How do I tell the Vicar . . .

[longtallsally2]

Lovely church, with lots of strengths, but the preaching isn't one of them.

Parish audit at the moment, with all parishioners filling out a questionnaire about how we see our church, where it is doing well, what it could do to improve.

The sermons and teaching, I find, tend to reinforce known truths, and to focus on the bible reading, but do not, for me, shed much light on it, rather just to reiterate what was in the readings. How do I lovingly say that the sermons could be a bit more challenging . . .?

Any tactful words or phrases much appreciated.

With my church leadership hat on, is recommend you say it as clearly as possible. I'd say I know the congregation pretty well, so know which adults might feel like you do, as well as who falls asleep, who only listens if it's relevant to them, begins with a joke etc.

Maybe something like "I enjoyed a sermon we had on xxx as I felt it challenged me to see things differently. I'd like to have more like this as i find it helpful to grow"

If you feel however, that the sermons are meeting the needs of the majority of the congregation, could you maybe ask your priest to recommend some books to read or a diocesan course of some kind? (Just speaking with experience of my congregation here)

Thank you Caulk. Yes, I do tend to get my teaching/spiritual challenges from elsewhere. Maybe it's too much to be expecting a one-fit-all sermon.

Wish I could think of a challenging sermon we have had recently, rather than being able to see the negatives. (We recently had a sermon on Matthew 14, Peter walking on water, which always blows me away. What was the expression on the other disciples faces? Would I have got out of the boat? Why/why not? How far would I have got before sinking? Love it! But the sermon somehow managed to take all of the challenge out of it. We all have difficult choices to make sometimes, but God is with us, and helps us when we step out in faith . . .

How do other people feel about it? For a while we had three preachers and one was dire but half the congregation thought he was great.

Yes, I suspect that this is me. The majority are very happy with a comforting/reassuring sermon I come from a slightly different tradition than the majority there. It is a lovely church in lots of ways, so I don't want to sound as if I am criticising them for being who they are.

Thanks there - food for thought.

I did some training recently on leading lay-led all age services, and the main message of the course was very much about the different needs of your audience (people who want to learn something new, people who want to be inspired to an immediate course of action etc etc) and how the challenge, should you choose to accept it, was to try to include something for all of them.
So, as pps have suggested, I think it would be quite appropriate to say that, while you know many of your fellow congregation are getting lots out of the sermons, they're not at the moment giving you enough of the exact specific thing you're looking for (and state what that is). Hopefully, your vicar will welcome your honesty and constructive advice. Good luck!

Preaching is a really hard task as you have people of different ages and stages of faith and with different cultural and theological backgrounds and learning styles and personalities. No preacher is going to get it right all the time but most of us could do better and constructive criticism can be an enormous help.

It always helps to be positive about something and as said about be specific about what isn't working for you. So you might say 'The preacher caught my attention with the engaging story about the giant pumpkin and the lost parking ticket however the link to today's gospel about the parable of the tenant farmers was not entirely clear. As an active learner I particularly valued the discourse on the best form of fertilizer for the growing of giant pumpkins but reflective and theoretical learners may have found less to grapple with.'

Be kind as most of us preachers sweat blood over this stuff.