This is part four in a series of iMonk posts that Michael wrote back in 2006. We have edited them and now present them each Monday. His subject was “the sermon,” and the series was called “What’s Wrong with the Sermon?” Here is Michael’s explanation of the approach he took:

In this series of posts I will be examining the sermon as it is currently done in evangelicalism. My method will be a bit backwards. I am going to examine the most frequent criticisms of sermons — something I hear all the time from my peers and student listeners — and see if there is truth in the criticisms.

Past posts:
• Part 1: The sermon’s too long
• Part 2: The sermon’s boring
• Part 3: The sermon — I don’t understand it

• • •

What’s wrong with the sermon?
(4) The sermon — it isn’t practical

To gain some idea of the state of contemporary preaching, survey what is being preached at any ten successful megachurches in your state, or any ten churches who very much want to become megachurches in the future. Compare these sermons to the sermons of any group of “great preachers” of the past, or well-known expositional, exegetical preachers today.

The differences are more than just pronounced; they are stunning. Aside from the fact that someone is talking, it can easily appear that these sermons have no similarity to one another at all.

There will be many differences. Length. Titles. Use of illustrations. Theological depth. Use of the Bible. The effect of technology. Foremost, however, among the observed differences will be the focus on “practical,” “How-to” messages in contemporary churches. Contemporary preaching, especially in the successful megachurches that are populating the western landscape, has become primarily focused on “practical,” “How to be” and “How to do” messages.

Many of these practical sermons are the heart of a church’s appeal to its seeker, market driven, target audience. These would include sermons on how to be a successful parent, how to deal with stress, how to find a mate or have a happy marriage, how to manage money, how achieve goals and so on. The similarity of these messages to the titles of self-help books or the results of surveys on “what would you like to hear at church” is no accident. Today’s practical preaching is very intentional in its approach, and what is successful in one church will be mass produced- right down to the illustrations and outlines- for hundreds, even thousands, of other preachers.

The New Testament is a practical book. It is a discipleship-oriented book. Jesus taught his disciples through an intensive kind of training that covered “how to pray”, “how to enter a community and minister”, and “how to cast out demons.” Christianity has always valued spiritual guidance, mentoring and practical wisdom. The premise of wisdom literature- and especially Proverbs- is the practical nature of the Godly life.

So I am not at all surprised that there is a recovery of a concern for practical discipleship and application. In many ways, this recovery is necessary, healthy and welcome. Somewhere in any church, there should be someone talking about these “real life” issues. The New Testament’s pastoral letters, both in their description of the qualifications of leadership and in their admonitions about general church life, assume this level of teaching is going on.

One might even suggest that Paul’s pastoral ministry had fallen short of the ideal because of the fact that he had to spend so much time going back over practical matters with his young churches. Look, for example, at how much time is spent in the discussion of whether to eat meat offered to idols. Much of that discussion sounds very familiar to anyone who has been around young Christians. It is the “how far can I go?” and “what can I do?” questions that are the focus of so many practical sermons today.

One of the most important lessons that I learned in my New Testament studies concerned two different kinds of material in the text. The first was kerygma, or proclamation. This was the “Biblical story” told with a focus on Jesus as messiah and Lord. It is what we see particularly in the book of Acts, and it is what Paul is often referring back to when he is talking to churches in his epistles and reminds them of what they heard from him (or others) when they were converted.

The second type of material was didache, or instruction. This is the teaching material that we find primarily in the epistles and the gospels. It is not a proclamation of the Biblical story, but application and practical teaching regarding life lived as a Christian. (Sometime I need to write why the term “Christian Life” is singularly unhelpful.)

But if we examine “didache,” we discover something interesting about the connection of application to the Biblical story. Look, for example, at Colossians 3:1-17, one of the greatest of the New Testament application passages.

