Bizarre preaching

I'd like to consign the ramblings of, among others, a recent preacher at my local church who had clearly neglected to do a cursory google to check some basic facts, like the date of the start of the Reformation (600 years ago last year, repeated several times), the history of the Church of Scotland (apparently the Scottish reformation was contemporaneous with Luther, Presbyterianism requires a territorial parish system, and the Kirk has been Presbyterian since the reformation), and the what, why and when of the Counter-Reformation (apparently Henry VIII converted back to Rome due to the counter-reformation, which was led by Ignatius of Loyola).

Other gems included the parable of the sower indicating that only a quarter of churchgoers are saved.

Nice enough chap but clearly not a clue. I don't know whether to attribute it to age or to a lifetime of (valuable) ministry among those who are largely unlettered and unchurched where playing fast and loose with half-remembered facts won't be noticed.
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  • stetsonstetson Shipmate
    edited December 2018
    I'd like to consign the ramblings of, among others, a recent preacher at my local church who had clearly neglected to do a cursory google to check some basic facts, like the date of the start of the Reformation (600 years ago last year, repeated several times), the history of the Church of Scotland

    Is it possible that the guy was just bad at math, and was calculating the difference between 1517 and 2017 in his head, and accidentally adding an extra hundred? I've had a bit of trouble since the millenium changed with doing those kind of figures.

    I think I would have assumed that the Scottish Reformation came after the bulk of Luther's activity, if for no other reason than it's unlikely that things would have gotten going up in Scotland the day after Luther nailed his Theses to the door(this was pre-TV and internet, after all).

    Henry VIII's late-career Tiber-swim is a definite howler. What denomination was this preacher?

  • stetsonstetson Shipmate
    edited December 2018
    Nice enough chap but clearly not a clue. I don't know whether to attribute it to age or to a lifetime of (valuable) ministry among those who are largely unlettered and unchurched where playing fast and loose with half-remembered facts won't be noticed.

    I'm trying to imagine what sort of agenda he would have been pushing with some of those facts. I could see, for example, a Catholic or maybe Anglo-Catholic cleric telling people that Henry went back to Catholicism during the Counter Reformation, ie. even Henry realized that Rome was where all good Christians should be.

    Or, conversely I guess, another branch of protestanism hostile to Anglicianism, "See, they're really just a bunch of crypto-papists, even the founder went back to Babylon at the end".

    Or was he just kind of randomly misremembering stuff, with no real pattern? I admit, I don't think I would have raised an eyebrow at the stuff about Ignatius leading the Counter-Reformation, since I've always been taken to understand he played a big role in it.
  • The one that lives on in our family memory some 20 years after the fact is a substitute preacher at my sister-in-law's AOG church taking as his text Exodus 24:17: "Tomorrow I will stand on the hilltop with the staff of God in my hand".

    The preacher explained he would be taking a careful expository word-by-word approach.

    "Tomorrow" was explained along the lines that today was yesterday's tomorrow, and yesterday today was tomorrow, and various other permutations. He then moved on to "I", which epitomised how selfish we all were. "Will" was all about how we selfishly wanted to do what we wanted instead of listening to God.

    He lost me after that.
  • He was Church of Scotland. The date screw up I initially attributed to poor mental arithmetic but even that just smacked of poor preparation to me.

    As for the agenda, just common-or-garden evangelical conversionism like we get from our friends at the faith mission. Possibly with a dash of good old fashioned west coast anti-Catholicism though that might just be my paranoia. It did seem like every move in a Protestant direction was led by God and every move in a Catholic direction was backsliding into the past. Same old evangelical insinuation that you're not properly Christian unless you have a defined "conversion" as an adult.
  • EnochEnoch Shipmate
    He sounds like someone who has the theological equivalent in reasoning powers, of an ERGist.


    I've heard a sermon at a wedding, and it was in this millennium not the former one, where the preacher first asked, 'what did the groom bring to the marriage?'. His answer was, 'his strength and his ability to protect and provide'. Then he asked, 'and what did the bride bring?', answer. 'her beauty'.


