Proclaimer Blog
Willcox House sermons
I heard some extraordinary news this week. Our 1960s office building was an early Norman Foster creation. Frankly, I found that hard to believe unless, as one wag pointed out, he'd done the drawings on a Friday afternoon during a particularly gripping Ashes test. Don't get me wrong, it's a great provision, functional, ideally located, reasonably robust (it's only occasionally that things fall off). All, in fact, you could want in an office building. But it's not Foster showboating. It's not the Reichstag or the Gherkin.
That got me thinking about sermons (like the link there?). The majority of our sermons are not high profile building projects. We don't have time or energy to produce a Terminal 5 every week. We're not showboating, trying to impress our congregations. Quite the opposite. We want to produce carefully crafted, useful, faithful, warm, heart changing (under God) sermons. But we're not on the conference platform every week. For which I thank God. We are Willcox House preachers.
We need to be careful. I am not advocating sloppiness, laziness, cutting corners. I am not saying you need to be dull or lifeless. Willcox House – for all its functionality – is still well built. No – rather, I am saying that we need to make sure style does not triumph over substance. In this internet age when we have immediate access to some of the world's showboating preachers, the temptation is to replicate what they do in the pulpit week after week, rather than thinking more clearly about the calling we ourselves have received.
The London skyline is overwhelmed with architects trying to outdo one another. The result is half empty buildings that look messy when the sunblinds are activated (the Shard) and strangely contoured buildings which melt cars (the Walkie-Talkie). God help the church where the pastor is only really interested in being a preacher superstar.