What if we recorded talk in the pews one Sunday morning? The sermon ends, the preacher descends, we sing in response, the benediction is given, voices break out, and the recording begins. As people speak to one another, what does one overhear?
Men talk of recent house projects, that afternoon’s football game, the weather, global news, politics, a sore knee, irritations at work, retirement. Women discuss kids, homeschooling, upcoming events, anxieties.
Ask an impartial judge: Is this a group of Christians? It might be hard to tell. Are we overhearing talk from a food court, a bus stop, or a church? Did these people just meet with the God of heaven and earth? The almighty Creator has just spoken to us through his preached word. Yet what if it has little to no consequence on our conversations directly afterward?
The contrast may be obvious with how happily we discuss other interests — for example, our entertainments. When you see a great movie or show, do you not make a point to discuss the plot twist at the end, the heartbreak of that character’s death, or the glory of this character’s redemption? Isn’t the experience somehow incomplete until you express what you think and feel and how deeply this or that moved you? Well, what about the sermon?
I am not giving a rule but questioning a culture. The problem is not that we talk about lunch or the game or earthly concerns, but that we lack deliberate conversation about the best things we just heard. Do we redeem the time? Would the recording detect much edifying, thoughtful, beautiful conversations about the soul and the Lord Jesus, or something closer to saltless, unspiritual, and rather idle conversation?
Consider how John Owen describes our blessed duty:
Believers, in their ordinary daily discourse, ought to be continually mentioning the Lord in helpful, profitable conversation, and not waste opportunities with foolish, light, frothy words that are out of place [especially on a Sunday]. (Duties of Christian Fellowship, 54)
A culture of frothy conversations seems to me the result of a more foundational assumption: that we really gather to hear the preacher speak, and not to further the grace in each other’s lives by our own speaking.
That All Were Prophets
What if we prayerfully arrived ready to speak words that “give grace to those who [need to] hear,” words the Spirit has equipped us to speak (Ephesians 4:29)? What if the culture of our churches were more potluck than single dish from the head chef?
I believe Paul has this in mind when he teaches the church that God gave us evangelists, shepherds, and teachers “to equip the saints for the work of ministry.” Note what ministry: “for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Ephesians 4:12–13). Pastors equip the saints not just to make disciples from the world out there, but to make mature disciples of each other in here. We are equipped by sermons, classes, and pastoral care not just to arrive the next week to receive again, but to use what we hear to speak into each other’s lives.
Thus, Paul continues,
Speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. (Ephesians 4:15–16)
How many members of the body are not working properly because they consider themselves mere consumers? While speaking is not the only way we build others up, it is the means Paul mentions here. The community that builds itself up in love is built not merely by the pastor with the microphone. Instead, that pastor equips us to take the truth of Christ and echo it into each other’s lives during the rest of Sunday and throughout the week.
Very practically, what should we say when the service ends?
1. Discuss the Sermon
As book clubs discuss books, saints should discuss sermons. Ask how God met them; be ready to share how God met you.
I remember being taught that when God’s word is faithfully preached, the responsibility to steward that word shifts from the preacher to the hearer. You now hold a duty to love, meditate upon, apply, share, and further speak the truth preached (including with those next to you).
Consider how we can influence each other — positively and negatively — by our worldward or Godward conversation.
God is convicting or uplifting or correcting a brother’s heart with the word — I interrupt to get his take on the Vikings game. Jesus teaches that Satan steals sermons from hearts; how often are we his unwitting accomplices? The seed was sinking into the soil; I blew it away. His spirit burned just now — I doused the flame. His heart was being pierced; I parried the blade.
But imagine if I discerned his unspoken heaviness, asked the Lord if I should go speak to him, and, going over, said, “Brother, tell me how God met your soul this morning.” You can do so much good by joining the preacher in ministry, seeking to further impress the truth upon souls by simple conversations about Christ after the service. Here is an idea: take sermon notes for yourself first and then also for others. You don’t need to be another pastor. Just be a humble, simple lover of God and souls, and the good you can do is unspeakable.
2. Care for the Soul
Thomas Watson gave his assessment after listening in on Christian conversations:
It is the fault of Christians that they do not in company provoke themselves to good discourse. It is a sinful modesty; there is much visiting, but they do not give one another’s souls a visit. In worldly things their tongue is a ready writer, but in things of religion it is as if their tongue did cleave to the roof of their mouth. (Heaven Taken by Storm, 38)
Consider how we rewrite Hebrews 10:24–25 by our Sunday conduct: “Let the pastors alone consider how to stir us up to love and good works, and let us not neglect to meet together to receive their words, as is the habit of some, but be encouraged by the pastors, and all the more as the Day draws near.”
Now the actual passage: “Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near” (Hebrews 10:24–25). We consider others, stir them up to love and good works. “Meeting together” is linked with “encouraging one another.”
So we ask questions about each other, we check in on each other’s souls, we stir each other up, and we “exhort one another every day, as long as it is called ‘today,’ that none of [us] may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin” (Hebrews 3:13). “Teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom,” we form each other’s souls (Colossians 3:16).
3. Pray for One Another
It is written, “My house shall be called a house of prayer.” (Matthew 21:13)
You may not possess many words of wisdom. You may not think well on your feet. You may get nervous and awkward and unsure of what to say in response to other’s questions. Here is one thing that eloquent and plain, wise and simple, young and old in Christ can do for one another: pray.
God’s house should be called a house of prayer. Intercession should fill the place before the service, during the service, and after. Ask others how they are doing. Ask how you can pray for them. And then bless yourself and them and the church by asking, “Can I pray for you right now?” “Right now” — two words that (when consistently added) can transform a stagnant culture.
Heaven’s Microphone
Some of the most shaping words spoken in the Christian assembly come not from the pulpit above but from the pew below. A church taught to make the most of the time together, to come to speak and not just to listen, to fill the building with holy conversation, experiences a foretaste of that country where we shall speak forever of all that God has done.
The pew is a powerful place. Marriages are saved there; sermons get engraved forever; souls pass from death to life. The pew or aisle or foyer is a grand place to “let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person” (Colossians 4:6).
The illustration I began with is not entirely hypothetical. Recording devices may never catch our conversations, but be sure that God does. He hears and remembers the holy speech of his people then and now:
Then those who feared the Lord spoke with one another. The Lord paid attention and heard them, and a book of remembrance was written before him of those who feared the Lord and esteemed his name. (Malachi 3:16)
When we who fear the Lord speak to one another this Sunday, what will the Lord overhear?
