Reading: Preaching book chapter 3

CHAPTR 3: THE FIVE MYTHS OF PREACHING

THE HOTEL ALARM CLOCK BEGAN PLAYING STRAINS OF easy listening at ten o’clock sharp. Jared read the time and smiled. It felt nice to be known so well. His wife must have figured out he wouldn’t mind missing the first workshop of the day, seeing as he’d tossed and turned until three in the morning, wrestling with new ideas.

Jared had showered, shaved, and half-dressed when he  heard  the  phone  ring  across  the  room.  Probably Trisha calling to tease him about missing out on pancakes at the prayer breakfast.

“Hi, sweets,” he answered.

There was silence on the other end of the line. “No, um, this is, uh, Clive Arbogast. Have I reached Reverend Palmquist?”

“Clive!” Jared corrected, his palms instantly sweating. “I didn’t think I’d given you the number here.”

“Your babysitter was kind enough to direct me,” he said, rolling past the awkward moment. “Listen, I called because the search committee and I are setting down some dates and it would help if we could get you to commit to an interview next Friday.”

“Friday?” he said, instinctively looking around for his  appointment  book,  then  shaking  his  head.  “You know, I didn’t even bring my calendar on this trip.”

“Well, never mind then. It can wait. Just trying to get a jump on things.”

“No, I’m glad you called,” Jared said. “There are a couple questions I wanted to ask you before we get into the more formal meetings. Hold on.” He rushed across the room to grab the coat in which he had stuffed the fax Clive had sent. “It has to do with that job description you sent over,” he said when he returned.

“All right.”

“There were a few points that seemed, well, like a tall order. Specifically, you say here” — he paused as he unfolded the paper — “that the pastor’s role is to ‘use the pulpit for communicating, educating, evangelizing, discipling, and transforming the members of the congregation.’ Let me ask you: Is this an ideal you’re talking about, or an actual yardstick you expect your pastor to live up to?”

Clive thought it over. “Well, we wouldn’t expect perfection from a pastor, but it’s safe to say those are qualities we’re looking for. I don’t see what’s wrong with finding a person who’s a great communicator, a great teacher, or a great leader.”

“I see,” Jared said, sitting down on the bed. “Don’t you agree?”

Jared sighed. “It might be better to say I have questions. And I’d rather not keep those hidden from you guys if we’re going to learn about each other the way we should during this process. Is it safe to assume I can be honest with you and not lose points for it?”

“Sure, I don’t see why not.”

“OK, I’ve been struggling with the purpose of preaching these past few years, because to me it seems to accomplish so little. I’m not sure I’ve found an answer yet, but I know it’s not the things you outlined in your proposal. I’ve beat my head against those walls for too long.”

“I’m not sure I understand. They seem like pretty ordinary qualifications.”

“Let me take each facet on its own. For starters, you say you want a great communicator. Makes sense. For a long time I believed I was exactly that person. I was so good I could draw tears from a stone.” Jared blushed a little at his boast but pressed on. “I had the delivery, the stories, the presence, the vulnerability, and the humor to pull it off with style. But there’s something no one ever told me: Speaking through a microphone to roomful of seated folks is one of the least effective forms of communication. I’ve read up on this, and researchers have found out that, on average, people retain only five percent of what they hear in the lecture format.”

Clive jumped in. “But that doesn’t make sense. Why would every university in the country rely on the lecture format if it’s so ineffective?”

“Well, in a classroom setting you do a lot more than sit and listen to the teacher. You take notes, you read books, you write papers, you study for tests, you do exercises with classmates. There’s a whole environment for learning that’s created. A church sanctuary is something else entirely -- unless you want to prove otherwise by taking a pop quiz on all the sermons at Trinity during the last six months.”

There was a chuckle on the other end of the line. “OK, OK — point taken. I’d probably ace the few sermons that I got to preach during this interim period, but I get your point.”

“I’m not really saying anything revolutionary. It’s common sense that verbal communication is weak -- we’ve let enough words go in one ear and out the other to know it firsthand.”

“True enough.”

“Now, if we take a closer look at the field of public speaking, I think you’ll find that most pastors rate below average compared with others from the secular world. Think about it: How many hundreds of students each year get degrees in Communication in order to pursue careers in public speaking, politics, or law? Most of us pastors, on the other hand, got into preaching for reasons other than public speaking.”

