In the Scots Confession the first of the “notes of the true kirk” is:

In the last few days preaching has made the news at a level seldom seen here in the U.S. with the direct challenge to portions of the tax code governing religious organizations.  While I have some pretty strong opinions about that, I’m leaving those for another time and probably a different venue.  I’ve got plenty of other things to talk about in this space and there are going to be plenty of other people talking about them, including the Rev. Mark D. Roberts according to a “coming attractions” note.

But an article on the Christianity Today web site by Craig Brian Larson about the spiritual discipline of listening to sermons, as well as the sermon at my church yesterday, got me thinking about the Word preached in the context of the virtual covenant community.  Having started to write this post I can see that the topic is getting away from me and I will be putting a lot of my thoughts into one or more subsequent posts.

In my congregation we have been posting some of the sermons preached on Sunday mornings on our web site for almost three years now.  Doing this is a team effort between the audio crew that records and digitizes the service and I as the internet geek who cuts out the sermon, screens it, possibly edits, resamples and compresses it in multiple forms, and posts it while updating the web page and the RSS feed.  Please note that in the flow process I do screen the sermons.  I don’t screen for “quality” so that only our best messages go up.  In some respects we are an “all the news that fits in print” outlet; in fact you can even find one of mine up there.  What I screen for is the long list of technical issues, including recording quality, copyright issues, and “personal revelations.”  This last issue gets at the heart of one of the major points of discussion among the techies.

The technical crew is constantly discussing the on-line presence and at one end we say we would love to stream our services live every week.  While we are not technically ready to do that, there is the concern of what the preacher might say that would be sent out in real time.  This is not as much concern about controversial statements, like the endorsement of political candidates, but concern for personal examples and family illustrations that a pastor might feel comfortable sharing with a congregation that knows their family, but may not want to share with a virtual community that only knows their voice.  The discussion is whether we need to allow the pastor to preach their sermon, or whether we need to remind them that this is going out over to the big, wide, wonderful virtual world and they need to consider what they share.

While the vast majority of sermons need no content management, yesterday’s was the exception:  our pastor shared, as a wonderful part of the sermon, some extended family details that probably are best not distributed to the world at large.  It was a “you had to be there moment.”  The last time this specific issue came up the screening committee (my wife and I in conversation with the pastor) decided that it would be best not to post the sermon at all.  My initial notes from yesterday are that this sermon can be edited so the personal information is not included since it is a small enough piece of it that the sermon will hold together just fine without it.

So this gets to the tension of what gets put out over the internet.  Do we ask the pastors to self-censor and whatever they say will go on-line, or do we let the pastors deliver the sermon for those who are “in the house” and the words may or may not get to the virtual community?  Which is more appropriate to the “true preaching of the Word of God?”

For those who are in the PC(USA) remember this is what our Directory for Worship says:

W-1.4005a. The minister as pastor has certain responsibilities which are not subject to the authority of the session. In a particular service of worship the pastor is responsible for

(1) the selection of Scripture lessons to be read,
(2) the preparation and preaching of the sermon or exposition of the Word,
(3) the prayers offered on behalf of the people and those prepared for the use of the people in worship,
(4) the music to be sung,
(5) the use of drama, dance, and other art forms.

The pastor may confer with a worship committee in planning particular services of worship.

By forcing a preacher to adapt a sermon for the internet how much do we infringe on this right and responsibility?

To some degree this seems to get down to the “audience”: which covenant community, local or virtual, gets to be the primary one and which gets to “listen in?”  More on that in the next post.