In a January 17 New York Times article David Carr adds his two cents to the recent NBC fiasco with studio executives, Jay Leno, and Conan O’Brien at its center.  As the article title clearly states, Carr’s theory about the reason for the problem is this: “It’s Not Jay or Conan.  It’s Us.”  He writes,

Think about it. The heart and soul of any talk show has always been a monologue in which the host takes the audience on a journey through the news, cracking wise about the things that happened that day. “The Tonight Show” has always been a kind of a water cooler where we all showed up and waited for the funniest person in the room to say something hilarious.

But as things stand now, by the end of the day, we all have been bombarded by news and commentary from all manner of media, making “The Tonight Show” and its ilk increasingly seem beside the point, no matter who is delivering the monologue. In its glory days, “The Tonight Show” served as a search engine on culture, letting us know which politician had made a gaffe, which corporate evildoer had been caught doing evil and which starlet had experienced a wardrobe malfunction.

Now the search engine is the search engine — or more likely, any number of “did-you-see” alerts received by e-mail or on Facebook, Twitter or other sites we visit from our desktops or on our cellphones.

As I read Carr’s article my mind drifted to a not-so-distant cousin of the late-night monologue – the Sunday sermon.  For over five hundred years, the “heart and soul” of any worship service, at least in the Protestant tradition, has been the sermon.  The homily.  The message.  The talk.  It has long been the place where the one educated in Scripture (usually a man) would take the congregation on a journey through the text, making comments about how God-inspired ancient words apply to us in the present day.  And Sunday after Sunday the congregation “showed up and waited” for the smartest person in the room to say something profound.

Now I appreciate the art of the sermon just as much as the next seminary-trained, ordained clergyman, but I can’t help but wonder, what might the struggle of monologue-centric late-night shows, who seem to be failing to recognize the changing nature of information dissemination, mean for the sermon, for worship, for the church?

What does it mean for the Sunday sermon that there are Christian blogs about everything?  What does it mean that we almost instantly hear commentary from Christians about global events, and then commentary about that commentary, via Twitter and Facebook?  What does it mean that there sometimes seems to be little correlation between the quality of a sermon preached on Sunday and the amount of transformation taking place in the lives of individuals and in communities on Monday?

What does it mean?

Some television networks, I mean, churches, continue to insist that it all comes down to talent.  More people will listen to and be transformed by sermons – more people will attend church – if the messages are delivered by the best, most provocative preachers around.

For other congregations, accessible theology books and sermon podcasts from the church’s leading (loudest?) thinkers feed the flock, leaving little or no place for the more local, ‘ma and pa’ sermon.  Or at least, no one in attendance to hear said sermon.

Other churches, like Awake or some of our sister churches, have opted for a Sunday rhythm that may include teaching three out four times in a month, or every other week.

For us, it is not a question of whether or not the proclamation of the gospel is powerful.  It is a question of what it looks like to proclaim gospel of the kingdom of God in a post-Christian society, a question of how to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ in such a way that it effectively provokes the realignment of hearts and communities to the way of God.

The Sunday morning sermon – like the Leno or O’Brien late-night monologue – just might not pack the same punch it used to.

I don’t pretend to have the answers – and there are routes that churches are taking that I didn’t mention above (e.g., passionate, faithful, non-consumer-oriented Sunday morning preaching of the Word. Beautiful!) – but I’m certain that this will be a reality with which Awake continues to wrestle as a missional community on Aurora Avenue.

NBC, it seems, will be doing the same.

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