“Yes, that’s true,” Clive admitted, “but what you’re saying doesn’t seem to square with the evidence that most people in churches across the country love the sermon. Why would they keep showing up if it’s so ... forgettable, as you imply?”

“Churches in America are growing at a rate of only one percent each year,” Jared countered, “while the population is increasing much faster. We just aren’t bringing in many people anymore. Most of the people who love the sermon are people who have been listening to sermons most of their lives. It’s a part of their way of life, a part of their community, a part of their past.”

“But I got so many compliments on the two sermons I preached. I’m hardly any good, but people said they loved them.”

“That’s  understandable,”  Jared  said.  “Most  long- time church people are apt to blame their nodding off on their lack of sleep or their short attention span before they’ll blame it on you. They’re too full of love and forgiveness to tell you what they really think. If you want an honest opinion, ask an outsider.”

“And who would that be?”

“The unchurched. I had a chance to go door-to-door with a friend of mine who was planting an outreach church, trying to listen to the needs of his audience. He asked at every door: ‘Why do you think most people don’t go to church?’ — which, by the way, was a better way to get an honest answer than confronting them with their  own  lack  of  attendance.”  Both  men  chuckled. “Well, the number-one response he got to his question

— which was the same response the twenty other people helping him knock on doors received — which is the same answer thousands of church planters all over North America have been given — was: ‘Sermons are boring and irrelevant.’”

“But,” Clive jumped in, obviously having readied his retort while listening to Jared’s story, “I’m sure they were just fishing for some excuse to rationalize staying away from church.”

“That may be true,” Jared allowed, “but only up to a point. Why would so many unchurched people gravitate toward knocking the pastor and his sermon with so many other excuses a person could find for not going to church? We might not like to hear it, but there’s at least a kernel of truth in their answers.”

“I suppose. But that seems to me like an even better reason to request a great communicator for a pastor: to overcome that hurdle.”

“All right, let’s say you find your man,” Jared said. “Let’s say Trinity gets a pastor who’s in the top ten percent. What does that mean for the other churches out there? Not everybody  can be in the top ten percent. What about the other ninety percent who are left with average speakers? I’m trying to think big picture here, and I just don’t see how we’ll get anywhere if our pastors are slaving away at creative ways to dispense information.”

“Well, then what should they be doing?” Clive was sounding frustrated.

“I’m not sure I know yet,” Jared confessed. “I don’t mean to be argumentative here; I just want to draw you into my dilemma. I have only a wisp of an answer so far: I guess I imagine the pastor to be like a coach talking to his team at halftime. He’s not going to give them new information, new plays, or new skills — he’s encouraging them, reminding them of long-practiced skills, pushing for better teamwork. None of the players needs to make an outline of what the coach said — they just needed those few buttons pushed to rev them up for the rest of the game.”

Jared heard the door handle click open and turned to watch Trisha enter. She gave him a quizzical look, as if to ask whom he could be talking to. He held out the fax to her as an answer.

“Are you still there?” he heard Clive ask.

“Still here,” he said, looking at his watch as he realized that he might not make the noon workshop either. “I don’t suppose I’m keeping you from anything?”

“No, I’ve got a free schedule. Are you busy?”

Jared laughed. “I should be, but I seem to be on a roll here. I’ll be OK if my wife wants to get me something to eat,” he said, looking over at her with pleading eyes. She responded with a mock growl.

“Perhaps we can move on to the next issue, then. I suppose you believe that sermons don’t educate people, either?”

“Well ... ,” Jared hedged, “I want to make it clear that I think sermons can do all these things from time to time. We have all had the experience of learning something new or being transformed by a sermon, and I don’t deny that. But I don’t see that sermons have a really good batting average. I think there might be more effective ways of doing these things.” He paused to write down a shorthand lunch order on hotel stationery.

“If we really want to educate people in the church,” he continued, “we can’t start in the big group meeting, where we have people  of all ages,  backgrounds,  and degrees of intelligence and knowledge. Educating from the pulpit is like facing the world’s worst classroom — you have seven-year-olds who were sent by parents who use church as a babysitting service, fourteen-year-olds who are there because of a crush on a seventeen-year- old in attendance, twenty-year-olds who are on fire for God, thirty-year-olds who have barely heard of Jesus, forty-year-olds who have been going through the motions for years, and sixty-year-olds who probably know more than you do. And on top of that, your class is in session for only thirty minutes a week.”

Clive laughed. “That would be grounds for a teacher’s strike in any other situation.”