    Perhaps other shipmates might not see anything faulty about that.
  • One doesn't have to go far from centres of excellence to go wrong. Blessed are the cheese makers after all.
  • Enoch wrote: »
    Perhaps other shipmates might not see anything faulty about that.
    I can do better (or worse). Also some twenty-something years ago I attended a wedding at which the Scripture reading was the story of Jesus meeting the woman at the well and the text the preacher took for his evangelistic message wedding address was, and I kid you not,
    The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband.

    You could see people eyeing the nearest exits.

  • stetson wrote: »
    I'm trying to imagine what sort of agenda he would have been pushing with some of those facts. I could see, for example, a Catholic or maybe Anglo-Catholic cleric telling people that Henry went back to Catholicism during the Counter Reformation, ie. even Henry realized that Rome was where all good Christians should be.

    I suspect he was just confusing Henry VIII with Charles II.
  • RicardusRicardus Shipmate
    edited December 2018
    Eutychus wrote: »
    Enoch wrote: »
    Perhaps other shipmates might not see anything faulty about that.
    I can do better (or worse). Also some twenty-something years ago I attended a wedding at which the Scripture reading was the story of Jesus meeting the woman at the well and the text the preacher took for his evangelistic message wedding address was, and I kid you not,
    The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband.

    You could see people eyeing the nearest exits.

    :astonished: :confounded: I have heard something like that repeated as a joke - the joke being that the intended text was 1 John 4:18 (i.e. first Epistle of John), 'There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love' - but the 1 got missed off, leaving instead John 4:18 (i.e. Gospel of John), which you quote above.

    This was in a book of clerical jokes from the 1970s - a case of life imitates art???
  • EutychusEutychus Shipmate
    edited December 2018
    It cannot have been a mistake as the guests at the evangelistic event wedding had been issued with pocket gospels of John, too.

    The other thing that sticks in my mind about this sermon was nothing about the content except that the preacher constantly referred to the bride and groom as "X, Y, Y, X*" alternating with "Y,X, X,Y" which had the auditory effect of a pair of Maneki Neko waving cats.

    From this I learned to address the bride and groom in wedding sermons by using "X, Y" once and then "Y, X" the next time, and so forth.

    *Names removed for obvious reasons

  • Ricardus wrote: »
    stetson wrote: »
    I'm trying to imagine what sort of agenda he would have been pushing with some of those facts. I could see, for example, a Catholic or maybe Anglo-Catholic cleric telling people that Henry went back to Catholicism during the Counter Reformation, ie. even Henry realized that Rome was where all good Christians should be.

    I suspect he was just confusing Henry VIII with Charles II.

    Do you mean James II? Or did Charles convert as well?

    In any case, I would find it rather odd for a Presbyterian minister in the UK to confuse Henry VIII with any other English king, even if it was just a case of knowing who you meant, but getting the name wrong, since Henry is one of those figures who's really in a class by himself. And I'm someone who basically knows about him mostly from stuff like Ladybird books and history cartoons.

  • According to Wikipedia, 'On the last evening of his life he was received into the Catholic Church in the presence of Father John Huddleston, though the extent to which he was fully conscious or committed, and with whom the idea originated, is unclear.'
  • FirenzeFirenze Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    I remember a wedding sermon in some little ultra-evo church in Wales which utterly defeated the ends of preaching. I could not tell you what it was about. I remember only that the name of the church came round about every second sentence, and the bride and groom were exhorted (?) to ‘actualize the dialectic of marriage’.
  • Another snippet I remember - the preacher stated (as if it were Biblical or at least widely accepted) that Jesus was whipped 39 times. A cursory google suggests that this is at least a widely known pious legend, though one I'm apparently ignorant of.
  • Maybe he's bad at history, bad with memorizing, and/or ignorant?

    So he was Church of Scotland. Is that Scottish Anglican, or Presbyterian, or something else? And at what kind of church was the man preaching?

