Hello and thank you so much for downloading episode 417 of the Speak Life Podcast. 417, you say? That's a big bat catalogue. Do I have to go back and listen to all 416 previous episodes to understand what's going on? Well, thankfully, no, you don't. Our content is largely standalone. So hopefully you will be able to follow exactly what's going on. But if you do want to go back and listen to some of our previous episodes, that's very available to you. We also have our YouTube channel. You can go to youtube.com forward slash speaklifemedia or just type into a YouTube search bar, Speak Life, and it will pop up. And all the discussions that we do on this podcast are also available on YouTube. We've also got lots of other content, short films that you might be interested in. So if you're new to Speak Life, if you're new to this podcast, you are very welcome. Today we have a conversation that Glenn Scrivener and Nate Morgan Locke of Speak Life recorded with Alistair Roberts about a recent Twitter storm that Alistair Roberts was caught up in. About the length of sermons. How long should sermons be? What is a sermon? All sorts of interesting questions like that. This is an extended conversation, so the one we put out on YouTube was 40 minutes long. We include a bonus 20 minutes that we recorded with Alistair Roberts in this podcast episode for you to enjoy. So we hope it's helpful for you. We hope it's informative. And I will hand straight over to Alistair, Glenn, and Nate.
SPEAKER_02Well, hello, and welcome to Speak Life. My name is Nate Morgan Lock, and I am joined uh today by Glenn Scrivener. Hello. Hello, Nate. Good to be with you. It is good to be with you, and we are in the week in which Marvel have decided to release yet another Thor God of Thunder film. Right. And so we thought we would interview a man who controls the storms of Twitter. A Twitter storm has been created by a bloke in Stoke, and that bloke in Stoke is called Alistair Roberts. Alistair, hello. Thank you for having me on. Well, it's great to have you. Now, um, I've I don't do very much on the Twitter sphere. What is it like to be um at the centre of a Twitter storm? What's that experience like?
SPEAKER_03Um it didn't really feel like being at the centre of a Twitter storm that much. I spent most of the weekend um in York and then spent some time in Trentham Gardens on Sunday afternoon. Actually, going to hear a sermon on Sunday morning.
SPEAKER_02It's really good. Yeah. Wow.
SPEAKER_03So I didn't feel like I was in the middle of a Twitter storm, which I think is the best way to do it. Yeah. Um if you get over preoccupied with it, you will just find you get caught up by the winds of it, and it's very hard to think very clearly.
SPEAKER_04Is there a little adrenaline buzz though? Like you see 20 plus notifications in that little thing, and you think, oh, it's on, it's on.
SPEAKER_03Occasionally. But yeah, I I try and be careful in my response to that because it's very easy to get caught up in the adrenaline, and I think to to get waylaid by that, to think very much about the animus that people are directing at you and to focus on that rather than upon the issues that you're concerned about. So I've been increasingly mindful of the effect that Twitter has upon me and upon others within it, and a lot more careful about how I handle it.
SPEAKER_02Okay. Well, we let let's rather than getting too kind of uh gentle, let's keep some of that storm going. Glenn, why don't you read us these incendiary tweets? Yes, yes. Um, on a subject known as the worship wars.
SPEAKER_04That's it. And you can ask yourself at home, whither the animus? Whither? Okay. So it it all began on the 7th of July, and uh Alistair tweeted out, would love to see more churches cut sermons down to 10 to 15 minutes while relocating most of their teaching to alternative formats and contexts. Ideally, more interactive in character, over dependence upon the Sunday morning sermon is a straitjacket upon Christian instruction. Now, were you ever thinking at that point that you would leave the tweet there? Um, because that that's a perfectly solid tweet all by itself.
SPEAKER_02It's it's short and it's sweet, and we knew it complete.
SPEAKER_03And it would be out of character on the full thread. Okay.
SPEAKER_02Because then Tom.
SPEAKER_04He went on. A greatly shortened sermon has the added benefit of allowing more time for the public reading of Scripture, confession of sins and absolution, passing of the peace, confession of the creed, celebration of the Eucharist, etc. Instead of doing lots of teaching in a long brackets and typically repetitive sermon, uh, divide the congregation into all age Sunday school classes and give instruction designed to stretch people at whatever level their understanding might be. A shorter homily surrounded by a strong liturgy and several readings leading to celebration of the Eucharist can deliver a far more effective punch than a rambling sermon. So we've had repetitive and we've had rambling sermon, surrounded by hymn prayer sandwiches. In short, he said sandwiches. Did you say that? He went for it. He went there. And then I I believe this is the fifth, the fifth tweet. In short, he begins, in short, focus on using the sermon for that which it is best and use more suitable means for much of the excess pedagogi pedagogical duties which it has become burdened with which it has become burdened in many contexts. And then as a follow-up note, uh my proposal is not extra meetings to carry the burden of teaching, which would be unrealistic, but reorganizing our Sunday mornings with time redistributed between the liturgy and a much shorter sermon and more tailored teaching in different formats and groups. Later on you go on to elucidate with five other threads, elucidating the first thread.
SPEAKER_02But first talking about short-term sermons and long threads. Fifth ten to fifteen minutes, it was thirty-five minutes reading those threads. That was the thing. Yeah. What was it what was it that's that spurred you into thinking through this topic? Because, you know, it seems as though these issues come up fairly regularly, concerns about the the practicalities of Sunday morning services, and you know, everyone's got their own views on preaching. What was it that sort of made you sort of think about this afresh over the weekend?
SPEAKER_03Well, it's something I've thought about quite a lot over the years, and what prompted the tweet was a conversation that has been going on on the Australian version of the Gospel Coalition website. And so seeing some of that conversation, um, I felt spurred to give a thought on the subject.
SPEAKER_02The Aussie started it.
