"Why I Didn't Like the Sermon"

I haven't been a member of any church since 1986, and there probably isn't a church in the world that would allow me to become a member. I can't join most Baptist churches because I believe immersion is unBiblical. Presbyterian churches won't let me join because ... well, here's my credo, and here are the views of my non-profit educational organization, Vine & Fig Tree. Church membership is clearly hopeless.

Although I'm not a member of any church, I visit churches from time to time with relatives and friends, and in my capacity as a member of the California Desert Chorale, I have sung in concerts in many churches, and often as a part of church worship services.

Whenever I sit through a sermon, I am often asked "What did you think about the sermon?"

Language has many functions, and this question has many meanings. If someone invited me to church to see how bad their preacher was, this question means, "Isn't he as bad as I told you he was?" On the other hand, someone who practically worships his pastor asks "What did you think about the sermon?" to get reinforcement: "Isn't he the greatest?" (which itself is a question which isn't asking for an answer). In this case I'll often say something like "Well, I'm glad you got a lot out of the sermon," or something else evasive and non-committal (or perhaps I should say, "dishonest").

But if I'm asked "What did you think about the sermon?" by someone described in the Bible at Acts 17:11, I'll give him the address to this webpage. This is a person who "searches the Scriptures daily to see if these things are so."

I never like the sermon.

It doesn't matter who the preacher is, I didn't like the sermon.

I don't like sermons, period.

OK, that's something of an exaggeration. I have literally thousands of sermons on my computer (or on removable disks). I listen to several sermons a week. Maybe I should call them "lectures." "Informative presentations." "Conferences." "Seminars."

There are basically two reasons I don't like "sermons."

John MacArthur, Rediscovering Expository Preaching. Dallas: Word Pub., 1992, p. 43.

The addition of Greek rhetoric into Christianity brought great emphasis on the cultivation of literary expression and quasi-forensic argument. “Its preachers preached not because they were bursting with truths which could not help finding expression, but because they were masters of fine phrases and lived in an age in which fine phrases had a value.”

A significant indication of this adaptation is the turning away from preaching, teaching, and the ministry of the Word. Into its place moved the “art of the sermon” that was more involved with rhetoric than with truth.21 The Greek “sermon” concept fast became a significant tradition. In his well-written article, Craig concludes that the “‘sermon’ was the result of Syncretism—the fusion of the Biblical necessity of teaching with the unbiblical Greek notion of rhetoric.”22 He continues,

These sermons were not just a setting forth of Greek-influenced theology. They were in fact external copies of the rhetorical manner of the most popular Greek philosophers of the day. It is not just what was said in the sermon, it is that the entire presentation and format was carried over from paganism.23

The same secularization of Christian preaching has dominated the church until the present day. The committed biblical expositor has often been the exception rather than the rule. Thus, expositors mentioned here deserve special attention as representatives of a rare and noble group.

   21 Kevin Craig, “Is the ‘Sermon’ Concept Biblical?” Searching Together 15 (Spring/Summer 1968): 25. [sic - I believe the date is probably 1986. This excerpt is cut and pasted from The MacArthur LifeWorks Library CD-ROM  - kc]
   22 Ibid., 28. See also Lawrence Wills, “The Form of the Sermon in Hellenistic Judaism and Early Christianity,” Harvard Theological Review 77 (1984): 296–99.
   23 Ibid., 24.

[My original article was a bit more radical than the one published in BRR, and I believe one of the quotes is ironically from the editor's (Jon Zens) softening pen rather than my own hard-nosed keyboard. - kc]

First, the whole idea of a "sermon" is unBiblical. I have explained this charge here. This is an article published in a periodical called The Baptist Reformation Review. I am honored to have had this article referred to by John MacArthur (hundreds of whose sermons I have heard, live or recorded) in his book, Rediscovering Expository Preaching.

(Additional citations on the web.)

A "sermon" is something given in the context of a "worship service," which is something else I don't like.

I have a pretty dim view of churches in general, and so even the best lectures become unclean in my mind simply by being delivered in a church "worship service." (Yeah, I know, pretty hard-core. On a scale of 1-10, "10" being good, "1" being bad, my claims usually get rated a "1." After reading the supporting evidence, however, the rating always goes up above "5.")

It doesn't matter who delivers the sermon, either. Show me the best preacher and the best content, and I still don't like it. Call me a grump.

But most sermons are nearly devoid of content, and this is the second reason I hate sermons.

I have preached hundreds of sermons in my own life (before I became a radical grump), and I enjoy "preaching" in front of crowds -- which is the big reason I run for U.S. Congress every election. I have a gut instinct that drives me to preach, teach, inform, persuade, argue, debate -- any process which conveys the truth. I find it particularly frustrating to watch other people's sermons. I always feel I would make better use of the audience's time. Nobody preaches what I would want to preach.

I think some of the great preachers of the past would agree with me, if they were to (or could) sit through the average late-20th century sermon.

I think first of the great preachers of the time of the American Revolution. The War for Independence was led largely by Calvinist preachers, as Yale historian Harry Stout has documented. They mounted the pulpits and told their congregations that the British attempt to tax us at rates scholars estimate were between 3-5% amounted to an intolerable tyranny. Our government today demands well over ten times more in taxes, and pulpits are silent. Further, the British government would never have dreamed of legalizing sodomy, abortion, adultery, fractional reserve banking, or prohibiting public prayer or the display of the Ten Commandments. If these colonial preachers could see America today, they would know what needed to be said. If they could hear today's sermons, they wouldn't hear a peep about it.

Consider the Westminster Standards, the Catechisms of which are written for young children of the 1600's, and would baffle today's seminary students. Consider Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion, a book many of today's PhD's in religion could not understand, but which Calvin considered to be an introduction to the "rudiments" of the Christian religion. We live today in an age of gross illiteracy, and our sermons reflect this, but do nothing to change this. It was the Protestant Reformation, with its return to the Bible and the "priesthood of all believers," brought about universal education and literacy, which has been destroyed by secularists since about the Civil War, and the heirs of the Reformation are pathetic and anemic in the face of the coming of the new Dark Ages.

I recommend this article for an overall explanation of why don't go to church unless compelled (or unless I have an opportunity to sing there). More.

Pulpits and Peripatetics: The Pagan Greek Origin of the "Sermon"