The Lausanne Global Conversation is on the World Wide Open Network
作者: Krish Kandiah
日期: 26.06.2010
Category: 领袖培训
John Piper was interviewed this week about his decision to pre-record his sermons and then show them instead of having a live preacher.
Piper explained that because his church had grown so much they now had 3 campuses – spread over a 24 mile strip of a highway in Minnesota. Obviously Piper can’t be at all three campuses simultaneously so he records his sermon the night before at a smaller congregation and they then show that in whichever of the campuses Piper is not in that morning.
Piper explained that he had been wary about doing this because preaching should be “eyeball to eyeball” but this was maybe a B plus (or B minus) solution. Adrian Reynolds rightly asked the question we were all muttering – why don’t you just train up more preachers to which Piper replied that there are plenty of opportunities for others to preach in the church when he is on holiday.
There was a whole queue of people waiting to speak to Piper after his talk so I didn’t get a chance to raise these issues with him directly. Piper explained in the rest of the interview that he likes to spend a lot of time on the internet “showing idiots why they are wrong” so perhaps he might contact me sometime.
There are some strengths to this approach.
1. It recognises that some people have a God given exceptional gift and it seeks to provide the biggest opportunity for its use.
2. It is seeking to “think outside of the box” and effectively utilise new technologies.
3. It allows a group of churches to be “on the same page” by hearing the same message as a point of unity.
4. It is only a degree different from multiple back to back services where the preacher zooms from one to the other – Keller apparently travels to multiple campuses leaving one service when the singing starts after the sermon and arriving just in time for the preaching slot having missed the rest of the service. ( I am happy to be corrected if this is wrong).
But I do have a number of questions:
1. What about the Cult of Personality?
The model effectively says there are no preachers that could possibly take the place of the gifted preacher. In fact its says its better to have a pre-recorded sermon than to have one of these lesser preachers. On this principle – if the preacher doesn’t have to be a) physically present or b) live – why not extrapolate this thinking. If John Piper is that good maybe we should just beam him into all the churches in the UK – we wouldn’t need to employ preachers and use the money and time that goes into sermon preparation into other forms of ministry – it would certainly be more efficient. Or if the preacher doesn’t have to be speaking live – why don’t we just use recordings of preachers from the past – a classic John Stott series or even LLoyd Jones or just have someone read old Whitefield sermons? If as Tim Keller says that global cities all have the same basic culture then we could just show recorded sermons of one pre-recorded preacher in every city. This for me is unacceptable, but the logical consequence of the thinking expressed by Piper. Which leads onto the second problem.
2. What about the lack of 2 way communication?
I believe we need sermons that are going to engage with the people in the room. Being able to speak into the pastoral situation of those that are present. If you know that someone in the congregation is seriously ill, or a wedding is coming up or the town is facing some major changes or a whole gang of newcomers have turned up – then you would want your sermon to adapt to that. Piper’s model encourages preaching to become a prepackaged monologue rather than live communication. There’s no room for the immediate feedback of seeing people getting bored, being moved. Many a preacher will know when God has moved an audience and you need to ditch what you had planned because the Spirit has done something in the congregation. Good communicators know when an illustration is working as you see peoples eyes track you, or their faces light up. Even when preaching a similar sermon in a multi-service event – there will often be a different demographic present in the early service to the later service so you need to hone your illustrations or adapt your application. But none of that is possible if you are not preaching live in the room.
3. What about the lack of relationship between pastor and flock?
One of my questions for the Mega church / Multiple Campus model is if it has unnecessarily and unbiblically separated the Ephesians 4 joining together of Pastor / Teacher? It has instead made teaching into a set piece generalized celebrity monologue. In a megachurch the person preparing the food for the sheep to feed on – does not know the sheep. They are in danger of speaking bland general applications at their audience rather than truth into the lives of people that we have journeyed with through the years. There’s little room for the biblical models of interaction – Jesus often preached in response to a question, or explaining an event that has taken place like a miracle or a lack of a miracle. None of that is possible in the pre-record. But it could also true in Keller model of rushing between multiple services.
4. What about the danger of consumer Church ?
Church becomes a place where I go to get my spiritual fix for the week of singing and preaching. Piper did explain that he thought that preaching was not the most transformational aspect of the church’s life. So the place of small groups becomes more significant – as a friend of mine reminded me of Rick Warren’s dictum – “we need to stop thinking of a church small group and instead think of a church of small groups” but this is still an interesting comment from a man who has given his life to raise up preachers. When asked to justify his reasoning for doing the move he said “we got great feedback” which sounds a lot like a marketing mentality rather than the usual theological explanation we’d expect from Piper.
I must admit I grew up as a huge Piper fan, I can look back at Desiring God as a very influential book on me as an 18 year old. I was uncomfortable with the language of Christian Hedonism then – and am probably more uncomfortable with it now 20 years on. I really enjoyed “Let the Nations be Glad: Piper’s book on mission. But found “Future grace” to be more harm than good to me personally. What I value most about Piper’s ministry is his commitment to expository preaching combined with passionate about emotion-touching charismatic style worship as well as a ministry that shows genuine and practical care for the poor. For conservative evangelicals Piper offered an interesting counterbalance to some of the Sydney Anglicans who were strongly opposed to any kind of church involvement in social justice at the time. Conferences like the Evangelical Ministers Assembly were influential in moving the debates along for conservatives and Tim Keller’s recent rise in popularity has swung the debate firmly towards a more holistic missional approach.
Despite diagreeing on this point - I am still hugely appreciative of his ministry. What do you think?
关键词: preaching, church, leaders, John Piper, video
观点: 12083
评论: 13
推荐: 0
使用条款 | 保密条款 | 洛桑全球对话(LGC)是由World Wide Open制作支持 | World Wide Open是什么？
对话 发表评论
南非
Thanks Bob,
Your comment weighs most among all our efforts to understand and make sense regarding this post.