SPEAKER_04It's the Aussie started it. Yeah, Rory Shiner uh wrote on the Gospel Coalition uh website. The man who called my latest book, Swashbuckling, just for those at home. Anyway, um, nobody needs to uh know that, but um Rory Shiner uh started and and because I I think there's a kind of a Sydney side tradition um coming out of more college, um, very influenced by John Stotz. You've got a between two worlds paradigm of preaching in which the preacher sort of manfully stands between Corinth back in the day and Stoke on Trent today, and is able, you know, rhetorically to hold those two worlds together, and between those two worlds they're able to. Um, I guess one of the troubles is not very many people are John Stott. And lots of people have been attempting to bridge that divide, and it tends towards a longer sermon. I don't know why what why why do you think that kind of um theology of preaching tends towards a longer sermon, Alistair?
SPEAKER_03I think part of it is just a commitment to be faithful to the text. And so, for instance, an expository pro approach to a sermon where you're trying to preach through the passage, going through each part of it sequentially, if you're going to do justice to a longer passage, you're just going to have to take a longer time and also talk through the processes of reasoning, etc. I think one of the things that um led to the misunderstanding was the assumption that I was just wanting to do away with that sort of study of the text altogether and have something entirely different, or that I was saying that having long teaching concerning the text is not appropriate within a church context. My concern is rather that the sermon is something different from the sorts of teaching that that exposition offers, or the sorts of catechesis that would have teaching people the principles of theology. Indeed, that lays a sort of foundation for the um for the exhortation that I think a sermon should involve more. So within the context of the liturgy, I see that's a place for a sermon to really be a sermon, to emphasize the message of the gospel addressed to people's hearts and consciences with a force and authority that can often be missing if you're just trying to get that exposition exposition right. And so my concern is to actually allow those things to be themselves by giving both space, and so within the context of the liturgy, you have that uh exhortation, you have that powerful address to the conscience and heart. And on the other hand, within the context of these other um parts of the meeting, you would have the exposition or you'd have um some time spent in catechesis.
SPEAKER_02Now, I mean this is a practical question, but if you're saying 10 to 15 minutes to reduce down would give more time to other parts of the service, other elements, isn't that assuming that the service lasts a specific amount of time? And would it not be possible to have your 40-minute sermon or your 35-minute sermon or whatever is typical in your church, and to add longer periods of um liturgy, of of the reading of God's word, of um those sorts of things as well.
SPEAKER_03Certainly. Uh I think one of the misunderstandings has been that my point is primarily about sermon length, and my point is primarily about the distribution of teaching and exhortation within the life of the church. Now, if you can have a strong exhortation to a congregation and it requires 40 minutes of non-rambling, non-repetitive address, then you need to take that long. But for most people, I think, first of all, if you're being exhorted or challenged from the pulpit for 40 minutes, you'll just be drained because it's talking directly to you in a way that uh exposition is not. I think also part of the punch of a good sermon is its context within an engagement with the world in with the word in many different modes. So it's one of the things I discussed in a follow-up thread that the whole service should be an engagement with the authoritative word of God. So we are living out the doctrine of justification by faith as we confess our sins using words of scripture of the Psalms, Psalm 51, for instance, or and then we are given this word of absolution, which is taking these promises of the gospel and applying them specifically to us. We're praying words from, for instance, um Simeon in the temple or the Magnificat, and we're taking those words and making them our own. And scripture is also on our lips in the forms of the psalms of scripture, we sing those, and then we have other times when we're reading these different passages from scripture, and a certain approach to preaching, I think, has tended to squeeze out these other forms of the word within the context of the liturgy and increasingly place the emphasis upon a sort of information rather than formation by the word. And so the information is very important. We need to be instructed in the truths of scripture. But I think the purpose of the liturgy is far more to be one to form us, and so within the context of the liturgy, I want to see that high form of engagement with scripture, which I think is primarily in that word of exhortation, encouragement. It's addressed not just to the mind to give you information, to know what's true or not true, to give you something to act upon, to give you something to convict you, to challenge you, and to direct you as you're sent out into the world.
SPEAKER_02So I want to. Yeah, I want to come back to that formative question and what is the role of formation and how is formation done spiritually. I want to come back to that. Just let me do my Kathy Newman bit. So what you're saying is that you're when people see the 10-15 minutes, they're thinking, oh, he wants less Bible, he wants less scripture, and he wants to go up and jump off into a liberal, you know, swimming pool or something. No, it's it's I don't know why I said swimming pool. Anyway, that's not the only option. But you're arguing for more scripture, more more biblical engagement and hearing from the word and and the particular role of preaching. Let me ask you, Glenn, what is the role of preaching within the worship service? Well, that's what I was gonna do.
SPEAKER_04That's what I was gonna ask Alistair in in in terms of um if there's a s if there's a specific thing that the sermon is for, if the whole of the liturgy is is shaping us. And I I mean I I wrote a thread off the back of Alistair's um thread, which was kind of based on a sermon which I preached 15 years ago, which I still think is the best sermon I ever preached, and it was eight minutes long. So, you know, maybe maybe this. I didn't even get to ten. I couldn't get to ten. Um so it was about David and Goliath, and it was at a Bible college, and at the end of my time at the Bible college, I kind of said, Well, guess what? Preaching is like being a war correspondent heralding the victory of David against Goliath. Two troops that are making shipwreck of faith and running away from Goliath and dismayed and despondent, and you say, Look and live, go and plunder the go and plunder the Philistines, go in war to love and serve the Lord. Um, that's that's what preaching is. But I said, Um, too much preaching I hear is basically a drill sergeant telling other soldiers, telling David's brothers, you know, get a firm base with your feet just like David has, and make sure they're shoulder width apart, and then it's all with the wrist, and and top tips for how to do it like David did it. And what's interesting about that is if you really are in the mode of being a drill sergeant trying to form other soldiers to do it like David, then you really ought to take quite a long time. Like you don't throw people into battle after a 10-minute like little but you can declare the victory in 10 minutes. You can't you can't train people to to get their own victory in 10 minutes, but you can declare the victory in 10 minutes. And so what's interesting to me about some of the the length issue is lying behind it is the question of what is a sermon. And I'm I'm all for understanding the scriptures at great depth, and there are there are all sorts of um opportunities to do that, but I really want to hear the victory, I really want to hear 1 Corinthians 15, verse 57. Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. So that I go to I go to the table gratefully receiving the Lord, you know, not not simply having because the other thing about having a 35-minute sermon is that feels like work. You know, we we're gonna do hard work on the text. I hope you're you know, I I hope you've brought your thinking caps, gotta screw them on, and and that feels like work. Whereas what Alistair's saying is we're in receiving mode. It's it's the doctrine doctrine of justification by faith, so that we're receiving, receiving, receiving. Um, so I I guess that's the frame that I would put the sermon in. It's it's the heralding of the victory of your of your Christ.