Col. 3:1 If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. 3 For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ who is your* life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.
Col. 3:5 Put to death therefore what is earthly in you:* sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. 6 On account of these the wrath of God is coming.* 7 In these you too once walked, when you were living in them. 8 But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. 9 Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self* with its practices 10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. 11 Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.
Col. 3:12 Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, 13 bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. 14 And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. 15 And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. 16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. 17 And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

What is easily discernible to any student is the fact that didache is a subset of Kerygma; application is a continuation of the proclamation. The practical and the theological/doctrinal are not separable. The life Paul describes is a direct result of understanding the exaltation and ascension of Jesus. It is a continuation of the Biblical story into the lives of Jesus’ followers.

It is also plain that didache isn’t ANY kind of practical advice. It is teaching specifically focused on the life that belongs to Jesus. It isn’t about getting a better parking space as a sign of God’s favor. It is about being a light in the world so that Christ is evidenced and glorified.

The implications for preaching are obvious, I believe. There are two errors lurking here. One is to ignore the practical in favor of the theological and doctrinal. The other is to allow the practical to consume the message without reference to the Biblical story.

Practical preaching that isn’t related to the bigger picture of God, the Gospel, Grace and the Kingdom of God becomes a an encouragement to moralism rather than a connection to Jesus. A steady diet of application without the theological context of the Bible’s own emphasis on the story of Jesus risks creating a church centered around values and behavior; pragmatism and concerns of the “culture war.” That was the program of the Pharisees, and Jesus not only opposed it; he was amazed at its shallowness.

Much Christian “worldview” preaching runs the risk of displacing the Gospel with applications, and often with applications that leave a Bible student scratching his head and turning pages.

I would suggest that practical, “How to” preaching, no matter what form it takes, has an appropriate place in the total Christian approach to preaching. Here the Puritans were good guides. Their sermons were purposely structured to be theological in a first movement, and applicatory and practical in the closing movements.

Practical preaching that strategizes the use of “how to” messages to gain the interest of seekers runs a serious risk of removing the contextual content of the Christian story, and an even more serious risk of pandering and deception. Those of us who listen to the modern seeker preachers and wonder if the Gospel has been displaced and obscured by accident or on purpose probably have an answer: this is an attempt to gain a hearing by moving what most needs to be heard down the list, and moving what people want to hear up the list.

I am more concerned with the message that exists between the lines of “practical” preaching: the message that God is about making our lives “better”. Is it the Biblical message that we have secret, practical knowledge others don’t have? Are our marriages always better? Are our children happier and more obedient? Do we have better finances and less stress? These implied “outcomes” are serious departures from the Bible’s message.

In fact, loyalty to Jesus has the frequent result of causing temporal difficulty. We may have less money and more stress. If our family is not the typical Christian family, we may have family conflict. Jesus predicted all of this in unmistakable detail. Paul’s career as a missionary apostle was highlighted with suffering, trouble, rejection, burdens, risks and losses. It was all worth it for Christ’s sake and for the sake of the church, but Paul was not telling anyone the message of Joel Osteen’s Your Best Life Now.

Many of today’s practical preachers are more than subtly influenced by the prosperity Gospel and the secular motivational speakers and gurus. The similarity between many of these presentations and Oprah Winfrey is not accidental. The problem can be stated simply: Some preachers will preach whatever they know will attract a crowd, and the secular world offers a constant array of tactics to gain that crowd.

One must almost admire the sheer, unmitigated greed of men like Joel Osteen in completely abandoning the Gospel and appealing directly to the desire of Americans for money, houses and success. His nationwide following attests to the power of preaching prosperity rather than Christ. One must also say that if Paul’s admonitions to Timothy to faithfully preach the Gospel of Christ are the Word and will of God, then men like Osteen are defying the Almighty right down to the specifics.

Practical preaching need not go down this dead end. There is a place for the didache. There is a place for application. There is a place to talk about life and the many problems human beings face.

But the proclamation of the Gospel is always an announcement of the story of Jesus, and the implications- be they practical or not- must be seen in the light of Jesus. When Jesus promised his followers “life abundant”, we must affirm that Jesus’ own example shows us what the abundant life looks like in this world where Jesus turns everything upside down.

