Living overseas, I go to church in homes with other ex-pats living here. Having done a great deal of reading about non-traditional churches, I am familiar with the debate mentioned in the link above. I have often been concerned by the blanket dismissal of ‘monologue’ because I do not see biblical examples of Paul or anyone else reading an Old Testament passage and asking a group of lost people what they think about it. At the same time, I think we learn a great deal from God through each other by having conversations about what the Scripture says. When I teach in our church I tend to be monologue until the end. What would be the ‘invitation time’ in some churches becomes the conversation time. Sometimes people point out things that struck them in the message or things in the Scripture passage that impressed them that I may have passed over. Other times they state some sort of commitment they are making as a result of the passage or ask questions about things that are not clear. Sometimes we share how God has worked in our lives to make the truths that we have just studied impact us in a personal way.
Another man in the church typically teaches in a more inductive, interactive manner. I can always tell that he has studied the passage and that he is guiding the church to the truth found there. We have an open discussion in that anyone can share, but it is not open in the sense that we are forming our opinions apart from study of the text. As this writer whom I found through this blog puts it, “First, the discussion is open-ended in the sense that I do not know where it will go. But it is not open-ended in the sense that anything goes or any opinion is valid. This is one of the great fears people have of discussion – that it will descend into a postmodern, relativistic, mush of opinion. We have a clear sense that the text means some things and not other things. Wrong interpretations are challenged and people are (gently) encouraged to see what the text is not saying as well as what it is saying.”
As I see it, both styles have a place; however, I think in the more traditional context of church in the US that a interactive, inductive style would be difficult outside of small group settings. I think both types of teaching are needed. Someone standing up and speaking truth directly is not “pagan Christianity” unless Paul was a pagan. At the same, it is not a given that interactive teaching will lead to blatant heresy. In our context, we find ourselves meshing the two together.
