Video Transcript: Approaches to Preaching, and Some Don'ts

This is lecture 23 in the practical ministry, Skills course, approaches to  preaching and some don'ts. We're taking this from chapter 14 of the pastoring  the nuts and bolts book. Our key verse is a kind of an interesting one from II  Peter 3:15-16. Peter says our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you with the  wisdom God gave him, speaking of these things in all of his letters, some of his  comments are hard to understand. I love that. I love that the apostle Peter says,  you know, Paul's a great guy, but sometimes it's hard to understand. Obviously,  Peter and Paul had different approaches to preaching and teaching, and you  can't say one was better than the other. You can't say one was more spiritual  than the other. And who you're going to choose which one's most spiritual, Peter or Paul. My goodness, you can't. You can't say that. There is no one correct  way. I'm sure there were people who heard or read Paul's letters and said, Oh,  now that perfectly I understand it. Now I am so glad I read that. And there were  others who said, What in the world is he talking about? And then others that  read Peter's and said, Oh, now I understand that. That's he makes that clear  that I didn't understand when Paul said it, but the way Peter said it now that  makes sense to me and others who said Now I understood what Paul was  saying, but when Peter says this, I'm just not quite sure exactly what he's trying  to get across. So there's no one right way. So what I want to do today is go  down some of the different tensions, if you will, the different Continua of different approaches to preaching, not because anyone is right or wrong, but because  first, I want you to help, help you kind of try to identify your own approach. And  second, so you will know that other people who approach it differently, first,  they're not wrong just because they do it differently. And second, you can learn  from them, you may even learn to modify your approach to reach different kinds  of people. So some pastors, some preachers are very emotional in their  preaching. They're all about emotion. And let me stop and say there are certain  traditions in certain denominations and certain church cultures, the mainstream  American church culture, especially on the Calvinist side of the white American  church, can tend to be very intellectual, whereas Pentecostal churches of all  type, but especially perhaps African American Pentecostal churches and  American pastors can tend toward the more emotional just because that's the  kind of church they grew up in. That's where what the preachers they listened to  did, and that's the preachers they listened to did it, because they grew up in the  same tradition, and the preachers they listened to did it, and it's kind of  expected, so recognize if your denomination has a certain kind of a an  approach, and let me say I'm sure that there are emotional press white  Presbyterians, and I have heard some very intellectual, academically rigorous  African American Pentecostals. So there are always, I wasn't trying to make a  stereotype, but certain traditions tend to run in a certain kind of preaching, and  so you need to be aware of how much of your preaching style has rubbed off  from your tradition, and how much of it is your natural way of thinking and 

communicating and work all of those things together. So some are very  emotional, some are very intellectual. Nothing right or wrong about that. I think  you need to recognize that your listeners, some will respond better to emotion,  and some will respond better to intellect. And I think with all of these, the reason  I'm going through this is that it is best if you can combine, or if not combined,  because sometimes they don't mix like oil and water, but at least have a bunch  of little oil drops here and a bunch of little water drops here, so that you can put  out some emotional stuff and some intellectual stuff, so that the people, different people in your congregation, will hear it according to their own learning style.  Because communication hasn't happened until it's been received and  understood. So some may tend to be more naturally emotional. Others may tend to be more naturally intellectual. Some prefer to be prepared and spend a lot of  preparation, like Carl and the comic, the cartoon that we saw last time with the  chain reference habit, spending a lot of time studying and getting it all written  out. And others maybe, prefer to be much more spontaneous and say, well, just  whatever the Lord says puts on my heart when I stand up. I do believe here that  there is a I don't know if you can be too prepared. If it gets stilted, you're too  prepared if you're so prepared that there's you don't leave room for the Holy  Spirit to work in your heart. That's being too prepared for the Holy Spirit to  change things, as you speak, that can be too prepared. But I do believe it can  be there can also be a dangerous of being too spontaneous, because in the  sense that that can be used as a cop out, as an excuse not to put the work of  preparation in, I believe the Holy Spirit can inspire the preparation, just As he  can inspire the speaking at the time, but that said, I have heard people give  wonderful sermons or in messages that they had no idea they were going to be  called on to give, but most of the time, let me put it this way, somebody asked  me after One of my sermons, how long it took me to write that sermon? And I  said 37 years. Not that I was working 37 years on that sermon, but 37 years of  ministry experience, of Christian experience, was all behind writing that, and I  preached enough, and I have enough of it still in my mind that if I'm called on  with two minutes notice, I can get up and I can speak without something written,  just because I'm remembering things that I did study and prepare beforehand.  So prepared, spontaneous, you need to find your place in that spectrum. Here's  a three pointer, evangelism, discipleship or exhortation. And these are kind of  the points that I mentioned when I said that a sermon needs to do four different  things. These kind of go along with those. Some people just naturally want all of  their sermons to be evangelistic sermons. That's just the way God has wired  them. That may be the situation God has put them into. That may be wonderful,  but if you are the pastor of a church that has very faithful church members  attend, and you know that you know them all personally. You know them all.  They're all good Christians. It's the same people that come every Sunday. They  don't need to hear an evangelistic sermon every Sunday, discipleship some. And

