Nick Gill made an interesting comment on the last post:

Ironically, I wonder if online sermons might offer an opportunity to reshape the assembly of the saints into a more healthy pattern?
If we could get more people to listen to sermons on their iPods, et al, we wouldn’t have to give so much assembly time to sermons — there’d be more time for communion, for public reading of Scripture, for dialogue.
What do you think? Am I dreaming?

The answer is yes, of course, Nick is dreaming. We’ve got a whole industry built around Sunday sermons. What would we do with all of the out-of-work preachers?

OK, seriously, it’s an intriguing idea. Sunday sermons are a relatively recent addition to Christian assemblies. [Edited at noon, August 13: OK, I’ve had to back off this statement. I may write more about this in a future post. I believe that sermons in their present form didn’t exist in the first century, but my original statement was misleading]  They’ve come to dominate the time that God’s people spend together. What if we could remove that teaching experience to another time of the week?

I enjoyed yesterday’s poll. Let’s do another one:

Photo by Ian Britton, FreeFoto.com