Supervision for Junior Preachers

I always feel that Indonesian full time bible teachers (guru injil) or pastors are heavily burdened with preaching duties. It was mentioned recently in the 23 September 2008 blog entry of this blogger. His entry really got me going for days. I have to write something to get it out of my head. I may offend some people. Please accept my sincere apology.

In Indonesian church life, preaching is part of prayer meeting, women's fellowship, youth fellowship, housewarming party, thanksgiving, business opening, casket closure ceremony, consolation service, pre-funeral service, grave-side ceremony, wedding, malam widodaren (Indonesian version of bachelorette gatherings) and many more.

My first concern is whether the congregation ever felt preached out sometimes. Secondly, whether the preacher has ample time to prepare for his or her sermon. And thirdly, with so many sermons delivered, are there any supervision for the junior preachers?

I believe there should be less sermon delivered on a weekly basis and each sermon delivered (especially by juniors) should be properly vetted and supervised to maintain quality and faithfulness to biblical teaching. In my line of work as an Educational Psychologist, my first 1000 hours with my clients has to be supervised. Practically, my first 250 to 350 psychological reports has to be vetted and co-signed by a registered psychologist. Why not evaluation and supervision for new preachers who are doing important work as God's mouthpiece? Evaluation and supervision is important for the following reasons.

First, sermon text should be vetted for correct teaching to ensure that nothing that's contrary to the bible is inserted. I recently cringed over a joke delivered in a sermon by an ordained pastor. On writing it doesn't sound funny but his delivery made people laughed. In the joke he related to a question by a youth, "Pastor, can a Christian go to night clubs?" He said he answered the youth by saying simply (I don't remember word by word), "If Jesus returns or you die today, is that how you want God to find you?" I was waiting for him to provide explanation of what his point was or was not but it never came. There were several things inferred from that illustration. First, that God only sees the external, and not what's in a person's heart. Secondly, there is greater weight placed on to our last act than the rest of your life. The pastor sermon overall was easy to listen to and his delivery was pleasant. But that little speck really bothered me.

Second, vetting of text and evaluation of delivery is important for the preacher's own personal development. I heard another pastor preached. He was a very senior one, and I cringed. This pastor liked to use "saudara saudara" excessively in his sermon to the point that it was distracting. In fact I was so distracted I started counting how many "saudara saudara" he used. I counted the rate per minute for 5 minutes and I counted 13-15 "saudara saudara's" every minute. That means there were a total of 650 to 750 "saudara saudara's" in his 50 minutes sermon. This debilitating habits could have been dealt with if during his junior years he was properly supervised. Now he is so senior that I don't think no one's evaluation is going to be received kindly.

Third, sermon text should be vetted so that it's worth (in delivery time) could be decided before delivery. If a sermon worth only 20 minutes of the congregation time, then the preacher should not spent 45 minutes. I often suffered through sermons which main points could have been delivered in less than 20 minutes. But because of inexperience or insecurity over delivering a short sermon, junior preachers often just padded his or her sermon with fillers to make it twice longer. Good preachers usually know when to stop preaching and they do not pad up his sermon with meaningless words. Good preacher words are insightful and succinct and overall sermons are usually is shorter.

On a side note, the pulpit of First Presbyterian Church of B0ulder, Colorado was equipped with a built in digital clock. I was told that the clock would blink at certain time to remind preachers that they went overtime. I thought that was hilarious. Maybe in all pulpits, there should be a timer so that preachers know when they have spoken too long. I believe the length of the sermon is not the issue. The issue is when a sermon went over 30 minutes and nothing insightful of new is being said.

Junior preachers can learn a lot from good senior preachers. They need to have their content and delivery style evaluated. A good evaluation should point out the things he/she did right as well as areas that need improvement.