Churches should reimagine preaching as a communication intended to launch practices. Sunday sermons should inspire new practices that impact the immediate community and the neighborhood. Preaching should move away from helping individuals in their relationship with Jesus to sending individuals into the neighborhood to affect the whole. To have a new imagination for preaching, we need a new strategy for communication. In part one of this two-part article, I addressed the need for a preaching team committed to one voice, many communicators strategy. I suggest churches build a preaching team with the five-fold ministry gifting outlined in Ephesians chapter 4.
Interestingly, many churches today tend to lean into the fivefold ministry gifting laid out by the Apostle Paul in his letter to the Church as Ephesus.
“And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.”
Paul is making a post-modern argument here that individual gifting contributes to the whole culture exemplified by unity. The individual is known by who they are as they express their five-fold gifting in the community. Preaching should change in light of this post-modern way of thinking in two ways. First, we need a variety of voices to communicate the gospel. Instead of choosing the strongest communicator, teams should discern their team’s gifting and align it with the central point of a message. For example, the Prophet should speak about injustice. If gifting is given more of a place in selecting preachers, then individual gifts are offered to the community to benefit the whole.
As a 5-fold Apostolic / Teacher, my point of view is only one of many. Even more than my 5-fold gifts, my unique story profoundly influences how I communicate the gospel and understand language. For example, amid a tragedy, I am likely to dash through mourning and lament and speak words of future hope and new initiatives. There is a time for those things, but we also need our shepherds to lead us in lament and our prophets to remind us this current tragedy is a manifestation of our broken world and not the future of God’s in-breaking kingdom. As an Apostolic preacher, I can phase into those gifts I do not fully possess, but I would be wise to let the shepherds lead, and the prophets proclaim. So it is likely as an Apostolic preacher, I have failed to lament.
The one voice many communicator strategies make celebrity preachers improbable, amplifies the congregation’s voice, and will increase overall communication efficacy.
412 project offers a 3-hour workshop to introduce your team to 5-fold gifting and one on one coaching for ideas of implementation in preaching and general leadership. Contact us today!