Jared missed the rejoinder as he mouthed goodbye to his wife. He plunged straight ahead: “The main problem is: Which people do you gear the education to? There’s no way you can meet the educational needs of all, so what demographic do you choose to focus on? In most churches — at least, in my church and some of my friends’ — the group that complains the loudest gets the most attention.  Now,  the kids might  wriggle in their seats, but they do not schedule a meeting with you to discuss their frustrations. New people might become bewildered and leave, but they don’t have enough stake in the church to tell you what to do. The people who will challenge most pastors about their educational needs are the top twenty percent of Biblically educated people. They have the knowledge-based confidence to challenge any pastor who ignores their needs.”

“I’ve certainly seen that happen.” “So, eighty percent of the congregation falls subject to the trickle-down theory, which hopes that a highly theological sermon will contain at least one or two nuggets for the less educated to hold onto. But that’s not really education.”

“Well, what about the churches that are geared toward outreach?” Clive asked.

“It’s the same problem, just a different twenty percent being targeted. Then churches have to trust the back-to-the-basics theory, which says that by preaching to newcomers, everyone will benefit from a review of the fundamentals. That’s not a bad thing, I suppose, but it still doesn’t qualify as education. There’s no impetus for growth. There’s nowhere to progress to.”

“But there’s Sunday School and adult education and

Bible studies for that sort of thing,” Clive countered. “Yes,  precisely.  Which  is  why  education  doesn’t

really fall into my job description, at least not in my role from the pulpit.”

“OK, checkmate,” Clive said with a bit of admiration in his voice. “You seem to know your way around an argument — perhaps I should cross out education and write in ‘persuasion’ instead.”

Jared laughed. “I’m just glad that you haven’t hung up on me yet.”

“Now, I don’t suppose you’re going to challenge the sermon’s ability to evangelize, are you? I seem to remember something in the Bible about Paul converting thousands with his preaching. Yes, I’m quite sure that’s in there someplace ... .” Jared laughed again. “I won’t deny that lots of people have heard the Gospel for the first time and — bam!

— they believed. But you can’t deny that there are also a lot of people who take a long time coming to a belief in God.”

“Agreed.”

“Would it surprise you to find out that — in modern-day America, at least — less than one percent of Christians attribute their conversion to an evangelistic service?”

“That  can’t  be  right,”  Clive  said.  “There  are  so many people who come forward at altar calls and fill out commitment cards — is that really only one percent?”

“The study I’m thinking of asked Christians what had the most influence in their process of becoming a believer. So, it may be true that many people came to a formal, outward decision when they walked down the aisle or checked a box on a card, but the church service was not what had the biggest  effect on them in the whole belief process.”

“Then what was the biggest factor in the survey?” Clive asked.

“More than eighty percent said the greatest factor in their conversion was a relative or friend.”

“Wow. Eighty percent?”

“More than,” Jared confirmed. “And I think it makes sense when you seriously examine what it takes to bring someone  from  unbelief  to  belief  —  at  least  from  a human point of view. I think it takes friendship. It takes walking alongside. It takes people explaining things. It takes Christians willing to  share why they need a Savior, sharing their hurts and pain and struggles. I think it takes people identifying with each other in their hurt. It’s an involved kind of thing — much more than a half-hour message is going to offer, no matter how polished or how packed with truth.”

“But — sermons are still part of that process, aren’t they?”

“Indeed,” Jared said quickly. “Everything we say in our sermons can profoundly affect someone’s path toward belief. What I’m concerned about is announcing that ‘evangelism happens from the pulpit.’ The minute you convey that attitude, it lets the average person off the hook. It discourages church members from lengthy commitment to a new person and makes them think that their role in evangelism is inviting a neighbor or a friend or a workmate to church and letting the program take care of the rest. After all, the pastor can talk about Jesus with so much more skill than John Q. Christian.”

“So, if I hear what you’re saying, you want the congregation to think of evangelism as something they do in their daily lives.”

“Exactly,” Jared said. “The more that we promote evangelism as a kind of quick-sell endeavor, the scarier it becomes to most Christians, because most Christians are not salespeople. But if I use the pulpit to promote the long-term approach, by recognizing and rewarding people who have stuck with it and had success, then I think the church can have a more meaningful evangelism ministry.”

“You’re talking a lot of sense here,” Clive said slowly, as if mulling over his choice of words. “But I have to wonder: If these are such great ideas, why aren’t you doing them at your own church? You make a good case, but how does it hold up in the light of reality?”

