Whatever happened to preaching?

I was greatly interested in two letters in this weeks Methodist Recorder discussing the lack of preaching and a range of thoughts about this topic. I have to say I found myself saying Amen a lot as I read them.
There were some extremely valid points raised and one or two of my own thoughts on this matter were echoed in these letters. What good is a sermon if no one can hear it? Why do we not instruct/teach our trainee local preachers about things like voice projection and the need for the person who can't hear but always sits on the very back row to be able to hear. Why do we not ask people to indicate if they can't hear us - a friend of mine always used to say if you can't hear me put your hand to your ear and I will see this, I never heard anyone complain they couldn't hear him. In part I think there is too much reliance on public address systems in our church. It was quite funny recently when at the end of a farewell service for one of our ministers where there was lots of noise over the cup of tea someone came to me and said could I shout and ask for a car to be moved as I was the person with the loudest voice (not sure if this was a compliment)(it turned out to be the ministers car.
There were also comments made about the use of the lectionary and the almost zealous application of this in some places - I do use it but not all the time because some weeks the combinations of readings leave me feeling like Ezekiel in the valley of the dry bones. There is I believe a place for the lectionary and it can be extremely helpful but again it should be a tool for use by preachers that can be picked up or put down.
One of the writers felt the use of numerous people in a service was not always helpful and that if they go to a concert they do not expect members of the audience to get up part way through and go and play an instrument with the band - I can see the point here and do think we need to use other people in a balanced way.
There was concern expressed about the use of aids in services and again I think these need to be used in a balanced way and perhaps only with some of our congregations. There are some churches in our circuit where I would no more use a power point presentation than fly a kite and there are others where I would do all sorts of things - in fact on Sunday Evening gone we sat and made prayer beads in the service and this was very well received but it was balanced out by a fairly traditional hymn sandwich with the a short talk about how difficult prayer can be to lead into the making of the beads( see the Methodist Church website and search for the Venerable bead if you might like to try it).
I think it is important that we know our congregations and one of the things I have been doing with the on note local preacher I am working with is telling them the things about the different churches that are not on the circuit plan - the likes and dislikes of churches, the differences in the way the offering is received and what the congregations do at that point in the service (sit or stand) and about the various providers of music from a full organ to a CD player and a number of things in between.
There is probably much more I could write but this will have to do for now as I do have a day job and time to get ready is fast approaching.

Local Preachers Continuing Development

Following on from my previous post, more from the district meeting I attended the other evening.
During the course of the meeting we were talking about Positive Promotion of Ministry (PPM)and that marvellous topic that makes many preachers eyes glaze over came up - those readers who know about these things will know immediately (and may have glazed over) that I am referring to CLPD (Continuing Local Preacher Development). It did seem that five of the people present who were either ministers or local preachers were broadly of the same opinion that this was an area where very little happened. One of the local preachers present said that he felt that for many of our longer serving local preachers they felt there was no need for this type of thing and that they were doing things well. I am fairly certain that if we were to do a straw poll in any circuit the result might be different to what any of us believe.Perhaps the name itself is part of the problem.
I said that I firmly believe that every one of our local preachers should be assessed once a year in the same way that our preachers in training are assessed and given that ADR (Annual Development Review) may well become the norm for ministers there may be a bigger case for introducing this type of process.
We had during the meeting discussed back to church Sunday which is in September and one of the people said perhaps we should have regular back to church Sunday's but only on 'special' Sunday's when there was a good chance that anyone coming for the first time might be in with a reasonable chance of attending a good service.
We also discussed briefly the 'retirement' of local preachers and this is another area where I suspect we find it quite difficult to suggest to a preacher it might be time they 'retired' and it may be an annual assessment could make that process a little easier. From a personal point of view I have someone who will tell me very clearly to stop if she thinks I have lost it.
I have to say I liked the idea that was floated a few years ago of having a 'Preacher Emeritus' status for those preachers who were no longer able to take services and had effectively retired but unfortunately it did not prove to be a popular idea with preachers themselves.
There was some mention of how preachers meetings have changed over the years and some talk of how you would often get two well respected preachers who would often be almost up to fighting in the preachers meeting where they disagreed on a point or on the development of a fellow preacher in training. Perhaps we were more passionate in the past or perhaps this is a reflection of how society in general often is - no commitment or passion for anything.
Maybe readers have some thoughts or opinions or then again maybe not!!