Screeching Preaching

I went to a Christian gathering recently, a sort of mini-conference. It was well attended and I knew a number of the folk present. It began with a lady telling us that the Lord ‘had laid’ several scriptures on her heart to share with us. She told the Lord that they were ‘too hard’, but He, apparently, was insistent. She proceeded to read them, and then added several comments and applications, admonishing us for not taking God’s word seriously in an increasingly shrill tone. I felt this was a little rich, and she clearly considered herself one of the speakers, so I stepped out and stood in the rain until she was finished. Two others were already there, patiently waiting for her shrieking exhortations to desist.

The man who followed her was little better. Although I came in out of the rain, it was clear from the outset what was in store. This was his model: read a few verses from here, get things off his chest. Read a few verses from there, get things off his chest. Read a few verses from somewhere else, get a few more things off his chest. This is not a great preaching model: the scriptures become a mere list of proof texts, generously building a sturdy platform from which the speaker can ride his many hobby horses to much acclaim.

The gentleman decried the state of the churches, their ignorance of scripture, and then explained that we were all going to be sent to forced labour camps, eventually. He said there was an ‘overground church’, and ‘an underground church’, the former characterised by lukewarmness, the latter by folk who have stopped attending their fellowships in order to concentrate their energies on smaller housegroups of like-minded believers. He pronounced the criminal justice system as ’utterly corrupt’, and that we ‘stopped being a democracy’ four months ago; that ‘we don’t realise what a powerful weapon worship is’. This is hogwash, yet many of my fellow attendees were busily scribbling down his many and varied musings, lest, God forbid, they should ever be forgotten. He hinted that we might have to fight for our faith (“Could this mean physically?”, he asked, darkly), at which point my patience expired. As our friend had been allocated a generous hour and fifteen minutes, I quietly produced a book from my bag, and set about reading it. It was, again, Francis Kilvert’s Diaries from 1871. Its author might not have possessed as much righteous zeal as our earnest preacher, but he spoke far more sense. As it was hardback, and a thick one, I thought it might be mistaken for a Bible, especially if I effected a pious expression, occasionally flicking through the pages and nodding slowly but wisely. The odd picture inserted in to the text might have given the game away, because someone commented afterwards, with a wry smile. A better speaker was lined up for the afternoon, but I was already sapped. Sometimes, saving the best till last means getting too full up with froth and bubble. Eating packets of crisps before a Sunday Roast will leave no room for it, no matter how delicious the smell.

Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps I was too impatient in the second talk and too priggish in the first. All I want when I go to a conference, a service, a Bible study, is to hear God’s word read and expounded. I am not interested in what the preacher ‘feels’, or ‘believes’, or what the Lord is 'trying to tell’ us. Just give me God’s word: it is enough, and extremely satisfying.