The Vanishing Pulpit and the Soon Coming Word

While not every Christian tradition has given up a visible pulpit in their sanctuary, many in the low church evangelical tradition/s have. This is not inherently wrong. There’s nothing inherently better about the addition of a pulpit within Christian worship structures.

However, what may be symbolic, in fact, testifies perhaps to a deeper reality that has long been underway. The vanishing pulpit in evangelical churches may itself be indicative of the vanishing of the proclaimed W/word of God in the evangelical church. While “biblicism” informs what is often categorized as broadly evangelical within the so-called Bebbington Quadrilateral it doesn’t address what needs addressed (check out Brandon Basse’s first of three installments noting some of the problematics with this manner as description).

Biblicism does not mean biblical literacy. Biblicism does not mean actually knowing the Scriptures even at a basic level. Biblicism has more to do with affections for an idea than any specific practice of reading, meditation, proclamation, etc. Biblicism can allow a church to hear the words of the rulers of nations making “biblical” pontifications as if they were either Scripture itself or attuned to Scripture. Self-deceit may actually be at the heart of such biblicism.

Nor does biblicism mean careful attention and attunement to the scriptures themselves as a part of the regular worshipping life of the community whether in broad readings or in careful rearticulations, prayers, confessions, and songs belonging to the church’s shared life together.

The loss of the pulpit as a visible symbol may be prophetically indicative of the loss of the place of scripture, within the low church evangelical tradition/s. I would contend that a restoration of the pulpit wouldn’t restore this. Nor would shifting physical forms of the pulpit restore this (as if a small table, a slim podium, a plexiglass lectern, or a vast wooden artifice exalted above the masses would resolve any of this!).

What would restore this would be a return, first and foremost, by those tasked with the preaching and teaching of local congregations to commit themselves to the very hard, very long work of hearing Scripture well and giving themselves to the obedience of what the Spirit is saying to the churches. And I do not mean to imply professional paid preachers (though that would be a given). I mean those in the congregations carrying out the tasks of gospelization. This is a call to return to the proclamation of that obedience … a faith-filled and faithful obedience.

It requires hearing again … and again … and again … and again.

A painful hearing. Not an AI induced hearing. Not an individualizational hearing. Not an ideological hearing.

A resurrectional hearing. To death. Through death. Beyond death.

A hearing that proclaims the Soon Coming Word as the end of all other words.

That hearing as conforming to the Living Word, the Lord Jesus, our Christ, our King, who abides by the Father’s Spirit among us (though not without charges to and against and for us). Who is faithfully testified to in those words inspired by that same Spirit as prophets and apostles were carried along. Who must be faithfully proclaimed as all in all in the midst of a world groaning for this very message.

What is needed is a restoration of God’s Word as central to the life of God’s people, that Word: enfleshed, and yet also enscripturated and proclaimed.

Not a framework. Not as equals in a trilateral relation. But as the witnesses to God’s self-revelation in the One given to and for us (and indeed, the whole of creation) and coming again soon!

And even so, the Bride and the Spirit cry out in one voice together: Come quickly!