    Thx.
  • The Church of Scotland is presbyterian. Since moving here 20+ years ago, I've only been to regular CofS services a couple of times - and both were the only times I heard Creationism preached from the pulpit. Though, CofS places have hosted a lot of much more sensible events (Iona Community services etc), which makes it a very mixed bag.
  • Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
    to attribute it to age

    How old? We have a retired minister willing to step in at short notice, but his sermons are dreadful. Given his age (80 +) and the fact that he's usually doing someone a huge favour by being there at all we tend to smile and nod.

    He's not factually incorrect, more out of touch. E.g. using examples such as the fear you feel when you are in your Anderson shelter and you know the last bomb fell close by.

    If you ignore the dire sermons and look at the bigger picture of his lifetime of service, he's pretty impressive.
  • Another snippet I remember - the preacher stated (as if it were Biblical or at least widely accepted) that Jesus was whipped 39 times. A cursory google suggests that this is at least a widely known pious legend, though one I'm apparently ignorant of.

    It's possible I suppose. Or was he getting muddled with Paul (2 Cor. 11:24)?
  • la vie en rougela vie en rouge Circus Host, 8th Day Host
    Dear preachers everywhere: please stop saying Jesus died “over two thousand years ago”. No he didn’t. It was slightly less than two thousand years ago. And my irritation at your inability to do basic arithmetic will completely obscure any other valid and worthwhile point you may make.
  • Another snippet I remember - the preacher stated (as if it were Biblical or at least widely accepted) that Jesus was whipped 39 times. A cursory google suggests that this is at least a widely known pious legend, though one I'm apparently ignorant of.

    It's possible I suppose. Or was he getting muddled with Paul (2 Cor. 11:24)?

    Perhaps a Roman Catholic preacher could argue that this indicated the pain inflicted on the body of Christ by the 39 Articles
  • Another snippet I remember - the preacher stated (as if it were Biblical or at least widely accepted) that Jesus was whipped 39 times. A cursory google suggests that this is at least a widely known pious legend, though one I'm apparently ignorant of.

    It's possible I suppose. Or was he getting muddled with Paul (2 Cor. 11:24)?

    Seems likely, based on the duckduckgo I just did.



  • LydaLyda Shipmate
    What I looked up said that Jewish law specified that there could be no more than forty blows given in punishment. However Jesus was scourged by Roman soldiers with a Roman scourge, likely one with multiple thongs embellished with bone bits that rip you up :anguished:. Thirty-nine blows with that probably would have killed him before the crucifixion.
  • For reference the preacher is in his 70s, ordained in the Church of Scotland and preaching in a Church of Scotland context. Given his ministry context during much of his working life I can completely forgive him being ignorant of the history of the Reformation. What I find irritating is the choice to preach about something of which you are ignorant without making at least a token effort to inform yourself.
  • Dear preachers everywhere: please stop saying Jesus died “over two thousand years ago”. No he didn’t. It was slightly less than two thousand years ago. And my irritation at your inability to do basic arithmetic will completely obscure any other valid and worthwhile point you may make.

    We got told the other week that AD stands for 'After Death', so it might not be arithmetic but stupidity ...
  • BroJamesBroJames Purgatory Host, 8th Day Host
    Ignorance and stupidity. I don’t know what it means. (Ignorance) Let me we what might it be? Aha! After Death. (Stupidity)
  • Ricardus wrote: »
    Dear preachers everywhere: please stop saying Jesus died “over two thousand years ago”. No he didn’t. It was slightly less than two thousand years ago. And my irritation at your inability to do basic arithmetic will completely obscure any other valid and worthwhile point you may make.

    We got told the other week that AD stands for 'After Death', so it might not be arithmetic but stupidity ...

    Ripley Doctrine - take off and nuke from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
  • He may not know he's ignorant. Maybe someone taught him the things he preached, or he picked them up along the way.
    Not everyone is focused on having everything pinned down, proven, and cited, nor checking everything online.

    FWIW
  • Not everyone is focused on understanding computers, diagnostics and finding solutions but it's a proper ball-ache when they're meant to be techies.