SPEAKER_02And is that a are there any differences between that and exhortation, which was a word that you using uh quite a bit, Alistair, in terms of exhorting a direct address to the congregation within that?
SPEAKER_03Yes, I think the description of the word of God as something that is living and active, as something that divides and something that pierces to the heart of matters. I think that's something we need to feel within the context of a sermon. And I think often what we have is an attempt to deal with the text on the one hand that gives us all the different points about what the text is saying, and then tries to have an application and a force to that. And those two things don't necessarily go well together. They can often be done better separately than in the same um rhetorical event. And so part of my concern is to stop treating the sermon as a sort of general dog's body of um Christian catechesis and instruction, and to actually allow it the space within the liturgy to really do what it's best at. And so I think we've all had the experience of being in learning environments where we've just had a long monologue delivered at us and we've just zoned out. And that happens in different ways. I think, first of all, it's just taxing on the attention, and maybe it's just hard work. We have to work through this. On the other hand, often I think people find sermons are they're addressed to the whole congregation, they're there for everyone to get something from them. And often they can be pitched at such a low level for people who have been in the faith for uh few decades that it's not actually moving them forward, it's actually just dulling them. They've got used to the habit of just um zoning out for the sermon because it's addressed to the person who might just walk, have walked through the door for the first time, and it might be speaking very well to them, but it's lost the ability to speak to everyone. Now, I think one of the benefits of a really strong exhortational message is that that applies to everyone, to the from the youngest child to the greatest scholar, they can be addressed with the word of the exhortation of scripture, and it can really hit them. So, for instance, I remember what one of the first sermons that really hit me was a sermon on Hebrews where it taught just working with the grain of the text. Today, if you will hear his voice, do not harden your heart. And just the reality of what it means to harden your heart to the word of the Lord, where you're not actually learning to act in terms of it, it's just something that dulls upon you. Now, I think that's first of all an example of how preaching works well. It's addressed directly to the conscience and it's addressed to the heart, and it calls sin to light, and it gives you something to act upon immediately. And on the other hand, it's something that gives an example of um, I think the way in which um the way in which sermons can stick in our minds, they can actually have that long-term effect. That's stuck with me. Whereas I've heard so many expositions of the passages that haven't. Um, and when I think back on the sermons that have really made an impact, so often it's been close to the grain of the text. It's not actually been trying to make a series of comments about these things that um talking about the typical alliterated points that get into a more objective view on that. It's addressing you directly. That's an imperative to you. And I think that's something that I want people to feel within the context of worship, that the word of God looks us directly in the eyes and speaks to us, it warns us, it encourages us, it exhorts us, and it says, Today, if you will hear his voice, you don't want to become dull to that word. And so, one of my concerns here is that the word always retains that salience and that force. And my concern then is that we allow the context of the liturgy to be one in which that word is primarily exhortational, primarily something that addresses us with the force of the truth of the gospel, and whatever stage of development we're at, that should hit.
SPEAKER_02That's great. You mentioned that any stage of development, and earlier on you sort of said uh that the direct address can be to the children as well. So you're anticipating in these sermons that children are staying within the gathered worship of the people and they're not going out to their own age-appropriate teaching uh sort of after 15 minutes of uh uh of uh hymn prayer sandwich. Um how do you think we've got to the stage in which we are putting the children out into age appropriate groups after 15 minutes of of of the service?
SPEAKER_03What why do you think we've got there? I think part of it is first of all, the sermon is long. The sermon is intellectually taxing, and I think this is also something that leads to a segregation between churches. That increasingly you have the fact that you go to a church that is pitched at your intellectual level. If you're a university graduate, you want something that is more expositional and whatever. But a lot of this is about actually hitting you at your intellectual level. And that I think is a very unfortunate way to divide the church. Ideally, we want a church that brings together people from all different intellectual backgrounds, that allows children and their parents to sit together and that enables children to be participants in the worship. I think this is one of the benefits of a more interactive participatory liturgy where there's a lot more standing when we're kneeling down at key points, where we're saying the words and we're um confessing our faith with the words of the creed, we're praying the Lord's Prayer together, we're singing the hymns, and there's there's always activity going on. And that one period where you're primarily being addressed from the front is only about 10 to 15 minutes in length, and it is also very much addressed to you. It's not a speech that's about the text, but not really pointed at you. And so I think that is a key factor. I think also just generally we have made our churches less hospitable places for kids and our meetings. And I think one of my concerns here that I think a lot of people were missing is that I want us to have a sense of the many different aspects of church life that can get missed out if we're just focusing upon the sermon as the primary thing that has to serve all of our formative needs. Yeah, I think that's a good thing. What we need is kind of meeting together. It's the universal tool, and and as a result, it does nothing, not to blame the Swiss Army knives. I don't think they're this is true about them, but um, it does none of the things that it's supposed to do very well because it's trying to do everything. Yeah, and what I would love for us to do is to have contexts where we are meeting together regularly to eat every Sunday. Yeah, and we have contexts where within that gathering together, we are having catechesis or instruction in the faith, and then we have the formal liturgy as part of that larger whole. And so I suggested, for instance, the situation where the whole church, and this is it's expected, this is part of what it means to assemble together, not just the formal liturgy, but the meal that we eat together, the time that we spend in catechesis. This is something that many traditions do and recognize. And it was interesting seeing some of the responses to my thread and saying, we Lutherans do this all the time, or the Orthodox have added this extra time of catechesis so that there's not the same weight placed upon the sermon. And all these sorts of things are being explored by other traditions. And I think the concern for the word of God that many people have in response to the idea of a shortened sermon is the exact right instinct. We need to be concerned to have more of the word of God, but we need to consider the ways in which scripture addresses us in different forms. And the more that we focused upon the sermon, I think the more we've lost the participatory liturgy, the more that we've lost the public reading of scripture, the more that we've lost the singing of psalms, the more that we've lost the context of actually just fellowshipping together in around a meal, or the times of catechesis that are just focused on catechesis. And I think catechesis works best for it's a more interactive dialogical setting. And I think this is also something that we see in the practice of the earliest church, that the sermon does not have the same weight that it has for us as the universal tool of Christian catechesis and instruction.
