Doug Pagitt's Preaching Reimagined
Monday, February 18, 2008
Doug Pagitt has written a book on preaching called Preaching Re-Imagined, which has gotten lots of attention. Rick Holland criticizes the book in an article called “Progressional Dialogue & Preaching: Are They the Same?” Holland's article is interesting because it reflects a common reaction that some have about the emergent church's style of preaching.
Personally, I don't think Pagitt's idea of multiple voices is a good one, but at the same time Holland's criticism misses the mark because it doesn't rule out the use of progressional dialogue, nor does it rule out my own idea called Preaching 2.0. (The problem with letting just anybody speak is that there's too much shared ignorance - which is one reason most bible studies suck, I prefer to hear someone smarter than me, someone who will be interesting and stimulating.)
Pagitt believes preaching should no longer be a monologue delivered by an expert, but a conversation with multiple voices participating. He says the congregation needs to hear other stories as they live in Christ.
In response Holland claims that Pagitt's new definition of preaching is neither biblical nor historical. He claims the biblical understanding of preaching is proclamation, not letting the masses share whatever is on their mind. Moreover, the history of the church shows that the church was most influenced by preachers doing public hermeneutics.
But it strikes me that Holland's claims, while I think are true, need not rule out anything Pagitt wants to do. On Holland's understanding, biblical preaching is a speech event, but isn't Pagitt's idea also? Why can't sessions which includes multiple voices also include a speech event? What exactly makes those two things contradictory? As far as I can tell nothing in scripture or church history dictates that preaching must be done by a single individual for 30 minutes. Why can't it be done with several others?
In fact Pagitt can go further and turn the tables on Holland and issue a challenge: what should be done if preaching as monologue on Sunday morning no longer reaches anyone? Must preaching happen only on Sunday morning, or can Sunday mornings be used for some other style of communication? It seems to me that one can practice biblical and historical preaching while adopting other forms of communication.
8:56 AM
Tim,
In reading Doug's book and talking with him about these ideas, I gather that he hits a lot of preachers where it hurts. Part of Pagittine ethos that power is to be shared among the people and not held by a single person or class of people. That is at the heart of many of his critiques. Many well-intentioned preacher view the power (they would often say "authority") that they have is given by God and therefore is a tremendous responsibility that they carry as a "mantle". An undirected progressional dialog can easily turn into a shared ignorance session. As Doug says, when this is done in a shared community with a common goal over a period of time the sharing of ignorance becomes self-disciplined. In other words, when you are with the same group of people over time and you continue to ask foolish or inane questions the feedback that you get from the group helps you to monitor yourself.
Doug has also said that there are people in his community that absolutely hate the dialog time and other who love it. (Sounds like most churches) Progressional dialog, as Doug describes it, take a lot of time and effort from both the leaders and the group to truly master. I suppose the overall point of it is that the sermon is meant to foster transformation in the community, not simply to convey information. Scot McKnight just posted a letter of a guy struggling through this very issue.
Pete