Preaching and the confusion of terms

The notion of preaching as it has come to be understood and practiced in evangelical pulpits is beset by terminological and theological confusions. Peter Adam defines preaching as ‘the explanation and application of the Word in the assemble congregation of Christ’. That definition certainly reflects current practice. Yet it is hard to find a direct comparison between what we can see practised in the New Testament - and the terminology that was used to describe it – and what we know as ‘preaching’ in the churches of the Sydney diocese and elsewhere. There is certainly a well-established tradition of preaching as a sustained monologue from a trained pastor in the setting of a church service. This tradition may be a proper development from the New Testament experience, but it is hard to see how it directly compares to what happened in the early churches.

Characteristically, Donald Robinson worked on the words. In an unpublished paper read at the Autumn School of Theology held at Moore College in 1966, Robinson pointed out that there finds three fairly clearly distinct activities by which the Word of God is conveyed in the New Testament. There is the handing on, or teaching, of the paradosis or tradition. There was the activity of prophecy, a highly valued gift in which exhortations and encouragements were delivered. And then there was the preaching of the gospel to those outside the church: ‘the very spearhead of God’s overture to lost mankind’.

The conventional ‘sermon’ (literally ‘a word’) is usually a mixture of all three of these things in various proportions. A preacher characteristically preaches the gospel, passes on the faith ‘once delivered to all the saints’, and prophesies (in the sense that Donald Robinson means it here). Yet it would also be the case that these activities are not restricted to formal occasions. The ministry of the Word, Sydney Anglicans would want to emphasise, can take place mutually and informally among Christians. Those without office in the church are invited to join in this mutual Word ministry. Romans 15:14 calls on Christians to ‘instruct one another’, and is confident of the capability of any Christian in the Spirit to perform this role. The day of Pentecost, after all, was declared by Peter to by the fulfilment of the prophecy of Joel that the Spirit would be poured out on young men and women such that prophecy would no longer be a gift restricted to a few carefully designated individuals.

While there is a kind of democratisation of this ministry of the word, there is also in practice the sense in which ‘preaching’ is connected to a particular ‘office’ and is the work of a particular designated individual, the preacher. The sermon that is preached by this person is usually given the bulk of the time in a church service. It is somewhat confusing to use ‘preaching’ language to describe the informal encouragements and exhortations that occur between Christians. Furthermore, there is no need for a sense of embarrassment that giving this particular person’s Word ministry pride of place contradicts the Reformation notion of ‘priesthood of all believers’. Far better to use the label ‘ministry of the word’ to describe that general activity and to reserve ‘preaching’ for the specific, formal monologue in the church meeting.

It is extremely useful to have the terminology of the New Testament clarified and shown that it doesn’t quite fit with today’s practice of preaching. This helps us to be appropriately flexible about our customs. But it is entirely appropriate that this traditional practice has developed as a way of receiving the New Testament material rather than as a way of expressing it exactly. Returning to the primitive terminology in order to clear away the accretions of traditional practice, as if in that terminology was indicator of normativity to be found, is a dubious process. It is doubtful whether a coherent or consistent answer could be found. The New Testament terminology is somewhat loose and overlapping. The data is too sketchy. Enormous effort has been put into trying to define what ‘prophecy’ and ‘teaching’ and ‘preaching’ actually mean, on the assumption that the usage of these terms by the New Testament church reflects a normative practice. I not at all convinced that this is a productive line of inquiry. ‘Preaching’ as we know it now is an activity of the church which is entirely in keeping with the kind of church it has learnt to be from reading the New Testament – even if it is not exactly what the churches of the New Testament were doing when they met.