This Is Not Teaching

An Autopsy of the Christian Sermon

This is the second in a series of autopsies.

The first examined the table: This Is Not a Feast.

They are not isolated failures.

They are one tangled system.

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Yesterday I wrote about the table.

About food, faces, shared air. About a form of gathering so ordinary, so human, so disarmingly unspiritual-looking that we tend to miss how central it was to the life of the early church.

Today I want to name the thing that makes that kind of gathering almost impossible for us now.

The sermon.

Not teaching.
Not exhortation.
Not testimony.

The sermon as the central, organizing act of Christian assembly.

This is not a small critique. And it is not a stylistic preference. It is a claim that the sermon, as we practice it, is a tradition that has quietly rearranged the people of God around itself, with devastating consequences.

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A Tradition Elevated to Command

The modern sermon is treated as indispensable.

You can remove the table.
You can remove shared prayer.
You can remove mutual exhortation.
You can remove time for the body to speak.

But you cannot remove the sermon.

That alone should trouble us.

Because Scripture never commands a weekly, uninterrupted monologue delivered by a credentialed individual as the centerpiece of Christian gathering. Yet we treat it with near-scriptural authority. To question it feels like questioning the faith itself.

That should tell us something about what we’ve enthroned.

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From “Each One of You” to “Please Remain Seated”

The New Testament gives us its clearest window into early assemblies in places like 1 Corinthians 14.

Paul does not describe a vibe. He describes a structure.

“When you come together, each one of you has a hymn, a word, a revelation, a tongue, an interpretation.”

“You may all prophesy one by one, so that all may learn and all be encouraged.”

This is not chaos.
It is not anarchy.
It is not a free-for-all.

It is participation governed by love and mutual upbuilding.

The modern sermon replaces that with managed speech.

One voice.
One perspective.
One approved channel of meaning.

Everyone else receives, evaluates, and goes home.

We have traded shared discernment for controlled delivery.

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The Gathering Monopoly

The sermon does not merely exist within the gathering. It organizes the gathering around itself.

Time is structured for it.
Space is arranged for it.
Silence is enforced for it.

One voice occupies the majority of the assembly’s attention while the gifts, insights, questions, confessions, and exhortations of the body are structurally excluded.

Not because people have nothing to offer.
But because the form cannot tolerate it.

The meeting is no longer built around Christ expressed through the body. It is built around a talk about Christ delivered to the body.

Those are not the same thing.

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The Pulpit and the Professional Class

Sermons require things.

Credentials.
Training.
Permission.
A platform.

And once those are required, a line is drawn.

Some speak.
Most do not.

Some prepare the Word.
Most consume it.

We may still affirm the priesthood of all believers with our mouths, but the architecture of our gatherings denies it every week.

Authority flows downward, not mutually.
Discernment is centralized.
Responsibility is outsourced.

A body trained this way cannot suddenly become mature.

It has been taught to sit still.

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Formation by Passivity

Week after week, believers are trained to:

Listen.
Receive.
Evaluate.
Leave.

They are not trained to speak carefully.
To weigh one another’s words.
To disagree faithfully.
To carry spiritual responsibility for one another.

The sermon produces spectators, not participants.

And spectators eventually confuse attendance with obedience.

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Borrowed Forms, Baptized Assumptions

Defenders of the sermon often speak as if this form fell straight from heaven.

It didn’t.

The sermon owes far more to synagogue patterns, Greco-Roman rhetoric, and lecture culture than to anything resembling New Testament ekklesia.

Teaching existed. Of course it did.

But what began as teaching has become performance.

A weekly talk, polished, timed, branded, and delivered to an audience trained not to interrupt.

That should feel strange to anyone who believes the Spirit has been poured out on all flesh.

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“But What About…?”

Prooftexts, Greek Words, and the Category Error

This is where the conversation always turns.

And it turns here because the sermon needs biblical cover.

Let’s look carefully.

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Peter at Pentecost

Acts 2:14–41

Peter stands and speaks. He proclaims Christ crucified and risen. Thousands respond.

