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Alpha & Omega Ministries Apologetics Blog
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PowerPoint Preaching is Not Prophetic
03/03/2010 - Alan Kurschner
These brief comments are not intended to give a list of pros and cons for using PowerPoint to supplement pastors' sermons (or for the more enlightened pastors who use Mac's Keynote). I just want to consider one con, probably the most important one. I simply do not find sermons supplemented with Powerpoint conducive to the qualities of soul-grabbing, prophetic, anguishing preaching.I think it is safe to say that the main reason why pastors who use PowerPoint is to induce a bullet-point memory in their congregants. But that goal sets the bar too low for God's people. Preaching requires much higher demands on its people. In addition, there is just something about a cold, large projector screen vying attention away from the flesh and blood countenance of the pastor that diminishes my reflective soul to hearing God's Word. And I do not have a short attention span, so I cannot imagine the affect on those who do.
I know I said above that I was going to consider one con, but I will mention a second one, while on the subject. I have not pinned down why exactly, but after a pastor puts his most recent bullet-point on the screen, there is this atomizing affect that disconnects it from the other points. I am a big discourse analysis guy (aka "arcing"). Expository preaching is not about preaching bullet points, so why communicate it as if it were, in PowerPoint? Expository preaching is about explaining the author's argument---whether that is found in Jesus' parables, Paul's epistles, or Revelation's apocalyptic prophecy. Gordon Fee aptly once wrote: "For the sermon to have integrity as a proclamation of the intent of Scripture, it should focus on this question [the intended author's reasoning], and all its parts should serve that focus."
So jettison the PowerPoint and quit worrying about whether the congregants will remember the "three main points" of a sermon by Wednesday, and focus on edifying their Christian soul at that moment with soul-grabbing, prophetic, anguishing preaching.
(Case in point: John Piper does not use PowerPoint when he preaches. If he did, I am convinced that it would diminish the soul-grabbing, prophetic, anguishing quality of his preaching. But not just the latter quality, but it would also diminish his explanation of the expository-argument. I have observed that Piper does a masterful job in interweaving his discourse analysis into his sermons, which just goes to prove that DA is essential to good expository preaching.)
13:08:23 - Category: Pastoral Theology - Link to this article -
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