    I like people standing up front pontificating to know what they're talking about.
  • An older lady who, after she had (finally) been removed from the preaching plan, I came to like and respect, once led a service in our church where prayer cards were given out to remind the congregation that it was xxx-charity Sunday. At one point in the chaotic proceedings she said 'we will now use the prayer on the cards provided' but started to read the wrong side of the card and intoned 'xxx-charity was set up in 18** by Dr PQR...' - and continued, right to the end - with a large part of the congregation dutifully following with bowed heads. She also used to fire up 'The Lord be with you' (and also with you) when she lost her thread, which was often and gave the whole thing the feel of a Brucey-era episode of The Generation Game (didn't he do well, good game, good game). I am still trying to work out whether the screaming in my head 'FFS, even I could do better than this' was an early call which I still need to address, or what.
  • Thank you for my morning chuckle. And yes, it probably was a call!
  • To be fair to the guy, I used to think AD stood for After Death too. It was not until I was about 7 or 8 that I realised there would be a gap of 30 odd years between B.C. and A.D. that I asked someone to explain it to me.
  • Although there is no excuse for extreme laziness and lack of preparation of sermons (as in any responsible job), they are - like university lectures - meant to make the hearers think and find things out for themselves. They are a launching pad for ideas and further research, not a complete instruction manual. It sounds like the OPer engaged beautifully in active, thinking listening in response to the sermon, so mission achieved.
  • If not quite in the manner intended ...
  • I can take heresy preached from the pulpit. I just need to work out why it is heresy and what I actually think. I cannot stand it when people simply ignore the evidence. The best example I have is a sermon on the sermon on the mount where the preacher started out with the statement that Jesus could not have talked to all those people as sound systems had not been invented yet. This is wrong on two accounts:
    1. Plenty of other preached to large crowds before the days of modern amplification systems e.g. John Wesley
    2. Actually reading the passage it is clear Jesus' focus for teaching was the disciples not the crowd.

    So he brought up a non-existent problem for something that is not recorded as happening. As all he needed to do was read the text carefully, he lost me from the opening sentences.
  • EutychusEutychus Shipmate
    edited December 2018
    Chorister wrote: »
    Although there is no excuse for extreme laziness and lack of preparation of sermons (as in any responsible job), they are - like university lectures - meant to make the hearers think and find things out for themselves. They are a launching pad for ideas and further research, not a complete instruction manual.
    Words that should be carved into every pulpit and, for good measure, intoned corporately at the start of every homiletics class.

    [ETA I only remember one lecturer like that, though.]

    [that link might actually work now]
  • MooMoo Kerygmania Host
    When I was in college, one Easter Sunday the Episcopal chaplain asked a retired priest to assist him. In those days only a priest was allowed to distribute the elements; with the large crowd expected the chaplain wanted help in the distribution. As soon as the chaplain told the priest he wanted help, the man lit up and said, "I know; you want me to preach the sermon." The chaplain didn't have the heart to say no.

    Normally, the sermon was about five minutes long; that's what everyone expected. This man preached for forty-five minutes, and no one could follow what he said. Afterwards we speculated that he had written a sermon every Sunday since he retired, and had given us one sentence from each. After everyone had stopped trying to understand, he jolted everyone awake by bellowing the word LOVE.

    It was a memorable sermon.
  • Jengie Jon wrote: »
    I can take heresy preached from the pulpit. I just need to work out why it is heresy and what I actually think. I cannot stand it when people simply ignore the evidence. The best example I have is a sermon on the sermon on the mount where the preacher started out with the statement that Jesus could not have talked to all those people as sound systems had not been invented yet. This is wrong on two accounts:
    1. Plenty of other preached to large crowds before the days of modern amplification systems e.g. John Wesley
    2. Actually reading the passage it is clear Jesus' focus for teaching was the disciples not the crowd.

    So he brought up a non-existent problem for something that is not recorded as happening. As all he needed to do was read the text carefully, he lost me from the opening sentences.

