Continuing my previous post, I agree with the concept that worship and teaching must focus on the Word. Romans 10:7 is clear that faith comes through hearing (Greek “akoe,” literally “the sense of hearing”). Moreover, the final authority for Christian faith and practice is the written word, and the writers of scripture were inspired such that the very words they used were those that God intended to communicate. It’s absolutely critical, then, that our corporate worship and teaching, and our evangelistic efforts, focus on the written Word of God.
We shouldn’t conclude from this, however, that the expository preaching model adopted in most evangelical churches is normative. First, Romans 10:7 primarily refers to how unbelievers come to the faith, not to how local churches should order their corporate worship. Further, nothing in Romans 10:7, or anywhere else in scripture, precludes other means of experiencing Truth and participating in worship. In fact, the only detailed instructions for worship services were those given to Israel, and they are multisensory. The details for how the temple should be decorated, how the Priests should dress, and the manner in which sacrifces were to be carried out suggests that the worship experience was to be visual, fragrant, and tactile as well as verbal. (Not only that, it sometimes was loud — see, e.g., Ps. 150:5: “praise Him with the clash of cymbals, praise Him with resounding cymbals” — oh, how I wish I could hear how that sounded!) Finally, a focus on the Word doesn’t necessarily imply a focus on expository sermons.
The Word can be proclaimed without an introduction, three points, and a conclusion. The typical sermon form is merely a cultural form left over from prior generations. Perhaps sometimes the proclamation of the Word can simply be through displaying the text of a passage in a video collage, reading a narrative dramatically, or singing the text to a melody — and yes, sometimes through theological exposition. But in a culture that is accustomed to sensory media, we can’t expect to communicate effectively merely by lecturing. It’s like reading the text in Latin to parishoners who speak only German.