But notice the context.

This is public proclamation to a crowd that does not yet exist as a gathered church. It is evangelistic announcement, not a description of weekly Christian assembly.

The Greek verb here is kēryssō or its noun form kērygma.

This word means to herald, to announce, to proclaim news.
It does not mean to deliver a weekly instructional monologue to believers.

Using Acts 2 to justify the modern sermon is like using a press conference to justify a classroom lecture.

Category error.

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Paul, Troas, and the Young Man Who Fell

Acts 20:7–12

This passage is often cited with a grin, as if it settles the matter.

Paul “spoke” at length. A young man fell asleep. Fell out a window. Miraculously lived.

Case closed, right?

Look again.

“On the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul dialogued (dielegeto) with them…”

That word matters.

dialegomai does not mean “delivered a sermon.”

It means to reason with, converse, discuss, exchange words.

Luke uses this same word repeatedly to describe dialogue, not monologue.

Paul’s extended speaking happens in a context that includes:

• breaking bread

• conversation

• interruption

• interaction

• urgency (he is leaving the next day)

This is not a liturgy.
It is not a weekly template.
It is not silent rows facing forward.

It is communal life.

To extract from this a justification for a forty-five minute uninterrupted sermon requires flattening the text until it no longer resembles itself.

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“The Foolishness of Preaching”

1 Corinthians 1:21

This verse is quoted constantly and almost never examined.

Paul writes that God was pleased “through the foolishness of what was proclaimed to save those who believe.”

Again, the word is rooted in kērygma.

Paul is contrasting the message of the cross with the wisdom systems of the world.

He is not defending:

• a sermon slot

• a professional speaker

• a weekly monologue

• a stage

• a sound system

• a credentialed caste

To turn this verse into a defense of the modern sermon is to confuse content with container.

Paul never does that.

We do.

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Teaching vs Proclamation vs Dialogue

The New Testament uses different words intentionally.

• kēryssō – to proclaim, announce, herald

• didaskō – to teach, explain, instruct

• dialegomai – to reason, discuss, dialogue

What we have done is collapse all of these into one professional act, performed by one person, while everyone else listens.

That synthesis does not come from Scripture.

It comes from convenience.

And control.

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Eloquence, Employment, and the Death of the Ordinary Voice

Here is another lie we rarely name.

We mistake well-spoken for Spirit-gifted.

By the time you encounter your average forty-five-year-old pastor, he has been practicing this craft day after day for years.

He studies.
He prepares.
He performs.

And crucially, you pay him to do it.

Is it any wonder he is polished?

So when the Spirit-filled but less articulate brother attempts to lead a Bible study, you find yourself thinking:

“Nice try… but we really need Pastor Bob.”

Not because the brother lacks the Spirit.
But because he lacks stage reps.

The form has trained your ear.

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The Small Group Concession

Modern institutions have heard the criticism.

They know something is missing.

So they adapt.

They create small groups.
Care groups.
Life groups.

A shallow image of ekklesia.

My wife and I hosted one of these for a long time. And it was genuinely rewarding, inasmuch as it resembled ekklesia.

But our stated purpose for gathering was this:

To discuss that week’s sermon.

Yes. Really.

Even when I was still fully inside the matrix, this struck me as strange.

Getting together to talk about what one man thought Scripture meant, after already listening to him explain it, felt at best redundant and at worst just plain stupid.

So we changed it.

We each brought something.

A passage.
A question.
An insight.
A struggle.

Interestingly, it was the younger generation that thrived.

Our group was intentionally multi-generational. I wanted all walks of life, all ages.

It was the older set who were so offended by this shift that, without saying a word to me, they went to the religious bosses to report me.

As Charlie Brown would say:

Good grief.

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The Deeper Cost

The sermon does not merely monopolize time.

It trains dependence.
It rewards polish over faithfulness.
It silences the ordinary voice.
It relocates discernment from the body to the platform.