SPEAKER_02If uh if he's leaving the the banks of the Trent, he's going to the boss for us, he's going to become a uh uh Eastern Orthodox. Byzantine Glenn. Yes. Recently you've been spotted crossing the Tiber. And there are physically, yes. That you are um you've got um your Lutheran adjacent. Right. Crypto Crypto-Lutheran. Crypto-Lutheran what's going on from your point of view on this.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. No, I mean, as as Alistair said, that there are so many traditions that um for which this is not news, and and there are so many charismatic traditions as well for which this is this is not news, in in especially with the the having the meal together and all that kind of stuff. There are Baptist circles in which this is not news. Spurgeon used to have two bites at the cherry on a Sunday. We only remember his more homiletical stuff. He he actually used to spend quite a quite a lot of time in the in the service, sort of going through the passage and doing the exposition that everyone else who thinks Spurgeon is their hero, that's all we do in terms of our preaching. And he he considered that just the kind of the warm-up on the on on the you know the side of the pitch. And then he he did his actual, you know, so he wasn't doing the Swiss Army knife thing either. Interestingly, all that expos expositional stuff has kind of been lost to us. All we remember is his more homiletical stuff. Um, so it's it's it's a thing that is in so many different church traditions. And so I just I I I guess what one question I've got for Alistair is you you set out a lovely um sort of three-hour block, um, a hypothetical three-hour block. Is this attainable? Where we have age-appropriate Sunday school, um, and we have an hour-long service, let's say, ish, and we have an hour to eat together. There's there's a lovely three-hour block on a Sunday. Are you also along with that um saying um we therefore don't need midweek Bible study groups? We don't need um which if if you are saying that, I I welcome, I welcome your proposal.
SPEAKER_03I think first of all, we just need to acknowledge the realistic um fact that most people are not going to be attending midweek. And so if we're having a lot of expectation upon people midweek, um we're just going to have maybe half the number that we'd have on a Sunday morning. So ideally, we want to put more weight upon the times when people are all together. And there are a number of things that will get missed out in the life of the church if we shift um a lot of catechesis to midweek, corporate prayer, a number of things that really should be part, I think, of our regular Sunday meeting, the primary gathering and assembly of the people of God. So those midweek meetings can have their place. But I think if we are thinking about things that are essential to the life of the church, ideally we want to do those at the primary gathering. And my concern is that those have tended to get squeezed out of that primary gathering. They've been parceled off to other parts of the week and other services, which has multiplied services beyond reason, I think, in many contexts. It's led to a situation where many people just won't be attending those or getting any of those things as a result. It's also, I think, downplayed some of the ways in which we need to serve our own families and our own selves in these areas. We need to spend time in personal devotion and family devotion. We need to spend time meditating upon scripture more generally. And so, what one of my concerns throughout my ministry has been to actually produce material to encourage personal devotion and family devotion. This is really what my focus is. I'm not a pastor, I'm not someone who's working in that regular church um preaching context. I'm encouraging people to engage with the word in a broader context throughout their days. And now what I think that we have the opportunity to do is to create space for a richer understanding of scripture within the life of the church and a richer understanding of the church within our lives. And so my hope is that we first of all enrich and make the Sunday morning service a bit more variegated. So we spend real time together, we really get to know each other, the bonds of community are really forged, and we spend time in an active engagement with the word, and with the word in active engagement with us. We have contexts that are most conducive, I think, to understanding where if we're going to be instructed, we have more dialogic um question and answers, we have conversations talking through the actual exegesis of a passage, people doing it on the spot. Now, this is one thing that I found very helpful in um contexts of teaching, where people get together and as a group interpret a passage and there's conversation about it, there's questions, there's pushback. And people through that, I think, learn a lot more about the process of interpretation than they do just being addressed in a sort of lecture format. And so my hope is ideally to emphasize the Sunday morning gathering as the primary context. Now, some other churches, as you mentioned, Spurgeon and others, having an extra meeting on a Sunday, extra meetings during the week. I don't think we should put too much weight upon that. That's a possibility for some churches. Most churches realistically will not have people come out for all of those extra services. But if they extended their time on a Sunday morning, they could have the whole congregation or the majority of the congregation for a long period of time and could really do something effective with that.
SPEAKER_02I think that's a great point with the you know regards to the concept of the Swiss Army Knife sermon. Now, is there a the the challenge that could be put back at you is to say, well, hold on, are you not now making Sundays the Swiss Army Knife of the Christian life? Because now they have to do everything that your midweek groups are doing. But I think what I'm hearing you say is is that the family, the role of the household and the role of for the individual, and in a much less formal way, is is liberated by the the having fewer midweek meetings. Is that the sort of thing you're suggesting?
SPEAKER_03I think that would follow from it. I think um part of my concern is that the church can become a context that prevents people from gaining the ability to do these things for themselves. Much of what we want to do is to teach people to read the scripture for themselves, to engage in that task of um not just be exposited to, but to actually go through a text and learn good questions to ask, to learn how to recognize connections between things or to follow the train of a narrative all the way through the gospels, whatever it is. And I do not think that we well prepare people for that. And a sermon is not going to do that, yeah, a sermon is not going to teach you how to do personal devotions or family devotions well, but I think if we had times of um catechesis and exegesis in dedicated slots on the Sunday morning, we could actually teach people that in a format that would be quite applicable and quite effective. And so my hope is that we gain a number of different um forms of engagement with the text and equip people for further um forms of engagement that they can actually do that in their own time. And this is something I think we've lost very much. The ability to meditate upon scripture, and so much of the word of scripture within our services is just the springboard for the actual sermon. We have the text and we read that out, and then now those words of scripture are immediately followed by our words. Ideally, I think we should be having more public reading of scripture. We should also be teaching people the art of meditating upon scripture, and that is something that I think can really be learnt within an interactive dialogical context of actual study of the text as a community.
