When we planted our church in Maitland, the first and planting pastor used to have question time after every sermon. Occasionally time restraints would prevent this but it was pretty much an expected and accepted thing. There are good and bad bits about question time at church however the good definitely outweighs the bad.
The bad bits can be it makes a long sermon longer (not a problem if it interesting) or worse you can have a second mini sermon from the congregation instead of a question. This was a big problem at this stage of the church and the pastor became pretty skillful at heading it off early. Those are the only two downers that I can see for having questions on a sermon.
The bonuses are big though. Firstly in order to ask a question, one needs to listen to the whole sermon to make sure it is an intelligent question and wasn't answered during the sermon. Secondly it makes the members of the congregation think about the bible themselves instead of taking the pastors word for it. Thirdly it means that the pastor needs to put in a lot of preparation time so he can answer the questions. Fourthly it keeps him honest because there will always be somebody who says "I noticed you skipped over this bit, could you just explain that?" Or "I was a bit confused when you said this, could you explain what you meant about this verse?"
It can be a stressful thing for a preacher to do but I think it is definitely worth it and would encourage all church leaders to take this line, even if it means that it makes church goes past the designated time (perhaps we cab drop a song or just finish a bit late).
No comments:
Post a Comment