Word: pulpits
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...Press, who writes an oft acerbic "review" of a local church service each week, complete with restaurant-type ratings. Instead of cuisine or ambience, he rates worship service, music, sermon and friendliness, granting up to three stars in each category. In nearly two years Plagenz, who listened to many pulpit greats a generation ago, has found only two preachers worth three stars...
Plagenz blames this in part on the backwash of the 1960s. "A lot of men went into the ministry for reasons other than preaching. They were interested in social action, so now we're stuck with them." It seemed only natural that in 1969 The Pulpit, venerable sister magazine of the Christian Century, renamed itself Christian Ministry...
Charles L. Allen, folksy pulpit patriarch of Houston's First United Methodist Church, thinks that seminarians' lack of interest in preaching was largely due to the emphasis on social impact encouraged by Martin Luther King Jr. The irony is that King, "one of the greatest pulpit men of all time," moved his countrymen as much with words as with deeds. "A lot of younger preachers at the time didn't see that," says Allen...
...listeners' minds wander too. Lack of effort is not necessarily a sign of sloth. Ministers increasingly are expected to bear heavy loads of counseling and administration that nibble away their time. One rule of thumb is to spend "an hour in the study for each minute in the pulpit." But many modern preachers say they are lucky to manage half that...
...their doubts about the validity of established churches. In listing their affiliations, they created some brand-new sects, most of which sound suspiciously secular: The Holy Order of Our Lady of Perpetual Motion; Southern Pedestrian; New Emeryville Church of Voodoo and Imported Beer; Polyester Pagota of the Palpitating Pulpit; Born Again Atheist. Says the Rev. Gustav Schultz, a Lutheran minister who helped take the survey: "There are a lot of things in religion that ought to be laughed at. This is the students' way of expressing that. We think it's a good thing to have a healthy...