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| FPC, Lowville, NY |
The third criterion on the Mars Hill list is, "The church regularly gathers to hear God’s Word rightly preached and to respond in worshipful ways." The fourth criterion reads, "The church is where the biblical sacraments of baptism and Communion are performed regularly." Both of these criteria focus on worship, and while the order and wording may not have been intended to be important, it is worth noting that in this Protestant description of the role of worship preaching comes first, worship generally second, and the sacraments are third (although they do warrant their own separate criterion). In Protestant worship, we emphasize preaching. In my own preparation time for worship, I devote much more time to sermon preparation than to the overall "performance" of the worship service. Whether for good or for ill, I'm not sure.
So, let's start with preaching. Why do we put it at the center of Protestant worship? Historically, I suppose, the early Protestants partly reacted to the high church "ritualism" of Roman Catholicism. We didn't want to "be like them." But, going back in time, early Protestant clergy faced congregations that generally had little or no Christian education background, no knowledge of the Bible, and hardly any sense that they were responsible for developing their own understanding of their faith. They desperately needed teaching, and the reality was that the best time to do that teaching was during worship. Protestant sermons became long, learned discourses aimed at teaching the rudiments of Christian faith to the ignorant. We Presbyterians, in the good old days, even called our pastors "teaching elders," a term that the recent revision of the Presbyterian Church (USA) Form of Government has revived.
In a sense then, preaching is in our Protestant blood. It defines who we are, at least in part.
In terms of the third criterion, there is one point that needs to be made about its wording, which says that one mark of the church is that it regularly gathers to hear preaching and "to respond in worshipful ways." This is not a good choice of words. It implies that the worship service doesn't begin until after the sermon and that it is the sermon that inspires worship. I am sure the authors of these criteria did not mean to imply such, but the wording carries us to that conclusion. Take it as further evidence of how deeply the centrality of preaching has seeped into Protestant worship. Preaching, of course, is but one element in worship, and what congregants experience on a Sunday morning is not just the sermon but the whole worship package.
