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Last January I started writing a monthly pastor's letter to the congregation, and frankly, I was concerned about how many would read it. Concerned because I broke all the rules.

Other than printing the copy in two columns, I didn't do anything to make it visually appealing: no pictures or colors, little white space, no large type or special fonts, even for the headings. Just as daunting, the letter was almost two pages long. I didn't have an adequate printer, but I figured I'd start where we were and upgrade later.

Given our turbo-powered world of communications, on occasion I've wondered if my preaching comes across with the sensory minimalism of that pastor's letter. After all, preaching is as low-tech and scant-budget as it gets. Most of my listeners are accustomed to movies powered by special effects, by Hollywood budgets that can soar beyond $100 million. For the 1996 Super Bowl, Pepsi spent $5 million just to produce its commercials.

Can preachers compete? In creative moments I've thought about trying-preaching with some sort of musical accompaniment, or with slides dissolving in and out in the background, or with video segments. But I simply lack the resources.

And so the question stares me in the face: When I take my stand behind the podium and for some thirty minutes do nothing more than talk, can mere words engage listeners and, more important, change lives?

In my kitchen sits a tiny, $20 clock radio. It has an on-off button, a volume control, and an am/fm switch. It has one speaker, two-and-a-half inches in diameter, that produces only monophonic music. I enjoy listening to the two classical music stations in Chicago, but when I'm getting my breakfast, I almost never tune them in because the sound from this clock radio is thin.

In my living room, though, I have a component stereo system that includes a sixty-watt amplifier with individual controls for bass, treble, and balance; and four speakers, with woofers, midranges, and tweeters spread around the room. So when I turn on the classical stations, I use my living room system, and I get thick, quadraphonic music with full bass and clear, sparkling treble.

As superior as this system is to the clock radio, so Spirit-empowered preaching outdoes other communication. Paul said he spoke "not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words" (1 Cor. 2:13).

As Christian preachers, our words are qualitatively different than other forms of communication. As we speak spiritual words, our listeners experience revelation and illumination from the Holy Spirit within their human spirit, touching them at the marrow of their being. Preachers engage parts of the person that mere media can never reach.

Now, this is no excuse for anemic communication, because preaching is a divine and human event. To use an extreme example, even if God empowers my sermon, someone who doesn't understand my language will profit but marginally. Neither will someone who sleeps through my sermon or is distracted by a crying baby or who daydreams. And so it is if my message is confusing or boring.

So I can't quote Isaiah 55:11-"[My] word … will not return to me empty"-and then preach sleepers. A sermon that bores today would likely have bored the saints two thousand years ago. Competition with high-tech media has little to do with it.

All that said, however, there is a divine and thus supernatural dimension to preaching that no other form of communication can touch.

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