A new survey by the Pew Research Center finds that about a quarter of U.S. adults regularly watch religious services online. The most common reasons Americans give for watching religious services online or on TV are convenience and safety. Around 43 percent of regular viewers cite convenience as a major reason, and an additional 31 percent describe it as a minor reason. Another 49 percent of viewers cite personal safety as a reason.
Does it matter whether people hear sermons in person at church or in private on a computer screen? Why are sermons delivered the way they are—as an oral presentation before a public audience at a particular time and location? After all, there are numerous means by which the same information could be transmitted.
A pastor could email the text of his sermon to people to be read at their leisure. He could—as many had to do during the pandemic—prerecord the sermon in private and distribute it to be watched later. Should these other methods be considered equally valid? Is it merely a matter of personal preference or established prejudice in favor of verbal presentation on Sunday morning?
Some people believe there’s nothing lost by sermons being delivered outside of public preaching at a gathering of a local church. But much is missed when the sermon isn’t heard live, in person, and with other believers.
Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows
Let’s focus on one of the most overlooked factors: an essential function of a sermon is overcoming coordination problems through the production of common knowledge.
A coordination problem is when an individual needs or wants to participate in a group action but wants or needs others to participate too, and in a similar way. Consider, for example, a church choir that’s planning to sing a new hymn at the upcoming Sunday service. Everyone in the choir benefits if they all sing the same hymn at the same time—this would result in harmonious music that enhances the worship service. However, there are multiple hymns they could choose to sing, and each choir member’s choice of hymn to practice depends on what she expects the others to practice.
This is a coordination problem because all choir members gain if they coordinate (they produce beautiful music together), but they need to align their choices (which hymn to sing).
If they fail to coordinate and everyone practices a different hymn, the result will be a discordant mix of songs during the service, which is less than ideal for everyone involved.
What’s needed to solve the choir problem is the situation of common knowledge: not only does everyone know some information but they also know that everyone else knows the information. The coordination problem with the hymns can be easily solved by having the music director inform the choir what hymn will be sung. Then everyone would know that everyone else also knows what hymn to sing.
In a similar way, the sermon serves as a method of distributing common knowledge to a local body of believers. As a community, the local church has a coordination problem: What do we focus our attention and effort on this week as a congregation? The sermon is a biblically ordained method of focusing the attention of effort of a community whose faith and hope is in the Lord Jesus Christ. And the particular element of the sermon that does this is application.
Sermon Application Is for Congregations
As Michael Lawrence has helpfully explained, “A sermon unapplied is no sermon at all, but merely a Bible lecture.” The test of a sermon applicability as Ben Aubrey has said, is this: “Does it convince the mind, move the emotions/affections, convict the conscience, and gain a verdict of the hearers’ wills so that the biblical truth preached in the sermon becomes the hearers’ personal agenda for their daily lives?” A sermon isn’t given to a generic individual, though, but to a specific body of believers.
The effectiveness of a sermon thus relies on the network of hearers. If the people in the congregation know each other and will interact with one another (not a given in the age of the megachurch), their relationships can change through the shared experience of listening to the sermon. The audience’s actions following a sermon create positive externalities, as Kevin Simler says, meaning one person internalizing the sermon’s message benefits others.
For instance, a sermon application from 1 Thessalonians 5:11 might be to encourage one another. If taken seriously, the sermon creates the common knowledge to coordinate the actions of the entire congregation toward this specific application. Individual believers are reminded they should encourage others, but they’re also aware everyone else who heard the sermon heard and internalized the same message. This can create a network effect in which churchgoers are more apt to apply the sermon because they know others are expected to be applying it too. (This is one reason preachers need to know their congregations: to help determine what coordination problems need to be solved through a specific application of the biblical text.)
This purpose of sermons is often missed because we tend to view them—and other aspects of communal worship—from an individualistic perspective. We think primarily about how we should apply the message of the sermons as individuals, rather than as a congregation. Sermons are indeed a tool God uses to conform individual believers into the image of Jesus. Yet God primarily intends to conform them as part of a community. We see this even in Scripture as most of the epistles in the New Testament are directed to congregations rather than individuals (nine versus four).
What We Lose by Watching Online (and Alone)
When a person regularly engages with the sermon apart from the congregation, this aspect of common knowledge and shared experience is lost. The effect of the sermon on the individual hearers becomes more akin to a lecture. While both sermons and lectures are one-to-many forms of communication, says Simler, a lecture imparts knowledge and addresses each person in the audience as an individual learner. Such information can be useful and even edifying. But we should acknowledge the medium of watching it online transforms the sermon from a message for a group to a message for an individual. It becomes not a sermon but a lecture. And we still need to hear sermons, because we need to be a part of a community.
During the pandemic, concerns for the safety and welfare of our people often made it necessary to shift to preaching online. Similarly, there will always be people who are unable because of illness or trauma to hear preaching in a congregational setting. But those who are able should heed the command of Hebrews by “not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some” (10:25). We should try as much as possible to hear sermons the way God intended—in person and with other believers.
The Gospel Coalition