We don’t define abundant life with cultural definitions. Jesus defines that life. That’s why he can ask a rich man to sell it all and follow him. He knows what is real life and what isn’t.

God’s people need practical instruction. They need it wedded to the “cost of discipleship” and the Lordship/example of Christ. “Seekers” may need to hear many things, and the church may find a way to be helpful and serve people with classes and instruction, but to those without Christ our primary ministry and message must be the Gospel itself. That is not to say that the Gospel must be the subject of everything we do as Christians, but it is to say that whatever we do, teach or preach, it must be the Gospel that brings everything else into focus, and gives significance to whatever we are doing.

Suggestions for preachers:

1. There is a strong temptation to imitate the “how to” preachers who are drawing larger crowds by talking about things other than the Gospel. Be faithful. Preach Christ. At the same time, be clear that Christ redeems everything, and there are applications of our faith to every kind of situation and problem.

2. Follow the example of the Puritans in putting specific applications either into your message or accessible in handouts or web sites. (No, the Puritans didn’t use web sites, but it sounds cool.) There is nothing commendable about impractical preaching, and we must not overreact to the errors around us by committing another error ourselves by offering little or no application.

3. Remember that you may be able to have several sermons with different emphasis; some more theological and some more practical. This could also be done with follow-up in small groups. Marriage, for example, is a subject where specific application should never be ignored, because the scripture puts practical application and theological foundations together.

4. Remember to help your people see their problems and concerns in the true light of the Gospel. The Bible has principles for parents, but its message of universal sin and depravity makes it clear that we can expect our children to act like sinners. The temptation of many good Christians is to believe that “principles” from the Bible will provide insurance or a way to “fix” what is broken. (I see this everyday as people bring their children to our school and say that they can be fixed by religion.) The Gospel is about loving a wayward child more than it is about insuring there are no wayward children. In other words, much practical preaching simply ignores the true implications of the Gospel that may involve suffering with God in a fallen world.

5. “How to ” messages are famous for simplifying what is not simple. There is no way for a marriage to succeed with 5 or 8 or 10 “Simple” steps. This is a particular kind of American idolatry that the church should be busy rejecting. The Gospel makes us into people who see and follow Christ. It is not a collection of “how to” steps. The Christian publishing industry has often put Christian authors into the category of “inspirational” messages. We should remember that salvation is not a matter of knowing some “inspirational” thoughts to help us get through the day.

6. Preaching practical topics may be an occasion where some in a congregation find much fault with a preacher for not being as practical as other sources of “inspiration.” The preacher may feel inadequate, or feel that he is letting down his congregation by not being more helpful. If this motivates the preacher to provide more practical resources and to think in practical terms for subjects such as prayer, family devotions and the use of money, then good can come from those concerns.

7. Many preachers are reluctant to preach practical application because their own house is not in order. They do not talk about the devotional life because they do not have one. They do not talk about money because they are up to their necks in credit card debt. They do not do application on marriage because theirs in in desperate straits. If this is the case, then it is the pastor who needs the Gospel and practical discipleship, beginning with honesty, repentance and restoration.

8. Applicatory preaching is an invitation to pastoral care. When we begin to apply the faith, our people will come to us with their problems. There is no escaping this. Our people are not as good as they look. All is not as well as it appears on Sunday morning. Some preachers do not come “down to earth” because it is in those earthly valleys that real hurt and complex human brokenness dwells. We should not complain if our people turn to other “healers” if our presentation of the Word heals them lightly or not at all.

Christianity is a both practical and highly impractical. God’s wisdom and the answer of the Gospel to our dilemmas are not in the same category as the human wisdom many want when insisting on “practical” preaching. The greatest error is to ever move away from Christ and his Gospel by emphasizing what we can or should do over what God has done for us in Christ.

At the same time, we should ask “How does this look in real life?” Paul’s letters are full of practical instruction, and this is often neglected by preachers who are more comfortable in the more theological parts of the Bible. If the theological, the Biblical and the practical are properly related in a congregation, that church will produce disciples who know, confess and worship, but who also live, choose and follow.