Jared felt flush, caught unprepared for an answer. “I have to confess that I don’t know. Some of these ideas I’ve been wrestling with for years; others are brand new in my mind from last night. I feel like I’m getting a sense of how things should be, but I can’t quite piece it together yet. I guess I’m taking the time to talk to you now because I want to see if your church is even open to my concerns.”

“Well, keep talking,” Clive said. “I have to remind you that I am not the entire committee, but so far I’m listening.”

“Right,” Jared said, feeling the jitters recede a little. “Then let’s move on to discipleship. If you don’t mind, give me a definition of discipleship that we might start with.”

“I suppose,” Clive answered, “that discipling new believers means you’re helping them mature in a relationship with God. And to be frank, that’s right up the alley of the average sermon, as you’re helping people to better understand God and the Bible.”

“That’s pretty much the standard definition, I’ll admit,” Jared said. “But I have a problem with it. I can’t see how we can judge how well we’re doing at it. I mean, at what point can you say someone is now mature?”

“I suppose none of us is ever wholly mature,” Clive offered.

“Right, but there must be some goal, at least, that we’re shooting for. If we can’t know whether or not people are being discipled, who knows if we should rejoice or fall on our knees in repentance for not being obedient to the Great Commission?”

“Is this a rhetorical question, or do you have an answer?”

Perhaps the Socratic method wasn’t suited to Mr. Arbogast, Jared thought. Best to dive straight to the conclusions. “I believe that there’s an easy test to measure success in discipleship, and we don’t have to look any further than Jesus to find it. It took Jesus three years to make twelve disciples, right?”

“Right.”

“He walked with them, He ate with them, He cried with them, He prayed with them, He ministered to them, He challenged them. Then, after He ascended, they went out into the world and did what He had done over the three years. He’d made disciples, and so they did the same. You see, it is so simple: The test of whether you have made a disciple is if your disciple goes out and makes a disciple of his own.”

Clive  took  his  time  answering.  “You’re  going  to have to give me time to wrap my mind around that one, Jared.”

“Let me put it another way: To Jesus, making a disciple looked a lot like a mentoring friendship rather than a program or a seminar or a sermon — remember, He spoke to the 5,000, but He discipled only twelve. Day in and day out, He modeled what it meant to live a life pleasing to God. After three years, they went out and modeled that for others, who modeled it for others, and so forth.”

“So, if I hear what you’re saying, any shortcut in the process is going to produce a crop of disciples who don’t pass anything on?”

“Exactly,” Jared said. “If your grandfather taught your father to fish, and he taught you, but you get your son an instructional video, then what is he going to do with his son? I fear that, as the church, we’re encouraging our people to use sermons and books and videos as tools for discipleship instead of the blood, sweat, and tears of their own lives. It’s a one-on-one, long-term kind of thing. For Jesus, discipling meant spending time with people. That’s part of what we need to do to truly follow Him.”

“I guess I’d agree with that,” Clive said. “But convincing a room full of reticent churchgoers is a harder task.”

“Actually, I see it going on in most churches already, only it’s not always called discipleship. When new people walk in the door, and no one reaches out to them beyond a simple hello, they’re gone in a few months. But those who get befriended in a deeper way, or join a group where people can care for them, where they can walk through the valleys and climb the mountains together —”

“They stick around.”

“Yes.  And  most often  they become  leaders,  and they create more of these day-in, day-out friendships where they walk alongside someone, crying and struggling and being vulnerable, striving to find out who they are as God’s children. That’s where discipleship is really happening in our churches, and I think the best I can do from the pulpit is to encourage those efforts. Beyond that, I try to lead by example by making a few disciples of my own — and hopefully start a chain reaction that echoes throughout the rest of the church.”

“Hmm,” Clive said slowly. “I’ll have to think more about this method of discipleship. It’s not exactly what I’m used to.”

“That’s all I ask. It’s —” Jared stopped as he heard a knock at the door. “Can I put you on speakerphone? That’s probably my lunch.”

He opened the door, but it wasn’t Trisha; it was housekeeping asking if he wanted new towels.

“False alarm, Clive,” he said as he returned to the other side of the room. He stretched, glad to be out of a seated position at last. “So where were we?”

“I think we were just moving on to the last of our criteria: that the sermons will transform lives.