this is my weakness. I am strong on the discipleship, the teaching part,  explaining things. There are those who naturally lean in that direction. And for  me, I have to consciously remind myself to give the altar call, to give the  explanation of the Gospel, the evangelistic part. I have to consciously remind  myself to apply it to life, give the application and encourage people to act. There  are other people, other pastors, preachers who just focus on the exhortation.  And I have heard sermons that, and I probably preach some sermons that were  real big on here's what the Bible says, and here's the truth, and left everybody  wondering, what do I do about it? And I have also heard sermons that were very exciting and very inspiring, and get up and go and the Lord's with you, and we  this is the hour, and we need to do this. And I was all excited, and then I  realized, what was he saying I need to do. So it's great to naturally lean in any of those directions, but make sure that you also fill in the other parts. Okay, this is  not so much a this next one, not so much a something that you have to try and  get into every sermon. It's some sermons work better this way, some work better that way, and some preachers naturally tend to speak more this way or that way. And that is the difference between a narrative sermon and a linear sermon. A  narrative is a story. Some sermons work best as stories, and some preachers  just most naturally preach in stories. And stories can be extremely effective in  getting truth across to people, and stories can just kind of naturally include the  motivational exhortational part as well as the teaching part, just in the telling of  the story. That was never my personal way of doing it. I could tell stories, but it  was hard for me. For me, I tend to think and outline the linear is this point to this  point, to this point, to this point, to this point, it's much more along the lines of  what I'm doing right now as a lecture I and so there is value to that, and some  preachers lean more toward one than the other. But if you what I'm trying to say  is, don't always do one incorporate some elements of you know, if you tell the  story, you might summarize with the points that you want the people to  understand. If you're going through points, stop and illustrate important ones  with stories. Some sermons are topical and some are expository. Topical means  you choose a topic, a subject, a question, and you say, what does the Bible  have to say about this? And you pull together all the different places, or at least  some of the important places in the Bible where it talks about that issue, and it  may address them in various different places. And so you go through and you  say, this is an issue that a lot of people face. Here's what the Bible has to say  about it. Over here it says this, and over here it says this, and over here it says  this, and we can put them all together and see this. That's a topical sermon. An  expository sermon says, Here's a passage of the Bible called a pericope.  Pericope is the phrase for a section of the Bible that all logically hangs together.  It may be one verse, it may be a story, it may be a particular argument that Paul  was making in one of his letters. But anyway, whatever the pericope is, whatever the section of the Bible is, you say, we're going to look today at this passage, 

and you go down through it and explain the different points. I kind of did that  when I took you through how to strengthen yourself in the Lord from Philippians  4. And we went verse by verse by verse, And I commented on the different  verses. Both are needed. Both are valuable. Again, you will naturally lean more  toward one or the other, but try to not let yourself completely neglect the one  that doesn't come most naturally to you, eternal truths or current events. Well,  again, we need to address both. Some pastors tend to want to focus more on  one than the other. I think the best thing is whichever one you naturally tend to  approach things with. Use that as an intro to talking about the other if you  naturally tend to think in terms of the eternal truths, find some way to apply it to  what's going on in the world today. If you naturally tend to want to start with what should be the Christian response to this thing that's happening today. And  having said that, there is rarely one Christian response, but to almost anything  good Christians can differ in their responses. But you start with this particular  issue that's going on the world, and you say, what can we learn from that? What  eternal truths about the Bible can we apply to that to help us understand what's  going on? Either way we're trying to help people understand eternal truths and  know how to apply them. Somebody said you should preach with the Bible in  one hand and the newspaper in the other. And for you young folks who don't  know what a newspaper is, that's before they had internet and they would write  out all the news on a piece of paper, engagement with the world or separation  from it. Now, those are two different there more have to do with your theology.  And there are times and there are people I believe in the same times God can  call some people to be engaged and call other people to be separated, and  neither one is disobeying God or hearing God wrong. Some pastors and  churches tend to emphasize separating yourself out, to come apart from them  and be separate and just focus on the Lord and don't allow the world to drag you down. And there is value in there. There's an awful lot of value in that kind of  holiness, preaching, if it's done right, not as escapism, but as maintaining your  holiness, so that then you can go back and influence the world, because God  has us here, Jesus prayed or taught us to pray, Thy kingdom come Thy will be  done on earth as it is in heaven. Jesus' vision statement, if you want to say it  this way. And I got this from Pastor Bill Johnson, Jesus. Vision statement is on  earth as it is in heaven. And so the mission of the church, to large degree, is to  make earth as much like heaven as possible. And so that means to be involved  in the church. So sometimes God calls some people to a separate  contemplative lifestyle. Sometimes God calls some people, and sometimes the  same people at different times in their lives into an active, engaged social justice lifestyle, working to advance God's kingdom in individual hearts and in the world. So separation, those should not be opposites, and they should not be either or,  but recognize what God is calling you to emphasize in any particular sermon.  And I would say it's good to kind of alternate and have some of your sermons 