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SPEAKER_02Yeah, I I think that's an interesting point about the the ways in which we're engaging. And I did some work when I first started a job in Children's and Youth Ministry of looking at the different uh modes of engagement that children had in a Sunday school group and that they would have when they came into the main worship service. So the big challenge everyone always had was what do you do with your 13, 14-year-olds who aren't going into their Sunday school group and yet they're now coming into the service? And what we found was they were going from a highly individuated engagement, personal interaction, a game, a craft, you're working on it yourself, you're filling in your worksheet, you're contributing to a conversation to suddenly incredibly corporate, passive, you're listening, you're not sort of contributing in that way because the Bible teaching was being done in either the Sunday school group or in the sermon. And so the question was how do you how do you help children not to find it such a crazy moving of the goalposts when they go from oh your Sunday school group is all about personal interaction, there's a quiz, there's some questions, there's a little game and a craft, and suddenly now shut up and listen. Because you can take notes, um, but that's about all that's going to be involved. Um I just want to go back to the the question of uh formative. Um the idea that worship should be forming the congregation and forming a sort of Christian practice for people, and the way in which that relates to a much more sort of ergonomic accommodation to where people are at, and the sense that, well, what can people cope with? How how do either of you two see that relationship in terms of the sermon, in terms of the Sunday morning? Should it be formative or should it be an accommodation to the people?
SPEAKER_04Well, I guess I guess the the idea of a stand-up, sit-down, kneel-down worship service sounds like it is not ergonomic. It sounds like it wouldn't fit kids, and yet kids spend their whole time like in incredibly active, embodied, doing stuff with their bodies the entire time. So I think we've got a kind of a wrong, a wrong idea, really, of what children will respond to, what what children will kind of and and there's something also very democratizing about everybody doing it. Stand up, sit down, sing the psalms together. Um I I I think we are not fully aware, especially in sort of more low church settings, where we're not really aware of what children are capable of because we have segregated them for so long. And I think in my experience of churches that do integrated Sunday worship with with everybody and together, um the kids love those bits more more than you know, certainly that because obviously we have actually just dulled ourselves with a a kind of a worship that is just for usually tertiary educated, you know, middle class listeners, lecture hearers. And so that's that's what we think will will kind of uh be true across the board. Whereas kids actually like learning to s sing psalms and maybe even learning to sing in harmony. Let's let's give that a go. They're they're far more up for that. You know, you you get to a certain age where kids stop singing. It's a it's a great tragedy, isn't it? And they and they they stop enjoying that kind of stuff. But actually that the all age is served, I think, by the more formative liturgical stuff, I would say.
SPEAKER_03I think there's also a big difference. That example of singing, I think, is important here. There's a big difference between the sort of liturgy that we're often uh used to in a low church context where it's very passive, and there's less of a sense of actually engaging in an activity together. And I think that can be seen in singing. There's very little sense that we might need to practice this to become good at it, singing together. What would it mean to learn how to sing in harmony, to read music, to um learn the range of church music and the ways in which it can be performed best to actually have musical direction and learn how to follow that? Now, there are congregations that do that, and certainly in the past, that was more expected that there would be this musical literacy to go along with a theological and scriptural liturgy that literacy. But I think within our context, it's not something that's expected to the same degree, and we've really lost as a result because our music becomes something more that we consume, we're just listening to it, or we're singing along, but without truly engaging in a corporate act of singing where we're truly engaged and we're trying to do something as a group that is glorious and good, directed towards the Lord in worship. And so there's less of a sense of worship as just going along with these things. I think we find the same thing in the public reading of scripture. So much public reading of scripture is just as you might read any text. There's less of a sense that this is an act of worship that should be practiced and done with excellence. It's something that doesn't just happen. We can all read, but this isn't just reading aloud. This is something that involves understanding and study of the text and thinking about where do I put the emphasis? How do I communicate the meaning of this text in my act of reading it out? And that sense of sort of passive just going along is something that has infected a lot of our attitude to worship, and I think as a result, to the word of God. And my hope is that we can inject a lot more of a sense of agency to us within our worship. First of all, being addressed and constantly having this liturgy of address to us that the Lord summons us to his presence. The Lord calls us to confess our sins, he declares the forgiveness of our sins to us. And as we move through it, there's this constant interaction. And you can never just sit down and passively let this wash over you. You're always finding the word is looking you in the eyes and calling you to action and response. And that leads to, I think, context of communion, where we're eating together with each other and in the presence of the Lord as our host in our midst, and then to ascending out into the world to love and to serve him. Now, I think where that is being practiced, I think kids will just naturally be more engaged because they're able to do something. They're not just being asked to sit still and be passive, and they're doing something that the adults around them are doing. And so there's a sense of the importance of this. This is a solemn occasion, but not solemn in a sort of serious and glum sense, but solemn as in a weighty thing. This is something that has weight and significance, and they can be truly involved, and we are doing whatever we can to make sure that they are full participants. Now, where that is the case and where it's occurring within a context where they're also eating with us, and we're having this fellowship meal afterwards, and they get to spend time with the other kids, and there's suitable catechesis for them earlier on. I think they feel part of the event in a way that they don't when there's a long time of preaching that they can't understand, and they're just having to sit still, and it becomes this inbuilt frustration that they have to work out at a later point in their lives that actually preaching might have something of benefit to them. And so, ideally, I want to um protect kids from that built-up aversion to and being becoming bored with church that I think often results from this preaching-centric approach.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I just want to go back to one of the things you were saying about um worship and the sense of almost kind of rehearsal, okay, and practice and and particularly when it comes to singing or or the reading of the word. Does that this is slightly uh digging the ribs, but does practicing this worship not detract? Take away from the integrity of the expression of love and desire by the fact it's it's it's all been rather rehearsed.
