Discomfort in Preaching

I have never been comfortable after preaching.  I have never thought for once that I did a "good job".  It's an elusive cycle.  If I am affirmed too much by the congregation, I feel that something was missing in the message because none of it is to make the congregation feel particularly good, but reveal places where we are to work to improve our lives in service to God and each other.  If I am not affirmed, then I feel as if the message reached no one or that I have failed the congregation somehow.  The cycle of self-critical reflection is therefore relentless.

Perhaps, this is due to my idea of what preaching is that I just mentioned above: preaching is in order to reveal places where we are to work to improve our lives in service to God and each other.  I am always thinking in terms of outcomes.  So why preach?  Why read Scripture?  We do it to become better people and to do so by conforming ourselves to the image of God in Christ – period.  This is the ground and grammar, to borrow T.F. Torrance's phrase, of the Body of Christ and the Kingdom of God.

Perhaps, to go with this homiletic concept, it is because I do so in concert with C. Welton Gaddy's apt understanding of Kierkegaard here from The Gift of Worship (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1992).

Concerned about attitudes toward worship and practices in worship in the churches of his time, Søren Kierkegaard, a 19th-century Danish philosopher/theologian, compared what was taking place in the theater and what was happening in Christian worship. In a theater, actors, prompted by people offstage, perform for their audiences. To his dismay, Kierkegaard found that this theatrical model dominated the worship practices of many churches. A minister was viewed as the on-stage actor, God as the offstage prompter, and the congregation as the audience. Unfortunately, that understanding of worship remains as prevalent as it is wrong.

Each ingredient of the theatrical model mentioned by Kierkegaard is an essential component in Christian worship. Crucial, though, is a proper identification of the role of each one. In authentic worship, the actor is, in fact, many actors and actresses—the members of the congregation. The prompter is the minister, if singular, or, if plural, all of the people who lead in worship (choir members, instrumentalists, soloists, readers, prayers, preachers). The audience is God. Always, without exception, the audience is God!

If God is not the audience in any given service, Christian worship does not take place. If worship does occur and God is not the audience, all present participate in the sin of idolatry.

My view of preaching is rather sacramental.  If the Eucharist is the center of Mass for Catholics, preaching and the Word is the center of worship for Presbyterians.  It is not a performance, but a means of grace.  It is a medium for the mystery of the presence of God.

Perhaps this is why I never "feel good" after giving a sermon.  It is the means by which I understand my own image bearing status to have fallen so short of what it ought to be.

So why do you preach and how do you feel afterwards?

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