    What might have been interesting would have been speculation of whether Jesus ever preached a connected "sermon" on the mount at all, or whether it was simply a literary device used by the Evangelist to group together and frame some of Jesus' discourses.
  • Yes, that would have been interesting, I tend to view it as an exemplar of Jesus' teaching and not worry too much as to whether it was all delivered at the same time or at different times. I do not know whether Matthew pulled together lots of key bits of preaching or took a story of what Jesus preached on one occasion to present Jesus' modus operandi in preaching. However, that was not what we got.
  • LydaLyda Shipmate
    And getting back to the they-couldn't-hear-him bit, I have a feeling that in an age when people didn't go places with amplification that blasted your ears and didn't wear earbuds that sent sound straight into the brain, people could hear pretty darn well.
  • There was still hearing loss, maybe not so much. I have twice been in services where the preacher was used to preaching without amplification and just carried on projecting as if nothing had changed. It was like having a hellfire preacher on full blast with no modulation. It was not a pleasant experience. The thing was neither were hellfire preachers; the first was a liberal pacificist and the second though conservative was a gentle academic soul*. Up until the 1980s at least students at at least one URC theological college were taught voice projection as part of their training. At the time, you could not be sure that every church had an amplification system, so they needed to be able to project when there was not one.

    *In fairness to this preacher, once he had feedback after the service he never made that mistake again.
  • I truly believe that of all the thousands of people gathered at one time to 'hear' John Wesley preach only those gathered around him, in the open air, would have possibly had a chance of hearing him. He was a focus (however sincere his own intentions) for mischief, trouble and fanaticism from countless others who were attracted to his field meetings - either out of sheer novelty, or because of real devotion. So of course the crowds were huge. But unless he had lungs the size of a small block of flats, he couldn't have made himself distinctly heard to everyone assembled, probably not even beyond a few hundred gathered close by. Not. Physically. Possible.

    Even in a biggish church, with enclosed walls, and a sounding board over a raised pulpit, a preacher, unamplified, has to effectively bellow slowly, syllable by syllable, as if addressing the simple-minded to be properly heard. It was no doubt, in its time, a fascinating spectacle, especially if the bellowing made sense and was of help. I used to go to the Hereford church where John Venn was known to have preached several times a Sunday to packed houses, who would queue round the streets to hear him.

    But this was before youtube and TED talks, of course.
  • Charles Spurgeon preached to 23,000 people at one time.
    At the Fast Day, 7 October 1857, he preached to the largest crowd ever – 23,654 people – at The Crystal Palace in London.
    (from wiki, but I knew this because my brother has written a biography of Spurgeon.)
  • MooMoo Kerygmania Host
    Some people's voices "carry" much better than others, and in the days before amplification, speakers were trained to project their voices.
  • I think Wesley did have a tendency to over-estimate the size of the crowds who came to hear him. Estimating crowd numbers is a difficult thing to do.

    That doesn't mean he didn't get sizeable crowds. He undoubtedly did. Like Anselmina, I very much doubt they could all hear him.

    As for Spurgeon at Crystal Palace, was that an open air sermon? Was there a venue that could hold / seat that many people there at that time?
  • It was inside the Palace: https://tinyurl.com/y7r8ebwo
  • Maybe they did a version of Occupy's human public address system? People near the speaker recite the speaker's words to the people around them, and some of them do the same thing, etc..

    Someone might also have made a simple megaphone with a cone of paper, corn shucks, etc.. I wonder if something like a ram's horn would work? Or something like the wooden Alp horns in Switzerland.

    And then there's yodeling, and the huge noise produced by livestock-callers (e.g., humans calling out to hogs). I've only heard it on TV, usually in contests.

    All sorts of low-techish (i.e., non-electrical) possibilities.
  • It's also important to remember how much ambient noise there is in the modern world, particularly in cities. On a still day in a rural area sound travels. A lot. How much that translates to speech to a large crowd I'm not sure, but 5000 people don't take up as much space as you'd think (give them a square metre a piece and you're talking half a football pitch).
  • It's also important to remember how much ambient noise there is in the modern world, particularly in cities.
    As I discovered some years ago at a performance at Shakespeare's Globe. The Bard's players didn't have to cope with low-flying helicopters buzzing along the Thames.

  • And the original globe accommodated up to 3000.
  • I know it's different - but opera singers in opera houses don't use microphones but have to sing from behind an 80-piece orchestra.
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