And then we wonder why the church feels fragile, divided, and spiritually malnourished.

We were told this was necessary.
That without it, chaos would reign.
That without it, truth would be lost.
That without it, the church could not survive.

But what if the opposite is true?

What if we have mistaken order for life?

We bought the lie.

And it is killing us.

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Why the Sermon Centralizes Blind Spots Instead of Correcting Them

Let’s name something plainly, before anyone else does.

Every one of us is prone to drift.

Our understanding is never static.
Our reading of Scripture is never unfiltered.
Our theology is shaped by past experiences, wounds, mentors, fears, and cultural air we didn’t choose.

This is not a defect.
It is the human condition.

Each of us carries blind spots. Some small. Some structural. Some inherited. Some invisible to us precisely because they feel “obvious.”

Scripture does not deny this reality. It assumes it.

Which is why one of the great safeguards God gives the church is not a single perspective, but a body.

A people with sundry experiences.
Different gifts.
Different emphases.
Different instincts.
Different histories.

The wisdom of God, according to the New Testament, does not reside safely in one head. It emerges as the body works these differences out together, under the Spirit, in love.

That is the design.

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The Body as a Living Safeguard

When the body gathers participatorily, blind spots are exposed organically.

One brother emphasizes zeal and obedience.
Another tempers it with patience and mercy.
One sister reads a passage with urgency.
Another hears it with caution and memory.

Truth is not diluted by this process.
It is refined.

This is why Paul assumes correction, weighing, and discernment within the gathering:

“Let two or three speak, and let the others weigh what is said.”

That sentence alone destroys the idea that spiritual direction was ever meant to be unidirectional.

The safeguard is mutuality.

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Now Introduce the Sermon

Now introduce the modern sermon monologue.

The course is set in advance.
The text is selected.
The interpretation is framed.
The conclusions are drawn.

And then it is proclaimed from a raised platform, through amplification, to a silent audience.

We imply authority not merely by content, but by form.

The room arrangement says: receive.
The silence says: assent.
The clock says: do not interrupt.

There is no way for the body to do what Scripture assumes it must do.

The blind spots of the speaker do not meet resistance.
They meet applause. Or polite silence.

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“But My Pastor Is Accountable”

This is where the institutional defenses appear.

You are told:

• “The sermon is reviewed beforehand.”

• “There’s a team that gives feedback.”

• “My door is always open.”

These sound comforting. They are not equivalent.

Only the most earnest, confident, and courageous person would dare feel capable of matching wits with a professional.

The asymmetry is built in.

One person has:

• years of formal training

• daily practice

• institutional backing

• symbolic authority

The other has:

• a concern

• a question

• a vague unease

• and the quiet knowledge that pushing too hard marks them as “difficult”

This is not mutual discernment.

It is deferred dissent.

And most people choose silence.

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The Real Danger

The real danger is not that error exists.

The real danger is that error becomes uncorrectable.

When spiritual direction is vested in a professional class, blind spots are no longer dispersed across the body. They are concentrated.

And concentrated blind spots do not get challenged.
They get systematized.
Taught.
Defended.
Passed on.

This is how entire traditions drift while sincerely believing they are being faithful.

Not because the people are wicked.
But because the form made course correction nearly impossible.

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Not OT Priests, Not Sacramental Specialists

Spiritual direction was never meant to be vested in a sacramentalized class of New Covenant priests.

We did not replace the Levitical system with a better-educated version of it.

Christ did not tear the veil so we could rebuild it with a microphone.

The New Testament vision is not “one who sees clearly, many who follow.”

It is many who see in part, learning to see together.

That is slower.
Messier.
Riskier.

And infinitely more resilient.

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The Irony

The sermon is defended as a safeguard against error.

But by removing the body’s ability to speak, weigh, interrupt, and correct in real time, it becomes the single greatest structural threat to doctrinal health.

It does not protect the church from drift.

It locks it in.

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So What Actually Happens at the Table?

Let’s stop abstracting and run the thought experiment honestly.

