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Preaching full time, and not just every now and then has been a really interesting experience for me. I& #39;ve had to change my preaching style. I don& #39;t like *hearing* personal anecdotes and stories in sermons. And I don& #39;t like telling them. But my folks thrive off them.
So I tell them. So I pay attention in my life and look for stories to tell. So sometimes my spouse becomes (with his permission!) a sermon illustration.
This is the pastor& #39;s first job. Not just to know the gospel, but to know your people and know how they HEAR the gospel.
This is the pastor& #39;s first job. Not just to know the gospel, but to know your people and know how they HEAR the gospel.
My folks also like "in the original Hebrew..." (I don& #39;t usually do Greek, because I& #39;d butcher it!). No one cared about that when I preached in seminary, because they could look it up themselves on Bibleworks. But my context is different now!
I think there& #39;s a way to bring academia into sermons that is elitist and showoff-y. But there& #39;s also the reality that many people in the pews would LOVE to go to seminary, but it& #39;s expensive. Would LOVE to read theology articles but they& #39;re behind paywall.
We make assumptions, sometimes, I think, about lay people. Not every congregation is going to have folks who care about biblical scholarship, but personally I& #39;ve never been in a church where there wasn& #39;t at least one aspiring lay theologian (usually it was me lol)
I didn& #39;t go to seminary because I wanted to be a pastor at first, tbh. I went because I was lucky enough to get a full-ride scholarship and I WANTED to learn about the Bible. I have congregants who I wish could also get full-ride scholarships to seminary, because they& #39;d LOVE it
But since those are hard to come by, I try to make what I know of academic biblical scholarship available. I don& #39;t think that& #39;s elitist. What might be elitist is assuming people in your pews don& #39;t care about scholarship.
Again, if you& #39;re up there lecturing and never listening, and assuming you have The Gospel because you have The Degree, sure that& #39;s elitist. But saying "this is what I learned in seminary" and ALSO listening to what people learned about God in their own context? not so much!
Anyway, I& #39;m speaking here less as a pastor, and more as a former lay person who was 100% done with church until I joined a congregation where the pastor regularly preached about the summa theologica
when I went to seminary, I was bored in my intro classes because "I already learned this in church." and i& #39;d like that to be true at more churches
