Wandering with Reckless Abandon

Surfing through the blogosphere tonight I came across this that chris wrote.

I think he is on to something…

I feel the same way, and I think his remark about teams hits it on the nose. I have long felt that preaching in the American church has become far too routine. That the process of preaching has been boiled down to a simple formula… Monday is brainstorming day, Tuesday is a study day, Wednesday is (insert whatever here)… and so on and so forth. For forty-eight to fifty-two weeks a year, the same person is asked to stand in front of the same body after doing the same things week after week, year after year…

Where is the freshness?
Where is the life-experience?
Where is the time spent soaking and marinating in your message?

As I dream and plan and soak and pray on the possibility of planting a church, I continue to return to one thought… there is no reason that anyone should be preaching more than 60% of the Sundays… none.

In my ideal world (here we go again) I would envision a team of people owning the preaching responsibilities at a church… introducing the concept of a teaching sabbatical where one person has a period of six weeks (or more?) to prepare his next set of sermons, soak on what the scripture is saying to him, and living life in a way that will help him better communicate what he is teaching, while the Sunday morning communication is handled by others…

The trick, however, is to convince the elder boards, deacons, trustees, and all the other committees, that this is a part of his job…