I was reading this not so exciting article titled “Why ‘Boring’ Preachers should be Fired” and it stirred some old thoughts in my warped brain.

Before I get into my warped brain let me disclaimer that I do think some preachers should be allowed a graceful exit. They have in many cases served God’s ministry well and are probably in need of walking away to heal and be fed instead of being held to a commitment where they have to feed while being barren themselves. By ‘preachers’ I am also batching together a preacher, priest, pastor not just a teaching pastor whose only responsibility is to preach.

I used to constantly rib one of my pastors I had served with about showing me his MBA. He knew where this was headed so he’d respond with a “keep looking” or “I know, and they still hired me.” Because my point who on earth would hire someone and put them in charge of leading a 1.8 million dollar entity that didn’t have some business experience. Seems like an illogical hire all the way around. But we do it all the time. Yes, committee systems are there for a checks and balances, but time and again our congregations give so much of the daily business power to the pastors, who rarely have formal business training.

Sorry, getting off that soap box.

Back to original box..

Back in the day one got away with giving a good sermon through the oratory methods shown to us in academia. John Wesley had his book of sermons and had specific instructions of, “if you can’t give a decent sermon just read this and it will work” (or something to that account). So the bar for ‘presenting’ a sermon that would engage and stimulate was not much different than a university lecture. It would teach and give the listener something to think about & learn. Today though we have a culture that is so conditioned to learning through entertainment. We also call new learning methods ‘active learning’ or ‘discovery based learning’ the list can go on. Our seminaries teach preaching and I know they give classes on teaching styles and preparations. However, do we need to encourage our seminaries to require theater work so that our preachers can shift where they can preach with a little flare? Maybe a semester of improv would do nicely..

Anyways, just a thought to help those ‘boring’ preachers.