Monday Shout-Out: Internet Monk on The Sermon

jasoningalls — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 13:00:44 +0000

Internet Monk is in the middle of a series: “The Evangelical Liturgy.” A recent post, well worth reading and pondering, discusses the sermon and its place in evangelical worship. These few paragraphs caught my eye:

Some of you are going to wince here, but getting rid of the pulpit was a bad idea. In fact, I can’t think of a single change in architecture that says more negative things about worship than the removal of the pulpit, or replacing it with a clear plastic podium. The desire to make worship into non-worship was facilitated more by the removal of the pulpit than anything else. All the “barrier between the pastor and the congregation” rhetoric is specious.

The pulpit speaks of the centrality and importance of the Word of God proclaimed, and it relativizes the preacher into a proper place: disciplined and called to stay behind the Word. Harness the personality to the Word. The preacher stalking the stage with an open Bible is a scene out of balance: the preacher and his personality are overly emphasized. The Word is literally being “used” by the preacher before our eyes.

…[M]any evangelical churches will never have a balanced and disciplined liturgy because the church must be the preacher’s stage.

Read it all.

Discuss:

What do you think about the preacher and the pulpit?
Is iMonk’s claim valid, or is he romanticizing an imaginary past?

Monday Shout-Out: Tish Harrison Warren on the Sabbath

jasoningalls — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 13:00:19 +0000

On Mondays from time to time, I’m going to post links to helpful internet articles. For the first, check out this piece by Tish Harrison Warren called “Keeping Sabbath.” It’s a wonderful and whimsical reminder of God’s gracious command to rest.

Tish is a colleague of mine from InterVarsity.

Practicing Peace » Shout-out

Monday Shout-Out: Internet Monk on The Sermon

Monday Shout-Out: Tish Harrison Warren on the Sabbath