoll finds people willing to sit through an hour and forty minute sermon, but sheee-ooot... I just don't have that much to say :)

Anyway... more on this jive later. I just wanted to give some background as to where we are at as a community before diving into Doug's books.

For our non-evergreen readers... I'm wondering if any evergreenies or people who have visited would care to comment on our sunday mornings- good, bad, indifferent. Does it work? Props? Shortcomings? What think ye all?