What value preaching in the missional church?

Here's an interesting article that raises some important questions about how we both do and see Sundays and church as a result.

I've long held the view that the church in general is over taught and under experienced. Sunday after Sunday we listen to someone, or someone like me gets listened to, whose primary purpose often seems to be to teach people three things they already know about a passage of the Bible they have read many times before. That's not meant to be cynical, it's just how it is way too often in our churches.

As the article says:

We will never be a missional church without greater participation - and I'm not talking about adding lay liturgists to Sunday worship.

We need to mentor disciples who make a difference in the community. The assumption that we come in, fuel up, head out - without any further spiritual responsibility has ruined us.

Somewhere along the line we need to recapture the vision of both preparing God's people for ministry and mission and celebrating the outcomes of those very ministries and missions in which we engage day-by-day.

Preaching still has a place. Maybe not so much as a teaching programme, but more of an inspirational programme that gets us engaging with God's word and making life-changing application of it. But I'd agree with the author of the article, preaching, as it is often perceived and desired in our churches, has contributed to our demise and has ruined us in some ways.