a proper view of the pulpit

i'm making slow progress on my project for the summer. i'm trying to read five different works on spirituality in conversation with one another. i've gotten about 53 pages into peter adam's "hearing God's words", the plan is then to move to francis schaeffer's "true spirituality" followed by david larsen's "biblical spirituality", then paul stevens and michael green's "living the story" with eugene peterson's "Christ plays in ten thousand places" hitting clean-up. i would probably also benefit from re-reading j.c. ryle's "holiness".

while perusing through the book shop at our local episcopal cathedral, i came across peterson's "under the unpredictable plant: an exploration in vocational holiness". let me quote peterson:

"it was once in fashion in silesia and bohemia of eastern europe to build pulpits in the shape of an upright whale. in order to take his place as a preacher, the pastor or priest had to enter the interior of the pulpit at the base, climb a ladder through the belly and then come into the open mouth and deliver the sermon."
"the architecture is precisely accurate. every true gospel vocation is a resurrection vocation that arrives after a passage through the belly of the fish."

we recently got a new pulpit in our church. it's a big, wrap-around pulpit that matches the wood in the sanctuary. the company that built it specailizes in custom-built furniture, so they measured me and built it from there (6'2", 275 in your program). it's a big pulpit. the last one was plexiglass and moved (the wheels are pretty good) whenever you put your hands on it. i hated it. there is the old j. frank norris legend that says he went to a church with a small pulpit and proclaimed, "there's a man here now. when you ask me back again, make sure you have a man's pulpit". i'm not there. i don't like our new pulpit because it's big - i like it because it's an honest to goodness, real pulpit.

i find some of the current evangelical emphasis on "communication" to be a bit troubling. can you imagine the ruckus at your church (or mine) if we installed the kind of pulpit that peterson describes? can you see ed young, jr., or joel osteen climbing through the belly of the fish? not on your life. apparently how the "audience" perceives the speaker has become as, if not more, important than the message. what if we had to focus hard on the words we speak as opposed to the style of our presentation? what if our message was shaped more by the reality of the resurrection than by demographic sampling? what if God gave us the grace to be prophetic again?