Preaching Lessons: Lillian Daniel

I hit up Lillian Daniel's sermon this morning. Her message--Noah's Ark--dealt with Genesis 6:1-9:16. I'm not going to spend much time discussing her sermon here (but I'll include a picture of my notes). For my preaching formation, there are two things I would like to emulate:

• Daniel did an excellent job of dealing with the genre of the text. She handled its mythic nature by taking it so seriously it revealed the absurdity in doing so. She reached to other creation stories to help guide us through this assertion (namely, Adam and Eve), and then fleshed out what the metaphorical implications for the story are for her in this engagement of the text. Nicely done. 
• I'm chewing on her question of whether Adam and Eve were kicked out or released from Eden and whether Noah and the Arkers (that would be an amazing band name) were free or stranded. She said, "There is no roadmap for how to be righteous. The Kingdom of God is within you. Paradise misplaced and paradise found. It's all in perception." For me, this connected to Anna Carter Florence's comments about sacramental vision. 

You guys, I talk with my hands a lot.
Here's me flapping them at Lillian Daniel.

What I really want to talk about, though, was Daniel's lecture, "Who's Asking? (Are We Answering Questions that Nobody's Asking)." It's helpful to know that Daniel is the author of the book When Spiritual but Not Religious Isn't Enough: Seeing God in Surprising Places, Even the Church. And I am thanking God for the work she is doing. Today, she took us on a survey of preaching in America to understand just how we got to the point of church irrelevance (because to many, it is). For most of the lecture, I just sat nodding, so grateful that somebody was putting words to my experience, that someone on the inside was able to tell all the church people, in their language, exactly what was up. Here are a few things I'd like to pass on:

• The beautiful thing about pastoring a church now is that when a pastor looks out at the congregation, she sees people who actually want to be there. In his way, church shopping isn't a negative. It's a way of people making informed decisions about their faith life. And isn't that what we want?
• She lifts up the liberating effect of having people who feel that they can mark the "None" box on the religious affiliation form. We don't want people coming to church because they have to in order to vote, in order to make business connections, in order to fit in.
• She shifts the language of liberal and conserving traditions to one of open-mindedness and fundamenlism or literalism. I think this is helpful and a more accurate description of how different traditions handle Scriptural authority, encountering the Other, and a whole host of things.
• She outlined how open-minded churches have tended to market themselves in three ways, none of which matter to people who are nominally or non-religious:
• Through their activities
• Through opposition (Well, I'll tell you what we're not...)
• And through saying we are an alternative to fundamentalism/literalism. 
• She outlines non-religious people as generally falling into four main categories:
• No Ways--These people have been hurt by the church. Deeply. And actively avoid or are in conflict with the church in many ways.
• Not Latelys--These people have experience of church, but drifted away and didn't feel anything lacking after they left.
• Never Haves. These are individuals who have just never experienced church.
• Not Yets.--These are people who have never experienced church, but who are open and curious. 
• What matters to these people? Answering the question: Why does it matter to you that you follow Jesus?
• As preachers, this means actually seeking to answer this question week-in and week-out when instead we are often trying to answer questions posed by seminary professors, by our culture, or even by arguing with the pastor down the street who has different doctrinal stances than you. She urges us to stop preaching answers to questions that nobody is asking, and instead to look to Scripture to help us wrestle with the question of why following Jesus matters to us.
• And she argues that inevitably, this wrestling leads us to inclusivity, of wonder, of openness to God's movement in our lives and in the lives of people of different faiths (or no faith). So yeah. It matters.

Afterward, I went to meet Daniels and to thank her for her work. I told her that I was a "Not Yet" who has experienced a call to ministry. And then, I teared up. Being a former "Not Yet" in a church world that is still asking you to preach answers to irrelevant questions is hard. And I told her so. And I told her that I was grateful for her work because it helped those inside the church already understand how not to put the Not Yet leaders like me who have found a life-giving faith in Christianity into an irrelevant box that doesn't fit. Daniels was gracious and humble, but I hope she heard how important the work she is doing in making room for new leadership in the church. Because making room for them in the pews is one thing; letting them lead is another...and is an experience that I think will define the next era of Christianity in America...but not without a lot of growing pains.