We look and feel very normal, very warm, very family like, almost hospitable and intimate to an intimidating sense. Something we hear a lot from people is: “Man, it doesn’t seem Solomon’s Porch is a place you can just come for a while. It seems like to really get what you’re doing, you have to really get in and be part of it.” We know in some ways it’s a weakness for us, we hope it doesn’t make us exclusive, or exclusionary, to people. It’s what we’re doing. It’s what we have to do.
Preaching: You are part of the whole Emerging Church conversation going on. Obviously, that’s a long conversation on it’s own. But as you look at yourself and others that are shaping that conversation, how do you see the role of preaching as understood by those involved in the Emerging Church?
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Pagitt: I think it depends on which tradition from the Emerging Church someone is coming from. Depending on their tradition, preaching and the sermon already play a certain role as a particular function. Some friends of mine that are from Anglican traditions, they already have a certain function and a certain role of a sermon. Friends from non-denominational or Baptist churches think differently. So they’re all changing it or playing with it in some way, wanting it to make sense for them in their context. And so it really depends on who they are and what the role of preaching has meant to them before.
Sometimes people come from a context where preaching was not a very big part -- it was a seven minute homily following the church calendar -- are using much more active conversation, teaching, Bible study and engagement in their communities and preaching in that way. Some who are used to a 30 minute presentation as the sermon are moving in ways closer to a 7 minute homily. People experiment with the other components of the church tradition that allow them to grow in their own preaching experience.
Preaching: So the tendency is to move toward whatever they weren’t doing before.
Pagitt: Yeah, well, the nice thing about Christianity is that it has such a broad and deep history with so many ways of practice that none of us have them all in our repertoire anyway. I don’t think it’s just, “hey, what did I do before, let me do something different.” I don’t think it’s just the counter balance to the balance. I think it is people saying, “There’s a depth to our tradition that my own personal history has only allowed me to pursue this part of it. I want to have a deeper sense of what tradition has to offer.”
Preaching: Tell me about your background. What tradition did you come out of?