The Equipping Ministry, Student Workbook, SW15

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T H E E Q U I P P I N G M I N I S T R Y

whole counsel of God from the pulpits of the city? Can we do the one without avoiding the other?

Nothing Succeeds Like Success--Or Does It?

With the popularity of a handful of preachers and their congregations, many churches are moving wholesale to follow their example of success. The standard of success is plain and clear: large professional facilities, great and growing staff, solid financial base, growing numbers in attendance, and greater leverage in the larger secular world are added as indicators along with love for God and others, solid missions work, and steady growth. Moved by the outward signs of success, many preachers are more than willing to “learn from the best,” and a host of preachers are now adapting their methods and directions from the more successful mega-churches. What is important in this experience is the new trend to be attentive to culture, and respond to it in our preaching and presentation. While we ought to be thankful for the outward signs of success with such attention to numbers, size, and influence, we ought to be open to critically examining the meaning of success in a preaching ministry. How do we measure success in the proclamation of the Word? Will a faithful declaration of the Word always lead to a large following, financial independence, and growth in terms of facilities? How do we know that we have been successful as a preacher of the Word of God? A growing number of homiletical scholars are seeking to explore the relationship between preaching the Word of God and performing as an actor. While they are not emphasizing pretending to be something you are not, they are interested in exploring the connection between preaching as a kind of theater where the listener and the preacher encounter each other not in terms of the dry presentation of boring outlines, but in a living relationship where the spoken Word of the preacher becomes an event where God actually makes contact with the audience through the speaker. Surely, with the Bible’s own unity built on the dramatic story of God that culminates in Jesus Christ, there may be room for us to understand how the Bible, more story world than philosophical outline, can be seen as the drama of God, and the preacher and congregation, as members in God’s play. How important or distracting do you believe this emphasis on preaching as performance of the drama of God is for urban churches today? Can one truly ignore the dramatic, the world of Preaching as Performance--Taking the Drama of God too Seriously?

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