The Gospel leads us to practical discipleship, but it doesn’t create a religion of simplistic success principles. Good preaching leads to practical application without obscuring the Gospel itself.

This is part three in a series of iMonk posts that Michael wrote back in 2006. We have edited them and now present them each Monday. His subject was “the sermon,” and the series was called “What’s Wrong with the Sermon?” Here is Michael’s explanation of the approach he took:

In this series of posts I will be examining the sermon as it is currently done in evangelicalism. My method will be a bit backwards. I am going to examine the most frequent criticisms of sermons — something I hear all the time from my peers and student listeners — and see if there is truth in the criticisms.

Past posts:
• Part 1: The sermon’s too long
• Part 2: The sermon’s boring

• • •

What’s wrong with the sermon?
(3) The sermon — I don’t understand it

This post is not about people whose communication skills are too poor to get the job done. If you are ignorant, or mumble or can’t get a talk organized in any sort of comprehensible way, the road for you is clear and striaght ahead: Get to work improving your skills. Take a class in communication or speech. Get mentored. These obvious problems can be addressed relatively simply if you have the humility to admit you need work.

We’re going to go a different direction.

The longer I preach, the more I am convinced that preachers operate in two “rings” of comprehension.

The first ring includes those familiar with evangelical language, dialects and rules of communication. These are the people who understand preachers because they know the Bible, the vocabulary and the methods of communication we typically equate with preaching. Most of us who are sitting in church listening to sermons are in this circle.

The other circle is everyone else. They listen to the same sermons and in many, many cases they have no idea what the preacher is talking about.

They don’t know the Bible. They don’t know the in-words. They don’t know the unspoken assumptions. They don’t buy into all the intellectual shortcuts. They don’t buy into the universe of answers that the inner circle takes for granted.

This audience–often young people and the chronically unchurched–are truly puzzled by what they are hearing. What sounds familiar and important to us sounds silly, confusing, even bizarre to them.

It’s at this point that something interesting happens. A bold response arises in regard to those who do not understand.

All over America, there are young “preachers” doing talks that those of us who are “trained” and “prepared” preachers find amateurish, informal and inadequate. Some of them are theologically rough around the edges, or worse. It doesn’t sound like preaching. Some embrace the label preaching for “talks.” It grates on our nerves, and it bothers us because these preachers seem to be implying that the way the rest of us are preaching doesn’t make it across the communication divide between the two rings.

They may be right, by the way.

These young preachers have shifted almost totally to the outer ring, and have largely left the inner ring on their own. Often they explain this as their purpose, but sometimes you simply have to figure out what is happening. They are attempting to communicate the Gospel in a way that deconstructs the whole idea of preaching to exclude “inside” communication and to take great pains to communicate simple and practical lessons to the unchurched. It feels, to many Christians, like “baby steps” all the time, and they don’t care for it.

Now I am not claiming that these preachers are succeeding. I think the results are a very mixed bag that depends on a lot of factors I can’t address here. What I am going to commend is a shift in thinking away from only being comprehensible to a smaller and smaller group of insiders–an approach that really is more about teaching and discipling than about proclamation anyway–to an approach that seeks to speak as directly to the non-believer, non-“insider,” as possible.

America and the West are becoming a mission field. These young preachers understand this, and we need to pay attention to that insight before we decide they are all betrayers of what is true and important (which some may be.)

Watching and listening to this shift has caused me to ask very hard questions about my own preaching. I preach to hundreds of unbelievers. I am very conscious of the fact that if I do a typical sermon from my own Southern Baptist tradition, the kind that all the Christians will like, I will be incomprehensible to many of my students. At times, I have sat with the students, listened to guest preachers, and tried to hear the message as a complete outsider would hear it.

The results are sobering. We really do speak in a total environment of incomprehension for many people. So much is assumed. So much is unexplained. So many of the questions, answers, stories and difficulties are assumed or ignored. While we are talking about Christian beliefs that we all take for granted, many are hearing a completely mysterious, unknown, almost bizarrely irrelevant presentation.

