in crease our faith!!! ?? 1700 years since !

The first recorded Christian sermon is contained in the so-called Second Letter of Clement dated between AD 100 and AD150.


IF YOU HAD  FAITH NO BIGGER EVEN THAN  A MUSTERED SEED , YOU COULD SAY TO THE MULLERrY -TREE Be  rooted up and  replanted  in the sea and it would obey you!!! so simple it;s so hard allt e fog and doubts  robbed us silly  ms ,  no sheets needed  \ customs nor  titles ,, servants ,amazing so simple so powerful so unreligous..just pure faith minus all the dross of doubt ... 

We get our words sophistry and sophistical from the sophists. Sophistry refers to specious and fallacious (bogus) reasoning used to persuade (Soccio, Archetypes of Wisdom, 57). The Greeks celebrated the orator's style and form over the accuracy of the content of his sermon. Thus a good orator could use his sermon to sway his audience to believe what he knew to be false. To the Greek mind, winning an argument was a greater virtue than distilling truth. Unfortunately, an element of sophistry has never left the Christian fold.

Sometimes the Greek orator would enter his speaking forum "already robed in his pulpit-gown." He would then mount the steps to his professional chair to sit before he brought his sermon.
To make his points, he would quote Homer's verses. (Some orators studied Homer so well that they could repeat him by heart.) So spellbinding was the sophist that he would often incite his audience to clap their hands during his discourse. If his speaking was very well received, some would call his sermon "inspired."
The sophists were the most distinguished men of their time. Some even lived at public expense. Others had public statues erected in their honor.
About a century later, the Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322BC) gave to rhetoric the three-point speech. "A whole," said Aristotle, "must have a beginning, a middle, and an end.
In time, Greek orators implemented Aristotle's three-point principle into their discourses.
The Greeks were intoxicated with rhetoric.' So the sophists fared well. When the Romans took over Greece, they too became obsessed with rhetoric. Consequently, Greco-Roman culture developed an insatiable appetite for hearing someone give an eloquent oration. This was so fashionable that a "sermonette" from a professional philosopher after dinner was a regular form of entertainment.
The ancient Greeks and Romans viewed rhetoric as one of the greatest forms of art. Accordingly, the orators in the Roman Empire were lauded with the same glamorous status that Americans assign to movie stars and professional athletes. They were the shining stars of their day.
Orators could bring a crowd to a frenzy simply by their powerful speaking skills. Teachers of rhetoric, the leading science of the era, were the pride of every major city." The orators they produced were given celebrity status. In short, the Greeks and Romans were addicted to the pagan sermon—just as many contemporary Christians are addicted to the "Christian" sermon.

THE ARRIVAL OF ANOTHER POLLUTED STREAM
How did the Greek sermon find its way into the Christian church?Around the third century a vacuum was created when mutual ministry faded from the body of Christ." At this time the last of the traveling Christian workers who spoke out of a prophetic burden and spontaneous conviction left the pages of church history. To fill their absence, the clergy began to emerge. Open meetings began to die out, and church gatherings became more and more liturgical. The "assembly meeting" was devolving into a "service."
As a hierarchical structure began to take root, the idea of a "reli-gious specialist" emerged. In the face of these changes, the functioning Christians had trouble fitting into this evolving ecclesiastical structure.' There was no place for them to exercise their gifts. By the fourth century, the church had become fully institutionalized.
As this was happening, many pagan orators and philosophers were becoming Christians. As a result, pagan philosophical ideas unwittingly made their way into the Christian community. Many of these men became the theologians and leaders of the early Christian church. They are known as the "church fathers," and some of their writings are still with us.

Thus the pagan notion of a trained professional speaker who delivers orations for a fee moved straight into the Christian bloodstream.
Note that the concept of the "paid teaching specialist" came from Greece, not Hebrew. It was the custom of Hebrew teachers to take up a trade so as to not charge a fee for their teaching.

The upshot of the story is that these former pagan orators (now turned Christian) began to use their Greco-Roman oratorical skills for Christian purposes. They would sit in their official chair and expound the sacred text of Scripture, just as the sophist would supply an exegesis of the near sacred text of Homer. If you compare a third century pagan sermon with a sermon given by one of the church fathers, you will find both the structure and the phraseology to be quite similar.
So a new style of communication was being birthed in the Christian church—a style that emphasized polished rhetoric, sophisticated grammar, flowery eloquence, and monologue. It was a style that was designed to entertain and show off the speaker's oratorical skills. 

It was Greco-Roman rhetoric. And only those who were trained in it were allowed to address the assembly! (Does any of this sound familiar?)
One scholar put it this way: "The original proclamation of the Christian message was a two way conversation . . . but when theoratorical schools of the Western world laid hold of the Christian message, they made Christian preaching something vastly different. Oratory tended to take the place of conversation. The greatness of the orator took the place of the astounding event of Yahushua Moshiach. And the dialogue between speaker and listener faded into a monologue.

In a word, the Greco-Roman sermon replaced prophesying, open sharing, and Spirit-inspired teaching. The sermon became the elitist privilege of church officials, particularly the bishops. Such people had to be educated in the schools of rhetoric to learn how to speak. Without this education, a Christian was not permitted to address God's people.

