I don’t usually face what many of you confront in the pews every week: the boredom factor. But a recent experience gave me a new reason to empathize.
My pastor had asked me to do the children’s sermon. I told the several dozen primaries sitting on the steps near the pulpit a dramatic story, and they were suitably entranced. Then I moved in with the application, and instantly, like a shade drawn, they all blanked out. My mouth kept making words flow at them, but the words washed over these lovely children like waves over rocks. Dozens of glazed eyes riveted attention somewhere on the floor or ceiling.
How could I have lost them so quickly?
I decided the problem was “God-words”: abstract statements enmeshed with Bible verses. Just five seconds of God-words seems to click a magic button in many kids’ minds, instantly switching the channel to woolgathering. I have a theory that this button is somehow implanted early in all environmental Christians, and that with advancing years, it takes less than a second’s worth of God-words to trigger it.
What pastor hasn’t experienced a sea of glazed-over eyes staring right past him? Even the most eloquent among us senses those times, as I did with the children.
This problem is obviously worthy of book-length treatment, and I’m glad to see the Lewises’ book on effective preaching reviewed (“People in Print”). I don’t intend to give comprehensive answers here but to raise our consciousness about this “God-word factor.” The phenomenon reminds me of the Peanuts kids reacting to an adult voice on a TV special. Charlie Brown may be talking to Linus, when into their world intrudes this Squawk-squawk-squawk. The annoying sound is extraneous; Charlie and Linus clearly prefer more important voices-kids’ voices, that is.
Of course, words about God are the most important sounds of all. But we are talking here of how sound waves penetrate the mind-or carom off into some unused comer of it.
In the book Positioning: the Battle for Your Mind, authors Al Ries and Jack Trout liken the American brain to a dripping sponge: it’s so full that messages just hit it and splat to the floor. Contrasted to years ago when the parishioner came from a week of relative silence in the field, barn, and home, now even the farmer on his tractor is plugged into a Sony Walkman. Ries and Trout say, “Our extravagant use of communication . . . has so jammed our channels that only a small fraction of all messages actually get through, and not the most important ones either.”
They call us an “overcommunicated society” and point out advertising as one example. “With only 6 percent of the world’s population, America consumes 57 percent of the world’s advertising.”
Americans are uniquely saturated sponges. Add to this the problem of the magic button residing in most Christians’ brains, and the boredom factor becomes deadly serious.
I have often thought how instructive it would be to have a brain scan attention device for congregations. It would instantly report in bright numerals-like a football scoreboard at the back of the sanctuary-the number of brains interacting with the message and the number dozing off. That might increase our determination to penetrate those dripping sponges.
How can we penetrate? Many factors apply. The average pastor spends seven minutes a day in prayer. If the sender has no message, it may not matter if receivers’ minds are clogged. Too often, instead of carefully crafting messages that have personally gripped us, we rely on God-words that are true but not fresh and commanding.
Jesus constantly used stories and illustrations and did not always try to explain them. A little enigma might be refreshing on a Sunday morning. We generally want to explain so thoroughly that we can drive the illustration into the ground.
Which brings me back to my children’s sermon. My wife, Jeanette, told me the reason the kids checked out was that my application didn’t speak in their terms or refer to their interests She then gave helpful suggestions.
Next time I’ll talk to her first. Insight into the audience is vital to communication. Do we know their hopes, fears, boredoms, joys, and why they do or don’t listen to the morning message? Are we a squawk-squawk-squawk or God’s voice penetrating our listeners’ world?
Harold L. Myra, President
Christianity Today, Inc.
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