address some of these, and some of your other sermons address the other side, the whole Bible, or your specific message. You many pastors, I believe in most  cases. I believe in most cases, God calls us to preach his whole Bible truth.  Preach the whole truth of the gospel, but the gospel not just being how to get  saved through Jesus, but the whole message of the Bible. Preach the full truth  of the Bible. But there are other people who God has given a specific ministry to  bring a certain truth that has been perhaps neglected or misunderstood, and to  just focus on bringing that truth to more and more people. I would say, if you are, if you feel like God is calling you to do that, then probably your ministry should  not just be to one little local congregation, because the people of the church, of  any given church, should hear the whole gospel, the whole truth of the Bible. If  God has given you one truth to restore to the church, then you probably need to  be moving to different churches, making that available to different pastors. The  danger is that all of us have the parts that we like best, and that's what we tend  to focus on, or the parts that we're most comfortable, and that's what we preach  on the most. And there are other parts that we can neglect if we're not careful  about holiness or grace, the holiness, they're both true. They're both Bible truths that we all need to know and emphasize. But we can get over to looking at one  or the other and lose the balance. If we get off balance in the direction of  holiness, then we can become legalistic and judgmental, and that's not an  accurate presentation of the Bible message. If we get overbalanced in the  direction of grace, then we can move to what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called cheap  grace, which is, oh, God's gonna forgive me. That's his business. That's what he does. I don't, don't need to worry about it too much, about how I love, how I live,  because Jesus loves me anyway. A great way of, kind of pulling those together  as a statement I heard, God loves you just the way you are, but he loves you too much to leave you that way. So God loves you just the way you are, but he loves you too much to leave you that way holiness and grace, the Chosen Few of  every tribe and tongue. Some emphasize preaching to just the ones that they  feel like God has called them to. Others feel like God has called them for  everybody, and you need to be out there with everybody, speaking for God, or  teaching people to hear God. Both are aspects, you know, from what I've said  before, that, I think a big emphasis in my life is teaching people to hear God for  themselves. But you can't neglect if you are the one that's trained. You need to  be able to correct them, and you need to be willing to speak for God if you  believe that God is giving you something to say. And as a matter of fact, every  sermon should be you speaking for God, but not in the sense that you are.  Saying that I can hear from God and nobody else can real quick. Some don'ts  don't preach at specific people. Sermon, the pastor says this sermon is mainly  aimed at Ed here, but the rest of you might get something out of listening. I  would not want to be in Ed's place there. If you have a message for a specific  person, go to that person. Don't Preach at specific people, and especially not 

the way that other people can guess who you're talking to. Don't use the pulpit  to advance a personal agenda when you stand up there, whether you have a  literal pulpit, or any time you open up the Bible and stand up to speak the word  of God, you are to speak the word of God, not your own opinions, not your own  ideas. You're free to say those in other places and at other times, but not when  you are delivering the Word of God. Don't use anyone in the sermon illustration  without asking them first. Don't try to cram too much into one sermon, break it  up, make it smaller chunks more easily understood, don't don't cram too much  into it. I still, after 38 years, tend to do that, and you're getting examples of that  in this lecture. I figure it's okay in this lecture, because. By you're taking notes,  and you've got the book to read, and you can go back and look at it again, but  your people listening to you don't have that opportunity. Pick the one main thing  that you want to get across, and don't do other don't talk beyond people's ability  to listen in the American church, the stereotype is that the church starts at 11  o'clock and it lasts an hour. And so here is the pastor being carried out on the  shoulders of his cheering congregation. They're so excited and happy. And the  lady in the back is explaining to the man, they do it every time he finishes his  sermon by noon. You don't want to get in a situation where the people cheer and yell because you finally stop talking. I had one person come to me one time after a sermon. He said, Pastor, your sermon had a great ending. It's too bad you  kept talking for another 10 minutes after that. Well, I don't want to keep talking  for another 10 minutes after this. We're about out of time, and I will see you next time