As early as the third century, Christians called their sermons hom-ilies, the same term Greek orators used for their discourses. Today,one can take a seminary course called homiletics to learn how to preach. Homiletics is considered a "science, applying rules of rhetoric, which go back to Greece and Rome.
Put another way, neither homilies (sermons) nor homiletics (the art of sermonizing) have a Christian origin. They were stolen from the pagans. Another polluted stream made its entrance into the Christian faith and muddied its waters. And that stream flows just as strongly today as it did in the fourth century.
CHRYSOSTOM AND AUGUSTINE
John Chrysostom was one of the greatest Christian orators of his day. (Chrysostom means "golden-mouthed.") Never had Constantinople heard "sermons so powerful, brilliant, and frank" as those preached by Chrysostom. Chrysostom's preaching was so compelling that people would sometimes shove their way toward the front to hear him better.
Naturally endowed with the orator's gift of gab, Chrysostom learned how to speak under the leading sophist of the fourth century, Libanius. On his deathbed, Libanius (Chrysostom's pagan tutor) said that he would have been his worthiest successor "if the Christians had not stolen him" (Hatch, Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages, 109).
So powerful were his orations that his sermons would often get inter-rupted by congregational applause. Chrysostom once gave a sermon condemning the applause as unfitting in God's house. But the congregation loved the sermon so much that after he finished preaching, they applauded anyway. This story illustrates the untamable power of Greek rhetoric.
We can credit both Chrysostom and Augustine (354-430), a former professor of rhetoric, for making pulpit oratory part and parcel of the Christian faith." In Chrysostom, the Greek sermon reached its zenith. The Greek sermon style indulged in rhetorical brilliance, the quoting of poems, and focused on impressing the audience. Chrysostom emphasized that "the preacher must toil long on his sermons in order to gain the power of eloquence."


In Augustine, the Latin sermon reached its heights. The Latin sermon style was more down to earth than the Greek style. It focused on the "common man" and was directed to a simpler moral point. Zwingli took John Chrysostom as his model in preaching, while Luther took Augustine as his model." Both Latin and Greek styles included a verse-by-verse commentary form as well as a paraphrasing form.
Even so, Chrysostom and Augustine stood in the lineage of the Greek sophists. They gave us polished Christian rhetoric. They gave us the "Christian" sermon: biblical in content, but Greek in style."


HOW SERMONIZING HARMS THE CHURCH chirche  or oirganl ecclesia 
Though revered for five centuries, the conventional sermon has negatively impacted the church in a number of ways.
First, the sermon makes the preacher the virtuoso performer of the regular church gathering. As a result, congregational participation is hampered at best and precluded at worst. The sermon turns the church into a preaching station. The congregation degenerates into a group of muted spectators who watch a performance. There is no room for interrupting or questioning the preacher while he is delivering his discourse. The sermon freezes and imprisons the functioning of the body of Christ. It fosters a docile priesthood by allowing pulpiteers to dominate the church gathering week after week.
Second, the sermon often stalemates spiritual growth. Because it is a one-way affair, it encourages passivity. The sermon prevents the church from functioning as intended. It suffocates mutual ministry. It smothers open participation. This causes the spiritual growth of YAHUAH's people to take a further nose dive.
As Christians, they must function if they are to mature (see Mark 4:24-25 and Hebrews 10:24-2 5). No one grows by passive listening week after week. In fact, one of the goals of the New Testament teaching is to get each member to function (Ephesians4:11-16). It is to encourage members to open their mouths in the meeting (1 Corinthians 12-14).
The conventional sermon hinders this very process.
Third, the sermon preserves the unbiblical clergy mentality. It creates an excessive and pathological dependence on the clergy. The sermon makes the preacher the religious specialist — the only one having anything worthy to say. Everyone else is treated as a second-class believer — a silent pew warmer. (While this is not usually voiced, it is the unspoken reality)"


How can the pastor learn from the other members of the body of Christ when they are muted? How can the church learn from the pastor when it's members cannot ask him questions during his oration? How can the brothers and sisters learn from one another if they are prevented from speaking in the meetings?
The sermon makes "church" both distant and impersonal." It deprives the pastor of receiving spiritual sustenance from the church. And it deprives the church of receiving spiritual nourishment from one another. For these reasons, the sermon is one of the biggest road-blocks to a functioning priesthood!

Fourth, rather than equipping the saints, the sermon de-skills them. It matters not how loudly ministers drone on about "equipping the saints for the work of the ministry," the truth is that the contemporary sermon preached every week has little power to equip YAHUAH's people for spiritual service and functioning.
Unfortunately, however, many of YAHUAH's people are just as addicted to hearing sermons as many preachers are addicted to preaching them.


By contrast, New Testament–styled teaching should equip the assembly so that it can function without the presence of a clergyman.
Fifth, today's sermon is often impractical. Countless preachers speak as experts on that which they have never experienced. Whether it be abstract/theoretical, devotional/inspirational, demanding/compelling, or entertaining/amusing, the sermon fails to put the hearers into a direct, practical experience of what has been preached. Thus the typical sermon is a swimming lesson on dry land! It lacks any practical value. Much is preached, but little ever lands. Most of it is aimed at the frontal lobe. Contemporary pulpiteerism generally fails to get beyond disseminating information and on to equipping believers to experience and use that which they have heard.
In this regard, the sermon mirrors its true father — Greco-Roman rhetoric. Greco-Roman rhetoric was bathed in abstraction. It involved forms designed to entertain and display genius rather than instruct or develop talents in others. The contemporary polished sermon can warm the heart, inspire the will, and stimulate the mind. But it rarely if ever shows the team how to leave the huddle. In all of these ways, the contemporary sermon fails to meet its billing at promoting the kind of spiritual growth it promises. In the end, it actually intensifies the impoverishment of the church. The sermon acts like a momentary stimulant. Its effects are often short-lived.


Let's be honest. There are scores of Christians who have been sermonized for decades, and they are still babes in Christ. Christians are not transformed simply by hearing sermons week after week. They are transformed by regular encounters with the YAHUAH. Those who minister, therefore, are called to preach YAHUAH and not information about Him. They are also called to make their ministry intensely practical. They are called not only to reveal Messiah by the spoken word, but to show their hearers how to experience, know, follow, and serve Him. The contemporary sermon too often lacks these all-important elements.