FROM THE PRESIDENT
John Upton Preaching that Builds Community
It is becoming ever more apparent to me that we must speak with new clarity about what life together as Christians means. It is time for the church, Baptists in particular, to rediscover its communal self again, to discover how connected we are to one another. This is a most urgent need. In this age of technology, of minimal connectedness, of independent leanings, and of isolated leadership, I think it is time to remind ourselves that there is no viable presence of Christ without a real body. There is no bona fide faith that isn’t lived socially and communally. So, as I have traveled I have been interested to learn what kind of preaching best addresses life together. It has been pleasing to see how many Baptist communities around the world are addressing this issue. The question has been for me, “What kind of preaching best fosters the communal?” Let me share a few insights I have gained from listening to preachers around the world.
First, one notices that the very act of preaching itself raises its own challenges. The challenge for the preacher is how to connect with the person listening because there is “me and my sermon up here” and “you and your ears down there.” There is a perception of hierarchy that needs to be overcome so that sermons can be conceived and spoken in ways that suggest and embody community. I’m talking about the very spirit of the sermon. At the Brazilian Baptist Convention this year I listened to a superb sermon by a pastor who is fighting life-threatening cancer. His sermon matched not only what the text said; its content also matched the form and movement of the text. You don’t preach about loss and grief in a didactic mode and expect people to feel the grief with you. He had thousands of people at that meeting walking with him, not only in words, but walking with him through the form and the movement of the sermon. Every heart was stirred in the room. It was not an “I’m up here and you are down there” kind of experience. It was human hearts connecting. The spirit of the sermon must be communal. Second, I have been reminded of the importance of the
language used in the sermon. While in Russia recently, I heard a brother from one of the “Stanish” countries preach about the necessity of Christian community. As he spoke he called upon the larger family to not forget brothers and sisters who are arrested and persecuted at the whim of government officials. He had just gotten out of jail himself for carrying the Thompson Chain Reference Bible. I was captured by the kind of language he used that promoted communal connections in his preaching. He asked questions in his sermon for the sake of community. He had thought through what language, tone, and form best honored the freedom of the group. He had thought through what made the “least of
these” concept most accessible to all of us. His language left open spaces for us to think, choose, and act. His ending to the sermon led us to want to continue the conversation that he had started. I learned from him that language can draw correct little lines or it can open great doors. Tone can tumble down vertically or extend like a horizontal hand. The sermon can be a forced march or a lively human walking conversation. Language has tremendous cohesive power. Finally, in South Africa listening to those who suffered under
Apartheid, I discovered my tendency to take a text written for the larger community and apply it only to the individual heart and life. When this is done, larger community issues are rarely addressed. I was reminded at that meeting that in the Bible faith is understood communally. The Old Testament calls us to be a covenant people. The New Testament calls us to an ecclesia. The vast majority of the time when scripture says “you,” it is plural. Of course, the individual life in scripture is enormously valued and individual accountability is never in question, but on the whole there is a collective dimension to faith you would never guess exists if you were to listen to most of our preaching. We must keep the plural texts in the plural. All this is to say, you and I meet the Holy most powerfully when we meet it together. We discern the Holy more faithfully when we discern together. And, this walk is a whole lot more fun when we do it together. I’m glad there are churches and pastors in the world who are getting the importance of all this. They seem to be getting it in Latin America, in Asia, in Africa, in Eastern Europe, and in the lower economic sectors of North America and Europe. If the drift of current global culture is any indication, the
challenge of being community is going to get worse. A landscape of what once was community is filling up fast with millions of individuals holding solitary screens. There is a place for the screens, but there will always be a place needed for adjacent living. We don’t need to create a topical series of sermons about community, just preaching the Bible will take us right were we need to go. I am very grateful to my community called the Baptist World Alliance for reminding me of the gift I have in the family of Christ.
BWA President John Upton with fellow Baptists in South Africa
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