SPEAKER_04I wouldn't say rehearsed, I would say it is performed, and maybe we have an allergic reaction to that word because it sounds affected to be performing as a preacher. You know, I are you expecting the word to be performative and you're wanting the word to do something to people? Are you wanting your singing to one another to do something to one another? Um, certainly, do you think that as you eat bread and wine you're actually participating in the body and blood of Christ and that there is a real presence there? And and I think so much of this we're we're circling around an issue of memorialism that actually a very light view of the sacraments is that the sacraments are there to help us to remember Jesus as opposed to uh feast on him, as opposed to be acted upon by him in in a very tangible sort of sense. And I I think all of worship should should have that sense. So it's not a rehearsal in terms of going through the motions, although there are motions that have been given to us that are good for us to go through as embodied creatures. And if I shake you by the hand when we first meet, um I'm not going through the motions as I am performing what it means to be an embodied person meeting you. Um, and so yeah, I wouldn't I wouldn't say it's rehearsal as as much as it is, but there is something that we are performing together, and Christ is really present in our midst, and the worship is actually doing something. And so much maybe maybe memorialism is one of the sort of the the great meta sort of theologies that's that's um stymieing us. Um maybe it's just there are middle class circles in which we are we are just used to being consumers, we're just used to listening to lectures anyway, but there's a passivity that's going on in in all of this. And so actually, rehearsal for that reason might not might not be a very good word at all, but but certainly performance is, and certainly real presence definitely is.
SPEAKER_03And I think that's one of the things that if you're going to get a group of people to act in concert with each other, there needs to be some sort of set form. And the fact that we have set forms of words, set forms of actions, etc., enables us to truly and authentically and freely engage in corporate activity. And so there's a sense of the fluidity of common action that is truly liberating if you have the experience of being part of an orchestra, for instance, performing just a wonderful piece together. It's not something that you could perform without having some form of direction and orchestration, without having common music that you're working. I mean, we talk about singing from the same hymn sheet, but it's important to have these sorts of structures in order to free us to all be participants together. And so you also it gives us freedom as individuals. So I find if I'm praying the words of a psalm, I'm not composing and praying simultaneously. I'm able to actually follow the movement of the psalm in its expression of the psalmist's heart to God and offer my heart with the heart of the psalmist. And so it's an authentic expression of my heart, and it enables me to do that in some ways more freely than I would if I were trying to compose a prayer on the spot. And it also is something that enables us, I think, to have the very best expressions of these things. There are words that the psalmist gives to the gift of his heart to the Lord and the expression of the concerns and sorrows and fears of his heart that I don't have. And yet, when I'm steeped in the language of the psalmist, that is something that becomes part of me too. And so the practice of memorizing scripture, the practice of meditating upon scripture is very much about making that part of us. And I think we've tended to neglect that, we've tended to lose sight of just the benefits of having scripture as part of our the deep channels of thought and word that we build up over time. And so naturally, when I'm feeling concerned, the words of the 23rd Psalm would naturally come to mind. Or if I'm thinking about the weightiness of an endeavor that I'm engaging in and the degree to which things are of at the pleasure of the Lord's providence, and we really depend upon these things, and maybe the words of Psalm 90 would come to mind, and there's a sense of God's presence and his um supervision in all of our lives, and then it would be something like Psalm 139. There's this constant sense of um this repertoire of responses to the word of God that are given within the word of God itself, and as we've become accustomed to these, as we've rehearsed them, they become part of us. And so it's something that might be done habitually, but it's a habitual form of prayer. Think about the Lord's prayer or the way in which there is something, there are some actions that people do habitually, every time you leave your house to go to work, for instance, saying goodbye to the kids and kissing your wife goodbye. There's there's a habit there, but it's a habit that is deep and important. And if you were to neglect that, very important things would start to weaken. And so I think these sorts of practices enable us to do things in concert, they change us, they give us a sort of second nature that the word is forming within us, and they give us the resources and the repertoire of response in both word and habit to the word of God. And as a result, I think we are greatly enriched by having these sorts of worship that give us the very best of um structures of prayer, the very best structures of confession, etc. And these are generally drawn from words of scripture that are um put together in particular forms that are apt to be heard and remembered and to become part of you. And so if you find someone who's um elderly, who's grown up with this sort of liturgy, the liturgy is part deep of them in their memory. They may forget all these other things, but that liturgy is part of them, yeah, and in the same way it should be part of us.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so basically, there is no place for rampant expressive individualism. Okay. Um, but Glenn, how does this relate to uh a theme verse for Speak Life, Matthew 12, 34? From the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. Where is it, where is there that sense of your personal integrity of personal expression and desire? Is there a place for that? Or or or ought we to be much more focused, I think, as as Alice is saying, on using the very words we've been given in scripture as formative for our emotional life?
SPEAKER_04Well, you you end up having to invent liturgies if you don't actually have one. So it it's not a it's not a case of um we can all just be expressive individualists together, because there is no together without a mob will eventually come up with a slogan and they'll they'll you know, no justice, no peace, or they'll they'll come up with something. Yeah and they'll they'll shout that at the top of their lungs and they'll mean it, and they'll mean it a heck of a lot, even though they're just going through motions at that point. And and you know, as Alistair says, you you kiss your wife goodbye, that's you know, oh, same as yesterday. Come on, come up with something new. Well, come if what give her a Chinese burnt? Like what are you gonna what are you gonna do to come up with something new? Yeah. Um yeah, there are there are it's is it going through the motions? Well, there are motions that have been given to us, and I think the a heart-led anthropology, which which we kind of have, what the heart loves, the will chooses, and the mind justifies, as Ashley Null kind of summarized Cranmer's anthropology. Um, well, Cranmer believed that, you know, Almighty God, unto whom all hearts be open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets be hid, cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit that we may perfectly love thee and worthily magnify thy holy name. Why do I know that? Right? Um, because I've grown up with it, because it's it's and think of the heartiness of that kind of a prayer, and think of what it's done to form millions of people down through the ages and focus us Sunday by Sunday on the heart. You know, Alistair was was mentioning um Psalm 95 about, you know, um, today if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts. Well my my goodness. I mean, like morning prayer is you begin with that. Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts. It's it's something that pretty much like every day, if you're praying through the prayer book, you're being challenged again and again. Do not harden your heart again. And I need to be reminded not to harden my heart again and again and again. I need to be brought up by the liturgy. I need to be brought up by these familiar words. But the familiar words are not familiar words of simply going through the motions. They are Almighty God, unto whom all hearts be open, all desires learned from whom no secrets are hidden. So absolutely it's gotta it's gotta be a heart-driven anthropology. But the enemy that the enemy of that is not liturgy, the enemy of that is not structure. You know, you you learn you learn your scales as a musician so that you can play a piece. So that you eventually you can improvise, but you've got to be really good to improvise. You've got to have done a lot of rudiments first to be able to you know break out of that and and express yourself.
