1. Proclamation Centered
This is a blog series based on The Five Congregational Personality Types. I’ll briefly describe each of the five types and the potential dark side. If you want to go deeper with each one, order the book here, and get registered for the free webinar coming up on Thursday May 2nd, 12pm EST.
But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ.
—Ephesians 4:15
We will start with a proclamation centered congregation. This is a community of people who rally around the faithful preaching and teaching of Scripture. Worship services and Bible studies are the life stream of this congregation. Usually, they were founded or led for a significant period of time by a conscientious teacher who created a culture in which the study, proclamation, and transmission of scriptural truth (ἀλήθεια, aletheia) was a central value.
Proclamation-centered congregations are the communal embodiment of the conscientious personality trait. A central activity for this community of learners is thoughtful, attentive, and disciplined engagement with Scripture. People often feel compelled to act dutifully and excel as students, as they integrate learnings in their daily life.
It’s possible that when people talk about the “golden days” of this congregation’s history, it involves a teaching pastor or preacher, who was exceptionally gifted in the proclamation of God’s Word. It’s easy to see how this is a congregation that can become all head and no heart. But healthy conscientious people are also thoughtful and attentive to the needs of others.
The Dark Side of a Proclamation-Centered Congregation
Every congregation has a dark side or a blind spot. If Christ’s “power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor 12:9), how do we yield that weakness to Christ in order to allow him to turn it into our superpower? How does a proclamation-centered congregation represent the fullness of the “love triangle” in which God’s love flows in a continuous loop through pastor, congregation, and community?
The first movement is to communicate love well, thereby strengthening our center. In a proclamation-centered congregation, the leaders need to work hard to create vibrant preaching and teaching ministries that “speak the truth in love.” Ministers need to work hard on delivering compelling and transformative sermons. Leadership teams need to work hard to create environments in which people can gather around the proclaimed Word and create a discipleship system that will help people bend their lives to the truth of Scripture. Faithful engagement with Scripture can lead people to an encounter with the One who is the “living Word,” Jesus the Christ (John 1:1).
From the strength of that center, we can begin to move out to the edges. The dark side of a proclamation-centered congregation can manifest in many ways. In larger churches, it can become a shallow form of church, where people come to consume the preaching like a spiritual Happy Meal. In smaller congregations, it can diminish authentic fellowship because the whole system centers around the sermon, or the deliverer, but leaves no space for quality conversations.
A proclamation-centered congregation should not become fixated upon one person but become a community of proclaimers in which every person is encouraged to play a role. Large congregations with lots of staff can accomplish this by having a rotation of employees who preach. But even small proclamation-centered congregations can accomplish this by empowering laity.
At the network of congregations Jill and I serve as part-time pastors, we have no staff. Our preaching team consists of two clergy and a diverse group of six lay preachers who cover the pulpit of three congregations. We have a dozen more folks who preach and lead sermonic conversations in our Fresh Expressions of Church. We go away together for preaching retreats, teaching seminary-level content about how to study, prepare, and deliver sermons. As a community of equals, we each bring sermon series ideas to the table. We talk these through and democratically decide which ones we will preach. We plan out the entire year’s preaching calendar in advance.
The dark side is going to be different for every congregation. But we can use the concept of the “Fourth L” fulcrum to move the needle toward a weak area of our congregational life.
We can create small groups focused on one of these areas in which people are invited to delve deeper into their discipleship journey. The key to strengthening the center, while experimenting on the edge, is to use the gift of the congregation’s particular strengths, to lead them into other expressions and growth of their weaknesses gently over time.
These are determinations your team must make for itself, but perhaps the guiding questions following each chapter can give you a starting point and help you move in the right direction.