A matter always has two sides. As 1 John says "Walk in the light as God is in the light...and you will have fellowship with one another".
God bless!
28.11.2010
美国
Some background may be in order. As one who grew up at Bethlehem Baptist, and now in my sixties, I hope I may be seen as qualified to give it.
In the 1950s, when many churches were moving from downtown Minneapolis to the suburbs, my parents and their peers made the decision that Bethlehem would stay downtown. They did this knowing that it would severely constrain how much the church could grow physically. They believed it was important that downtown should not be left without a faithful gospel witness. In the 50+ years since, Bethlehem has repeatedly reaffirmed their commitment.
But what do you do when you are blessed with a gifted preacher? You cannot tear down your barn and build bigger because there isn’t room. You can go somewhere else, but that is exactly what we had decided not to do. You can multiply services and work your pastor to death. Or you can plant other churches. Bethlehem has an aggressive church planting program to do exactly that.
But then, what do you do with the people who just won’t leave? I remember one Sunday morning when John said something on the order of, "Some people think I have too much authority around here. If that was true, when I told you to leave, you’d do it." One church on multiple campuses is not an exercise in personal kingdom building; it’s an effort to find a solution to a problem that just wasn’t going away.
Do not think that John made this decision on his own. The whole church made it. As one who, for medical reasons, was already worshippping via closed-circuit TV, I spoke in support of the proposal. You may not think that having one church on multiple campuses is the ideal, but it has been, for us, a workable solution to an otherwise intractable problem.
26.11.2010
南非
I don’t see any problem with what Piper has said. Not that I want to put him on a par with them, but the church only had one Paul and one Peter, men chosen of God - leaders of the congregation. Remember also that Paul made trips to the churches where others might have questioned why he had to go and not send others...
Ever thought that Piper is also under fellow church leaders and that might be how they felt led by God’s Holy Spirit to do it?
In love
05.11.2010
联合王国
@ Josephg:
thanks for your comment Joseph. Not sure what the comparison between John Piper and the Apostle Paul implies. Paul had a whole band of people he worked with : Timothy, Barnabus, Silas etc. Using Piper’s model - perhaps there wouldn’t have needed to be the epistles 1 and 2 Timothy as he could have live linked the congregations up by video rather than invest and trust a younger preacher to have a go?
06.11.2010
美国
@ Josephg:
Thank you Josephg; your spirit and insight is most uplifting and moves us forward in a complex and difficult age. God bless you!
10.11.2010
南非
Krish, the scenario you describe is an example of how far we have moved from the incarnational and relational model of Jesus.
I simply cannot relate to a model of minstry which places the quantity questions above the quality ones.
We are deeply entrenched in a consumerist paradigm, using modes of mass reproduction which separate form and content, human and message, information and transformation, idea and presence. What sort of discipleship can come from such a dualistic, technology-driven machine?
I’m glad you demonstrate a graceful response, but to me it sounds like The Truman Show.
13.10.2010
联合王国
@ nicpaton:
nicely put nic.
you are not related to Alan Paton by any chance, I am a big fan of his novels.
Blessings
krish
06.11.2010
美国
Enjoyed the article Krish!
I personally have benefited greatly from both men mentioned in the article: John Piper and Tim Keller. I love these men, their ministries, and their passion for the gospel to go forth to the nations.
I agree with many of your points about the multi-site approach and personally disagree with this model. I think the biblical approach would be for a church that is growing like many who do multi-site would be to plant more churches and send more men and women all around the nation and world. I am convinced that multi-site loses the personal and important touch of community and fellowship between the pastor and his flock. The flock gets deprived of actually meeting, praying, and living life together with their pastor and the pastor misses the connection with flock as well, especially during the sermon.
There is value and good to the multi-site approach, but I am personally not convinced that this will last years and centuries to come. I pray that this model will bear fruit though and do love and respect those who have convictions different from my own.
15.10.2010
联合王国
@ zmigioia:
Nice to connect with you - thanks for your comments.
I think there can be advantages of large churches but really value the smaller churches where Pastors can actually know all of their flock personally.
06.11.2010
联合王国
Thanks Sam and Chris for your helpful comments.
Do you know of any other places doing this video pre-record approach?
thanks
krish
17.07.2010
爱尔兰
Thanks Krish.
I’ve seen several churches that relied on one pastor/teacher to do all the teaching. When they left or retired, since no one else had been trained up they then had to import other teachers every week. Some people with teaching gifts were simply not given the opportunity to use and fan into flame their gifts.
That to me isn’t how the body of Christ should work, surely the developing of gifts is a crucial aspect of life in the body? Unfortunately too often this only applies to certain gifts, often not teaching and leadership. In some ways it takes a leader who is very secure in him/herself to be able to train up others and ’trust’ them with teaching ’their’ flock, which in itself throws up anther whole set of questions.
06.07.2010
爱尔兰
Thanks for this Krish.
I totally agree on the cult of celebrity, and danger of ego element. For me developing the gifts in others is a crucial aspect of our calling, and when sermons are broadcast in multiple campuses (or should that be campii?!) this appears to deny others the opportunty to develop teaching gifts. I’ve seen many churches that relied on one pastor/teacher and didn’t train up others - when that person left they then had to continually import teachers - to this that isn’t how the body of Christ should work.
06.07.2010
联合王国
Nice post Krish, good to see some challenging questions for Piper, it would be interesting to see how he answers them as I think they are important for the direction of evangelicals.
26.06.2010
你必须登录后才能发表评论。如果你还没有用户名，请在此注册（免费、易用！）。