When I was in undergrad, my wonderful, snarky exCatholic turned Zen Budhist professor once remarked that his least favorite thing about Mass was the monolouge. He couldn’t understand only having a one-sided conversation on such supposedly important topics. Out of all his criticisms of Christianity, this one was stuck the most. With this in the back of my mind, reading the below was refreshing.
Can you anchor this approach to preaching in history? Are there examples of dialogical preaching in the New Testament?
When you read the Gospels, Jesus asked questions and waited for answers in the context of his own preaching and teaching. In fact, what he addressed next in a sermon or teaching moment was often dependent on the answers he received from the people. He even answered questions that people posed to him in the middle of his teaching. Thats dialogue.
via PastorHacks: Dialogical Preaching pt 1.
I am not a preacher myself, but when I envision preaching, I can’t help but to desire some sort of dialogical component, though I don’t know exactly what that would look like. I know that when I teach, I try to incorporate a dialogical component. It helps me know where my audiance is at, allows them to participate (and therefore retain what they are learning), etcetera. It draws the audience into the lesson and makes them an active part in it, instead of merely a passive reciever of my supposed perfect knowledge. However, when the audience grows beyond a certain point, it quickyl becomes impossible. At larger talks that I have given, such a method was impossible and I reverted to giving a 50 minute speech, so I recognize the initial limitations.
What about you all? Do you feel that dialogical preaching has a place in the Sunday service? If so, how can we creatively break through the present barriers?
