I just finished reading the 2008 book “Quitting Church: Why the Faithful are Fleeing and What can be Done about it.” It was writing by Julia Dunn, religion editor for the Washington Times.
It is at the same time both an easy book to ready (I read it in a day) and a difficult book to read (I am a life-long church-goer and spend my energy these days encouraging those who want to lead churches).
However, I confess that much in the book resonated with my own experience as a church leader and church-goer.
Millions of people are quietly, slowly dropping out of church: not the young adults we hear so much about, but their parents, people my age, people with my attachment to the church. Church attendance, Dunn asserts, citing reasonable and apparently reliable data, has decreased by 20% in the last decade.
If she is right then I am wrong when I frequently say that in a given week more people hear a sermon than engage in any other public activity (like movies, or sporting events, or political rallies).
Preaching is still important and still a powerful force in American public life; but if Dunn is correct the place and influence of preaching is bound to change. Fewer people will gather on the first day of the week to hear a person recite a prepared text about God and Jesus and life and death.
Preaching may, in fact, become much more like biblical preaching.
Very few of the sermons recorded in the Bible occurred in the context of what we today call a church, or a congregation. Some were written and distributed (John from Patmos, the entire book of “Hebrews”); many were delivered in public places to public audiences (Jesus on the mount, Peter on Pentecost); a few were preached to very small audiences (a prophet to a king, an inmate to a jailer).
Giving a theological interpretation to life and history is the calling of a preacher:
* what is God saying to us in this episode of life?
* how can we obey God in the midst of these circumstances?
* how can Christ be formed in me given who I am and where I have been?
* where does Christ ask me to follow given the chaos in the world and even in my life?
* when must I abandon self-interest and embrace the welfare of the human race?
These questions will persist even if the fairly modern pattern of Sunday church life dissolves into irrelevance. And these are the questions that good preachers will address even if the platform is shifting under our feet.
Anyone who speaks with clarity, intelligence, and passion addressing the deepest questions of soul and society will always gain an audience. That is the good news for young preachers who are responding to what they think is the direction of almighty God.