We are at a table.

Not symbolic.
Not staged.
Real food. Real people. Shared time.

No one stands.
No one announces an agenda.
No one clears their throat to signal authority.

We eat.

Conversation begins the way conversation always does: unevenly. Someone speaks too much. Someone barely speaks at all. Someone says something half-formed. Someone else finishes the thought.

And then, at some point, Scripture comes into view.

Not because it was scheduled.
But because it lives in us.

Someone brings a passage that has been unsettling them.
Someone else admits they don’t understand it.
Another says, “That reminds me of something Jesus said…”
Someone disagrees. Gently. Or not.

Nothing explodes.

No one panics.

Because this is how human beings actually learn.

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How Drift Is Corrected Without Control

Here’s the part that surprises people who have never experienced this.

When something off gets said, it doesn’t need to be “handled.”

It gets answered.

Not by authority.
By presence.

Someone who has walked longer with Christ says, “I hear what you’re saying, but that hasn’t been my experience.”
Another adds, “That doesn’t sound consistent with what we read earlier.”
Someone opens the text. Another slows the moment down.

Correction happens, not as rebuke, but as reorientation.

No gavel.
No platform.
No follow-up meeting.

Just people who care enough about truth and one another to stay in the conversation.

This is not fragile.
It is resilient.

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How Teaching Emerges — and Then Moves On

At the table, you quickly notice something else.

Certain people speak, and the room changes.

Not because they are eloquent.
Not because they are confident.
But because when they speak, things clarify.

Scripture opens.
Tension eases.
Christ becomes visible.

The room listens.

But here is the critical difference.

Listening does not become deferring.

No title is conferred.
No role is assigned.
No expectation is set that this person must now carry the weight every time.

What is recognized is not the person, but the gift in that moment.

And the room knows this intuitively.

Because who is to say that the life experience that sharpened this brother’s insight today will be the same experience the body needs two weeks from now?

Next time, another voice opens Scripture.
Another story illuminates the text.
Another set of wounds and faithfulness brings clarity.

Teaching emerges situationally, not permanently.

Speaking remains fluid.
Listening remains discerning.
No one becomes the resident meaning-maker.

This is how the body stays awake.

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Why This Never Turns Into Titles

Nothing here requires formalization.

Because the moment recognition turns into office, the table begins to tilt.

The moment we say, “We should probably let you handle this from now on,”
we have quietly rebuilt the stage.

The body senses this danger long before it can articulate it.

So it resists instinctively.

Not by suspicion.
But by participation.

Everyone remains responsible.
Everyone remains interruptible.
Everyone remains capable of being wrong.

And that shared vulnerability is precisely what keeps truth from calcifying.

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Why This Feels Unsafe to Institutions

This kind of gathering feels unsafe to institutions because it cannot be controlled without destroying it.

You cannot guarantee outcomes.
You cannot script the arc.
You cannot measure participation with attendance alone.

You must trust:

that the Spirit actually teaches
that truth can survive conversation
that Christ does not require a weekly mouthpiece

Institutions solve for predictability.

The table solves for faithfulness.

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The Strange Result

Here’s what happens over time.

People grow articulate.
Quiet voices strengthen.
Confidence stops being confused with gifting.
Discernment becomes communal muscle memory.

And drift, when it appears, is met early, gently, and publicly — not after it has hardened into doctrine.

Responsibility does not rise to the top.

It spreads.

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Why This Is Hard to Believe

This is hard to believe if all you have ever known is the sermon.

Because the sermon promises safety through control.

But the table produces safety through relationship.

The sermon delivers clarity by silencing difference.

The table delivers clarity by working through it.

The sermon looks strong.

The table looks exposed.

But only one of them actually trains the body to live without a handler.

And one day we’ll realize that Christ’s Spirit really is in charge —
and everything is not just fine,

but, as the song says,

🎶more than fine🎶

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Next in the series: This Is Not a Profession — examining how the sermon creates the need for professional ministers.