Now this raises clear choices.

For some, the mandate is plain: be understood at all costs. No matter what must happen, what must change or what must be done, communication with the unchurched audience is the priority. Into this option we could list all kinds of creative and catchy tools that turn sermons into “talks” about “principles” and “lessons.” Grabbing and holding attention is a preeminent concern. Simplicity and practicality are unsurpassed qualities. The Gospel? Well…..we may have a problem there.

For many, this appears to be an abandonment of the sermon as the church’s unique proclamation and a surrender to the culture. The content of the Gospel seems to be perilously and cavalierly at risk in this approach. The end result often seems to be unrecognizable as Christian preaching. These are real concerns, and I don’t have a problem with anyone who is critical of the risk some young preachers are taking.

This deconstruction of preaching in the name of communication is an important challenge. It doesn’t just want to come out from behind the pulpit. In many ways it wants to eliminate the pulpit, and even the church building itself. It is a deconstruction and rebirthing of preaching and the context of communication that seems perilously uninterested in the “great preachers” of the past, and very interested in emulating secular models of communication from advertising to MTV.

On the other hand, many traditional preachers respond to this same challenge by not only getting back behind the pulpit, but elevating it to new levels. There is a call for a return to classic, theologically driven preaching aimed squarely at the church and not at the unbeliever. It is not unusual to hear advocates of this approach make absolute statements: only exposition is real preaching; large amounts of scripture should be used; an advanced theological vocabulary is to be used in order to precisely describe Biblical truth; systematic theology should never be avoided.

The idea here is to make the church’s communication centered on the preservation of the Gospel and not on communication with those in the “outer ring.” The results, in my opinion, may be very good and necessary for the church, but there is a real danger here as well:  abandoning the missional nature of the church. The church of Jesus is a cross-cultural movement. To stop and entrench our communication with those who already understand the Gospel is to take the path of the Pharisees, and not the path of Jesus.

Jesus is the key to this dilemma. And it is on Jesus that my advice for preachers will center.

How can our sermons communicate the Gospel more clearly?

1) We must be clear about the Gospel itself, in all its aspects.

2) Preparation and study of Christian theology and Biblical exposition is crucial.

3) The key point for preaching, however, is not the mastery of theological categories, but mastery of the Bible as literature/story.

4) I can affirm the efforts of recent communicators to speak clearly to the unbeliever. I believe this is what Jesus did, and what he models for his followers to do.

5) Jesus’ use of parables and explanation of those parables to his disciples sets an interesting and exciting model.

6) This suggests to me that a Jesus-style preacher will be able to go to various levels of communication, being aware of all different audiences.

7) There is good reason to believe that the Bible itself challenges us to do communication in a flowing, lively process that begins with basic illustration and story, then moves on to more explicit explanation and teaching. The goal is not to just speak to one kind of person, but to move all persons through a process of “basics on up.” This takes time and preparation, but it allows both seeker-sensitive creativity, and serious application to be “OK.”

8) This means that the preacher may be using provocative and non-traditional approaches at one point, and then more “inside” explanations and teaching at another, all the while connecting these methods together.

I think it is important for us to remember that the message of Jesus never comes with an age-specific or culture-specific label. We are communicators to everyone! An expositional preacher who never goes “down” to the level of the unbeliever has failed. An evangelist who never goes into depths on questions of Christology or application has failed as well.

We cannot take full responsibility for the complete comprehension of all who hear us preach. The Holy Spirit’s work is illumination and regeneration. Comprehension is an important matter, but God does amazing things with all our less than perfect communications.

The crucial ingredient is genuine love for people and genuine passion for God and the Gospel. That love then spurs us to work hard at the business of communicating like Jesus. We don’t “dead end” into doing what feels safe or right for us. We look at the sheep in front of us, and we bring all our abilities to the work of showing them the Great Shepherd.