Saturday, March 6, 2010

Multiple conference preachers

What do you think about the (?recent) trend to have multiple speakers on the program at large Christian conferences?

I can think of some good reasons;
  • Gives an opportunity for younger preachers to get exposure and experience
  • Can be motivated by desire to have different types of preaching (e.g. AFES National Training Event often has one speaker topical, and the other straight exegesis.)
  • Potentially takes attention away from the personality
  • More attractive if people dislike one of the preachers
Also some bad reasons;
  • Panders to the attention-deficit generation
  • Doesn't allow a preacher to build rapport
  • Reflective of preaching that fails to build tension over a number of sermons and thus grapple with the content of an entire book
  • Unreflective imitation of America
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3 comments:

  1. I agree with your negatives, especially the second last point.

    Two speakers can be good if it's a longer conferece, as the interaction or complentary nature of the two speakers works really well...

    But in general, I think Australians have done it better having more of a focus on one speaker.

    This also seems to, in my mind, encourage proper exegesis and the power of hearing God speak from the Scriptures. When you have more speakers, preaching fewer times, the sermons veer off towards topical.

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  2. "This also seems to, in my mind, encourage proper exegesis and the power of hearing God speak from the Scriptures"

    I thought in my mind having multiple speakers would take away from the personality (and onto the word of God), yet in many ways having multiple speakers is even more likely to emphasise the preachers.

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