Faith Works 5-2-20

Faith Works 5-2-20

Jeff Gill

 

Preaching and distancing

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Trend lines and hospitalizations and health department guidelines . . .

I tweeted not long ago "we can permanently retire now the phrase 'they didn't teach me about this in seminary' I think."

That kind of viewpoint has really always been off the mark. Seminary is there to build the foundations, of Biblical competency and analytical understanding and usually some basic preaching and teaching tools. A classic seminary word is "hermeneutics," which I can almost guarantee you won't run into outside of a seminary class (in a building or online).

 

It comes, though, with an interesting pedigree: hermeneutics derives from Hermes, or to the Roman pantheon Mercury, the messenger of Olympus carrying news from the divine occupants of the above world to the mortals in this one. Hermeneutics is the study of how a message is best delivered, and has both a secular and sacred connotation.

 

For most people, it's basic preaching they want to know we're learning about. When a new minister is coming, one of the first questions is "can he preach?" Women in ministry have found over the last few generations of their arrival on the scene in many church communities that they struggle with the twin barrier of people asking "can she preach?" and the skepticism among some (women and men) about whether females can bring a message from God to the congregation.

 

Well, when people say they don't believe in women preachers my answer is usually just "I've seen them." To the puzzled look I can get back at that I'll add "You say you don't believe in them, but I've heard the word preached by women, so it's not a matter of belief, but of practice." Regardless, it's a fearful thing for anyone, male or female, to stand before a congregation and bring from God a message for humankind.

 

In a pulpit. In a sanctuary. In a place where predecessor preachers have stood, and in what church is there not some earlier minister under whom all was well and everything was marvelous? Yes, in their place, you stand and deliver. With Elijah and John the Baptist behind you, and the realm of Christ before you, when it's time for preaching you gird up your loins and call on the Holy Spirit and you preach. It's awesome and humbling and a little terrifying, but it's been done before and you (hopefully) have been trained and you can do it, too.

 

And then you have your laptop on your dining room table with your own foolish face staring back at you, with a small green light above to tell you it's recording. There is no one else in the room – well, you and the Lord God Almighty, as always – but there is for your hermeneutic exercise no one else as an audience, other than through the tiny aperture, the miniscule sieve of a computer camera, and the potential future audience which may or may not click on the link to YouTube or Facebook or your website's streaming video window (oh, your church has a webmaster, cool), but right now it's just you and your message and a hard piece of glass wrapped in aluminum, reflecting your own visage back at you as you speak.

 

No, they did not tell you how to deal with this in seminary or Bible college or diaconal training or anywhere. Not last year or fifty years ago.

 

Full disclosure: I have a wonderfully unfair advantage in a few small ways. I've gotten to stand up in front of cameras with red lights overhead, and had a floor director point at me and whisper "four, three, two" then mouth "one" silently, and point, grimly, at my foolish face. At which point, you speak or die. Metaphorically, but it feels real if you've ever been in that position. Good people freeze up on live TV. It's unnatural. It's weird.

 

The weirdness is what I'm writing about. If you have a preacher who is doing this for the first time these last few weeks, be kind. It's not something there's any training for, and experience in the pulpit suddenly is useless. The sermon is there, and the Word still lives and breathes, but delivering that message is a very different hermeneutic exercise than standing in front of ten or a hundred or a thousand.

 

Some have not been able to make the technology work, and I pray you show them compassion. This is hard in a way few of us anticipated. Some are struggling, and I honor them for even trying. Because no, they did not teach any of us how to do . . . this. Whatever this is!

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he's working through some video editing and uploading issues himself. Tell him what you think works for preaching in an age of coronavirus at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.