I recently had the privilege of attending a series of seminars at Canadian Reformed Theological Seminary on preaching. There was lots of thought-provoking stuff thrown our way. But I wanted to especially share this little tidbit from Dr. Jason Van Vliet. He presented a lecture on “Catechism Preaching: Keeping It Fresh and Relevant.” Under the heading of “Why preach from the Catechism?” he suggested that we think of the relationship between regular Bible-text preaching and catechism preaching in terms of nouns, verbs, and adverbs.
The nouns are the same — if done properly, in both instances our subject material is the Word of God.
The verbs are the same — if done properly, in both instances we are preaching the Word of God.
The adverbs are different — in the first instance we are preaching from a single text of Scripture (in what I would call an expository manner); in the second instance we are preaching catechetically from a broader range of God’s revelation in Scripture.
I think that’s a helpful way to explain it, especially for those who still struggle with the idea of catechism preaching. Still I am becoming increasingly convinced that it is unhelpful to describe the Catechism as our TEXT for the afternoon/evening sermon. That terminology can and often does give the impression that the Catechism has replaced the Bible in the second service. In the service I typically announce it something like this: “This afternoon we’re considering the teachings of the Word of God as summarized and confessed by the church in Lord’s Day x.” But I’m still trying to think of a better, yet still succinct, way of mentioning it in the order of worship in the bulletin. Right now we still have “TEXT:” I know some URCs have “Confessional Reading,” but that’s not really accurate either. If anyone has a good suggestion, I’ll leave the comments open just for this one post.
January 24th, 2012 at 5:26 pm
Wes:
Thank you for sharing Dr. Van Vliet’s thoughts on this important matter.
I don’t know if this is helpful or not but our afternoon services at Grace look like this:
Scripture Reading: ~
Text: ~ ( Confessional reference here)
The parentheses function as a reminder of the catechism’s subordinate authority to scripture. The reason for this is that I strive to preach from God’s Word or the text over the catechism but not against the catechism. As I have written elsewhere:
“It is easy to abuse the privilege of using the Catechism as an aid to preaching doctrine by simply repeating what it says instead of examining the biblical evidence that confirms it…. what we must seek to do is demonstrate from the scriptures that the doctrine is biblically correct and that the Catechism is, therefore, biblical. The Catechism may be used as the template by which we present the doctrines of scripture but not the primary source of the doctrines. This could be done, for example, by choosing a biblical text that accurately reflects the doctrine of the assigned Lord’s Days or one it’s question and answers.”
January 24th, 2012 at 6:19 pm
I usually say something like: “The catechism lesson for this afternoon is Lord’s Day…. and the text for the sermon is the word of God as it is summarized in this Lord`s Day.” I think that`s quite close to CO 52.
February 6th, 2012 at 8:47 pm
Our liturgy says
Ministry of the Word as confessed in Lord’s Day 1