What are we preaching?

There were two good synod-related services this past weekend – but somehow they’ve left me feeling a bit like Spitting Images’ boy David and the Lib Dems, wanting things to be neither this nor that, but something in between.

David Peel’s induction on Saturday afternoon was the kind of occasion you might have expected – and not the place for theological slouches. With a former college principal being inducted and another principal preaching the charge, it was pretty meaty stuff. Certainly it had its lighter moments – Trevor’s quotes from (we hope a well outdated) elders’ manual from the Church of Scotland urging someone to speak to the visiting minister, even though he has been useless, might be blue-tacked to some of our vestry walls. And David’s statement that the job of a minister in a pastorate was the top job in the URC came well from a former Moderator of Assembly – though perhaps was spoiled for some of us who were wondering, Who was the “leading figure” who had voiced the opinion that he was wasted in a local church? And aren’t we all capable of the well-meaning but ill-thought-out compliment that backfires?

But the challenge to the Church in Trevor’s sermon and David’s statement did not make for easy listening. I’m sure our church culture shouldn’t be bound by the tyranny of sound-bites, but the truth of the matter is that we’re not used to listening with the intensity that’s needed on such an occasion. Not that I’d have wanted the service to be any longer (in fact I wish we could cut these inductions down a bit) – but we could have done with some pauses to reflect on what we’d heard and see where the arguments were leading. Certainly it would be good to have a script to read afterwards. Otherwise – and perhaps this is just me, but I doubt it – so much good stuff that’s been carefully thought out is just going to be wasted.

And then on Sunday afternoon some of us were at Brinkburn Abbey for the annual Holy Island service – the first time I’ve managed to get there. Barry Hutchinson led a reflective service, in the style that we would expect from the St Cuthbert’s Centre. It was as different from Saturday as chalk from cheese: is that the difference between theology and spirituality? The focus on feelings (including feeling the chair supporting you and all the rest) made worship less challenging, more embracing – and perhaps none the worse for that.

But then came the reflective reading – from the Shack! Now I’m waiting to see how many letters will be in the next Reform in response to the outburst from Kim Fabricius in July/August. “Forget about the Shack – it’s awful –” he tells us “but you must read, for the sheer grace and truth of it, Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead (2004).” I’d have thought someone might by now have told the sainted Kim that Marilynne Robinson’s Home (2008) is a yet finer novel: but much as I agree with the thrust of his letter, that novels, including many modern novels, can speak to us powerfully about the things of God and of our human condition, Marilynne Robinson is not necessarily the right voice for many of the people who’ve read and relished the Shack.

I wouldn’t choose to write to Reform to air my prejudices, but Barry’s reading on Sunday reminded me that yes, the Shack is pretty bad. Some of my colleagues have defended it on the grounds that it has encouraged their people to think and talk about the Trinity – but it seems to me that if you do that on the basis of such gross sentimentality (and what we heard on Sunday told us that if you walk on water you need to take your shoes and socks off: it didn’t seem to have much of a faith content) you haven’t really grown in theological understanding. Where’s the Reformed insight into the sovereignty of God in this off-beat trio of individuals hosting an all-American weekend in the woods?

So, after two sessions in the pew, I’m left wondering how we can put some theological content into our preaching and our leading of worship, but do so in ways that are accessible – and even enjoyable. I’m desperate to know how: any suggestions out there?

And in case anyone thinks I only go trolling round to other people’s services, I was in my own pastorate on Sunday morning. For the second time in not many weeks I had a full church – nothing to do with me, but the occasion of an infant baptism, which our moderator has wisely described as “the new weddings”. Who do we speak to and how, in a service like this, when most of our guests have no idea what any of it is all about? And is there any way in which such a service can feed the host congregation?

I think I heard Trevor on Saturday afternoon saying that the business of the Church was not to get more people into church, but to share in God’s mission to transform the world. By 10.15 the next morning, as I was telling Ruby that she is a child of God and member of the Church, I might have been asking myself, Just what does this sharing in God’s mission mean here and now?