The Rev Roddy Hamilton considers the role of the sermon in worship.

I AM sure this might upset some of my colleagues, and not a few congregations who have experienced worship over more decades than I have, but, what would happen if we de-prioritise the sermon?

I’m just throwing this out there for discussion; I haven’t a firm view either way, but is a rich encounter of worship possible relying on the sermon as the central event?

This isn’t being flippant or being controversial for the sake of it. It is a genuine question asked off the back of experience, discussion and some research. If you were to ask a young person what they enjoyed best at church, they would say Sunday School. No surprise. According to Darren Philip and Suzi Farrant, however, who are researching intergenerational worship, if you asked any young person where they met God on a Sunday, they would say in worship.

My follow up question to that is, would the meeting be deeper with or without a sermon? I don’t know. I’m only stretching this to find if our presbyterian enlightenment model of worship needs upgrading.

Our tradition grew out of the enlightenment. We believe in sound doctrine, the ability to debate and rationally explore the word of God, and for all God’s people to do that together. That is fundamental.

What if we enabled that outwith worship, opened the word more thoroughly beyond a Sunday through study and debate and discussion, giving it a broader platform to be heard than pulpits, and offered a more creative, imaginative encounter with God on a Sunday, sometimes with a sermon but not necessarily?

In the place of the sermon might we spend more time shaping space that enables us to encounter, touch, engage with God through our whole beings?

Let me offer a brief example: Remembrance Sunday. Personally I have never preached on this day – what do you say? Instead our congregation has offered different ways to respond to the moment by inviting everyone to move and place their poppy in an oasis crosses, or add to a river of poppies down the aisle, or remove a poppy from a banner painted like grass knowing poppies only grow in ground that is disturbed; the vision, therefore, is fields without poppies where no soldier boots or military tanks have disturbed the ground. The symbol is enough.

The first Remembrance Sunday we did this, I was shocked by the number of people who chose to move to take part. I asked someone who always sat at the back and rarely moved for anything, but was at the front of the queue that day, ‘Why?’ She said it was the first time she had been allowed to respond in her own way to remembrance. That had a big effect on me. And since then, we have regularly sought ways to enable people to have an encounter, an experience beyond the sermon, as the central part of worship.

“ I haven’t a firm view either way, but is a rich encounter of worship possible relying on the sermon as the central event?

There are a hundred different ideas, in a hundred different resources out there, for a hundred different Sundays, but I do wonder, and I don’t know the answer, if being more willing, and being more able to think more often beyond the sermon as the central part of our encounter with God might free, not just our imagination, but God’s spirit in us all.   

The Rev Roddy Hamilton is minister at Bearsden: New Kilpatrick.