SPEAKER_03Which brings me to what's always that danger when when you're having a sort of set liturgy, you have that feeling, give me some more information, some different information. But the point is not so much information, it's giving you habitual, familiar words that you can hold on to those words. Those words can become part of you, and those words can form you. And over time, your heart overflows in words that have been formed by those words that you have taken into you. I think this is a common theme that we see within scripture that the word needs to be taken in first of all by hearing, and then by meditating upon, by memorizing, by deeply reflecting upon. And then that word comes out as a result. And so we see it in the um the Psalms again and again. Blesses the man who walks and observes the law in these outward ways and manages his company, but then he meditates on the law of God, and there's this constant feeding upon it, like a tree by a brook. And then we have that description, I think, being lived out in a far more pronounced way in the prophets that take the word into themselves, Ezekiel eating the book. That word is now a transformative living reality that he has to embody in the way that he performs some of his prophetic signs. And then he has to speak forth with courage the word of the Lord addressed to a rebellious people. And I think that that is the relationship we're supposed to have with the word. And I often give this illustration of the way that we've come to see the word as a very passive thing that we take information from and have lost sight of other aspects of it. So if you were to ask someone what is a Shakespearean play, they might pull down Hamlet from a shelf and say, that book, that's Hamlet. But another way to think about is to point someone to the stage and the actors performing Hamlet upon a stage and using the script and living out and acting out the script and say, that's Hamlet. And in the same way within the life of the church, the living, active character of the word of God, and something, the way that the word of God conscripts the people of God, and in conscripting the people of God, forms them into a living expression of the word. We are the primary vehicle of the scriptures, and that which gives them their unity as the object of the Lord's revelation and the addressees of the Lord's Word. If we think about it, there was no single Bible until centuries after um after the New Testament was written. What there were were many different scriptures, many different books that were joined together by their performance and their reading and their um people submitting to these within the life of the church. As it were, the vehicle of the text was not a single volume, it was the community of people that were formed by these texts that recognized this is the authoritative word of the Lord addressed to us in our situation, in our place and time, and which authorizes us to act in terms of this word and to be those who are transformed by it. And this is a vision that I think we find as a deep theological vision throughout scripture, how the word forms us and we take the word into us, we're transformed by it. And you see that, for instance, in the description of the people of God as then as an epistle of Christ, or the way in which we're told in the new covenant the law of God is written upon our hearts. So it's now lived out in a different way. And the word of God is all about forming that and leading to that within us. And if our engagement with it is primarily informational, I think we've lost something of the power of this word and the people who talk about long sermons, generally what they are animated by is a deep conviction about the importance of the word of God. And I want to say, Amen, I completely agree with that, but I want to lean in a bit further and let's think about how taking the full weight of scripture and allowing that to have its impress upon our lives, what that might look like, and what would be a form of service that would be more conducive for that in the life of our communities.
SPEAKER_02So we are inescapably sacramental, as we've already discussed on uh a previous speakeasy, in which I said the tequila slama was the secular communion. Um we are inescapably liturgical. We all we it's not a question of of whether you'll have liturgy or not, it's just a question of whether you have it. And it's we're we're inescapably catechetical. Okay. Okay. It's a great word to say, isn't it? Catechetical. Um and in terms of catechesis, which you've obviously mentioned a few times, um let you mention you went back to to preaching uh just there to sort of say you really are you're you're thrilled by people who want to see the word of God, uh, really um uh really given a great place within the life of the people of God, you want the proclamation of Christ to be kind of central. I just want to ask, just as we kind of wrap things up, just in terms of medium and message, and in terms of the you said that the preaching was a particular rhetorical event and a fifteen a ten, fifteen minute minute sermon um is is a particular small chunk of information or of or of exhortation compared with uh the final episode of season four of Stranger Things, which was two and a half hours long. Now, if our congregations are used to paying that much attention, can be that well engaged for hours in the episodes of uh of a seasons-long television program, are we not shortchanging them by saying it's it ought to be 15-20 minutes?