“Right.” Jared began to pace the room leisurely. “This is the most seductive one for me, because I desperately want to believe that I can pull it off. Like a lot of pastors, I went into seminary because I wanted to be used by God. I wanted to see people set free from sin, and to make a difference in the world. So, news of a changed life in my church could fuel my tanks for weeks, even months. It seemed like confirmation that God was using me.

“But somewhere along the line, my self-worth got wrapped up in these reports — more than is healthy. Transformation in people seemed to happen very quickly when I was starting out in my ministry, because I trusted people’s compliments that I changed them. But after several years, when I’d preached on parenting for the fourth time and I still saw so many families struggling, I realized that lasting change was a lot harder than a momentary epiphany people might gain from my sermon. My self-worth took a nosedive as I began wondering if I’d had an effect on anyone at all.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Clive said.

“Now, I truly believe that God can work miracles and transform a person overnight. I’ve seen it happen. But for most people, I think that the transition takes a lot longer. In fact, I need to look only as far as my own family, and my own parenting, to prove that people do not change easily!” Jared laughed. “I’m still taking one tantrum at a time, still trying to balance discipline and love, still failing and making amends.”

“I think we all are,” Clive granted.

“So, I decided to investigate some of the stories of change in my church, just to find out what it really took to change a person,” Jared said. “I talked to a few people who had started tithing, and found out that one small group had studied the subject and held each other accountable, so they were finally able to break the bonds of materialism. I talked to a couple who had reconciled and found out about their years of ups and downs, the battles and prayer times and tears, the yelling and screaming, the give and take of two people trying to find love again. I asked a person who had become excited about evangelism how it happened — for some reason a neighbor asked her about church, and, in sharing, she went through a process of discovery about what church meant to her. Through these baby steps toward sharing Christ she found Christ for the first time herself, and through that friendship that developed over the fence, she came to understand what evangelism was and now sees all the possibilities.”

“So, you’re saying that change happens on God’s timing and not ours,” Clive mused.

“Precisely. Change happens only by the grace of God, and while it will sometimes be instantaneous, I find that most of the time grace arrives in small measures that get released in the back and forth of a relationship with God, the ups and downs and failing and succeeding. I think our best course of action is to create some room for God’s grace to work instead of waiting for the quick fix. There are many concrete things we can do if we ask the tough questions: How many in our church made any significant changes over the last year? What percentage have taken on a new spiritual discipline, overcome an area of sin, or patched up a relationship? How can we make an effort to assist change? What might we do to better assist these types of victories and transformations?”

“And, if I follow your argument, the sermon is not the first place to look for this.” 

“In my experience, no, it is not,” Jared answered. “I deceived myself for many years, thinking that if I could just preach a barn-burning sermon, all of a sudden lives would just transform. The business of changing lives is an inexact and taxing one, I’ve found, with few signposts and even fewer pats on the back. Yes, my sermons — by the grace of God — have served as turning points or first steps in people’s journeys, but in the end they’re just one small part of the process.”

There was silence on the other end of the line. “Does that make sense to you?” Jared asked, fear-

ing that maybe he’d crossed the line and come across too brash.

“Yes,” Clive answered, “it makes sense. But I’m wondering …”

The door opened and Trisha walked in, balancing a couple sub sandwiches and large soft drinks.

“Hold on,” Jared interrupted, as he unburdened Trisha of the sandwiches. “Hey, Clive, my lunch is here. Do you mind if we continue this conversation another time?”

“Let me ask you one question before you go,” Clive said. “What you’ve been saying makes a lot of sense, and I can see how these requirements could be a burden to you as a preacher — but if you don’t believe that preaching  does  any  of  this  stuff,  then  what  do  you believe preaching does?”

This time Clive was left listening to silence. Jared was frozen, his hands leaving the meal half-wrapped.

“If  what  you’re  saying  is  true,”  Clive  continued, “why should we hire a pastor at all? What is the place of preaching in the church if it’s not this?”

Jared felt his appetite disappear. He’d never looked at it from that angle: What was preaching, really? If it couldn’t do certain things, what could it do? He looked over at Trisha for help, but she shrugged, having missed most of the conversation.

“Are you still there?”

“I’m here,” Jared managed. “I’m still thinking.” Clive chuckled. “Then we’ve both given each other

something to consider. Listen, since you’ve got to go, how about we both take some time to mull over these issues, and perhaps by the time we schedule an interview we’ll have some idea of what our expectations of you should be. Sound fair?”

“Sounds fair,” he answered absently. His mind was still elsewhere, frustrated by uncertainty: What was preaching, anyway?