SPEAKER_03Well, I think the Duffer brothers probably need to realize the limits of TV as well. But um, yeah, but on that front, I think I am very much in favor of lengthy forms of engagement with the word of God as a community. My concern is that the sermon is not the best mode for that, okay, and that the sermon, by being made treated as the mode for that, it's been prevented from actually serving the primary purpose that the sermon should be performing. And what would be better would be having dedicated times of catechesis where there's more interaction, dialogue, time for questions, there is a lot more interaction between different people. I think that gives a different dynamic than having an authoritative voice from front delivering a sort of monologue on the text. It gives you a context where you can talk through your process of understanding a passage differently than you would typically find within a sermon. And on the other hand, the sermon loses its power as an authority, authoritative form of speech when it's engaging in the nitty-gritty of the exegesis of the passage. There's a sort of negotiation between those two things, and it ends up often struggling to do either well because it's trying to do things that aren't necessarily meshing as effectively as they could do. So, my ideal would be having situations where we are actually engaging in long sessions of thinking and reading through texts together, and that would be, for instance, I mean, there are many ways you could do this, but I think within the early church, we often see that sort of reasoning in the synagogues. And I suspect what happened was that there would be people who would read out a particular passage, and then Paul and someone else would discuss that passage and talk through it, and they would ask questions and dispute, and then people would ask questions from the congregation, and there would be interaction and conversation, and there would be a less formal context and a far more um effective pedagogical setting, I think, for taking lots of information in. I mean, I found in my own experience the best way to take information in is to get used to expressing things outwardly. So whether that's writing or speaking or formulating a question, whatever it is, when you get people engaged and expect them to listen in order to participate, you'll find there's a greater level of understanding as a result of that form than there would be if people were just listening to a long monologue to which they had no form of direct interaction or response. If you ask people what they remember from an interactive form of catechesis spread over an hour and a half, and what they remember from last week's sermon, I suspect you would find more from the former than the latter, because the former engages them in a different way. And so the engagement that I want to see in sermons a lot more is speaking to the heart and conscience with an authoritative voice of the word of God, proclaiming the gospel and its truth and the truth of Christ and the claims that God has upon our lives. And that engages people, it engages people with a word of authority, uh word of authority. But the sort of catechesis and exposition that is best done in an engaging setting of another type, where people have time for questions, interaction, where there's dialogue even within the presentation of the material. And that I think is something that the church has always had context within which these things take place, and it's generally not been the sermon, yeah, historically. And I think for us it has been. We've lost out as a result.
SPEAKER_02And and I mean, we all do have sort of TikTok attention spans now, and so even if there were to be direct addresses, um I was reading recently about Abraham Lincoln's debates that he used to have before he became president of the United States, in which the man he was debating would speak for an hour and a half, he would then speak for an hour, and then the man would get an opportunity for half an hour response to that response. And then and you talk about people sitting listening maybe for seven hours worth of tightly argued uh political discussion and argumentation. Now, I think there is a point at which we've you know, there are forms of dialogue on the internet, obviously YouTube long-form content being one of them, in which these things are opened up. Um and I just wonder whether what your feeling, Glenn, is about the future of this kind of dialogue online in churches, you know, the the pedagogical terms that that are going to be using. What are you hopeful for the kind of preaching that we're talking about? Are you hopeful for um discourse to be to be done done well on the internet? We're talking about a Twitter storm as well.
SPEAKER_04Oh yeah, I mean uh and people online can have a two and a half hour, you know, final episode of Stranger Things and they and they can listen to Joe Rogan, you know, uh have a dialogical conversation. They can they can watch Jordan Peterson you know walk up and down um on a stage and and talk about Genesis for two and a half hours. So uh I I think people can be engaged in these ways. It's just You know, I uh uh it should the sermon be. But the sermon's like grace, you know, gra grace is the prelude to the meal. Don't say grace for thirty-five minutes. Then it's getting cold. I think that's that's kinda and and and again it's you know, I think I think our whole conversation with with Alistair has has kind of set it in its proper um context, which is the whole of God's people on the Lord's Day in the in the whole of worship. And and I think in in that context, a directed a directed word is what we need. And I think we probably having said that um dinner is getting cold on the table uh at the Scrivener house as well.
SPEAKER_02So three quick questions then. We're talking about preaching. Uh Alistair, notes or no notes.
SPEAKER_03I think it's good to be able to do either.
SPEAKER_02Yes or no? I'm gonna push you for an answer.
SPEAKER_03Um have a very limited set of notes as a crutch to fall back on if something goes wrong, to give you the confidence to go without notes.
SPEAKER_02Okay, alright. He's bottled that one. Glenn, uh PowerPoint or no PowerPoint? It's fine. It's it it's immaterial, but it's fine. Again, no one's taking a strong view on this. Lectin. You're no, aren't you? You're you're I'm no PowerPoint. Massive no, he's a massive no. Really don't like PowerPoint. Um Lecten or Pulpit. What's your preference? Um I would prefer just a raised chair. Okay, a raised chair.
SPEAKER_03Sitting in Moses. He's just sat down to teach.
SPEAKER_02All right. He wants to make those pronouncements. Well, we're very glad that you've been able to join us, uh, Alistair. Thank you so much. And uh yes, we wish you all the best with all the rest of the uh Twitter storms you're planning on starting over the next couple of months.
SPEAKER_04How can people uh catch up with all your your video commentaries, Alistair?
SPEAKER_03So I have uh um podcast blog. Um if you go to Alistair Adversario, that's my main blog. If you go to Adversaria Podcast, there are links to every podcast I deliver there. I also have a YouTube channel and I have a SoundCloud channel, and I've done a complete, almost complete series every single chapter of the Bible with biblical reflection. And so I'm very much about understanding the podcast, even if I'm for shorter sermons. Very good.
SPEAKER_04And it's awesome. So go go and uh subscribe to Alistair's channel now. Yeah, personally.
SPEAKER_02Do that and uh join us again next time we put something up on this channel. Uh, that is goodbye from me, Nate Morganlock, and goodbye from me, Glenn Scrivener. Cheerio. Bye-bye, bye-bye.
SPEAKER_01Well, there we go. That is the end of the show. I probably should have said this in the intro, but my name is Thomas Thoroughgood. I work at Speak Life, and I'm always delighted to have the privilege to do these intros and outros for the Speak Life podcast. We do pray that our content is a blessing to you, whoever you are, wherever you're listening to this. We know we have listeners on every continent apart from Antarctica. So if you know of anyone who could potentially help the Speak Life podcast be listened to by someone on Antarctica, let us know. Or just go ahead and share it with them. One thing I do have to draw to your attention, on the 3rd of September, Glenn Scrivener, who you heard a bit in this episode, uh Speak Life director, he is doing a discussion with Tom Holland, not Spider-Man, the historian Tom Holland, and Paul Vanderclay at Oak Hill. Uh that'll be on the 3rd of September. So more details to follow on that, but just to pique your interest in that, do subscribe to the Speak Life podcast if you haven't already. Do check out our YouTube videos if you want to see the visuals that accompany these discussions, and if you want to check out our other things that we do at Speak Life. But I think that's all from me. God bless. Thank you so much for listening, and we will be back next week.