When our church started, my vision as the founding pastor was to gradually move from a traditional approach to ministry to a more contemporary one. I believed we could blend the two traditions.
I was wrong. Although our church grew rapidly as many were attracted to the contemporary style, most of the founding members still desired a traditional worship service, and they told me so. To satisfy both groups, we began a traditional service and expanded to two contemporary services.
This presented me with a new challenge. I found that people in the different services didn’t respond alike to my sermons. Soon, I realized I was going to have to preach differently to the contemporary crowds than to the traditional.
Today I preach the same text in both styles of service, but I significantly rearrange the content. I often use different illustrations and a different style of delivery.
During the half-hour hiatus between the early traditional service and the first contemporary service, I tinker with the sermon. I determine what to take out and what to add (having gathered more supporting material and illustrations during the week than I can use in the first sermon).
Here is what I keep in mind as I adjust the message:
Highlight the visual. Those who attend the traditional service tend to be auditory learners. They are accustomed to following a textual message delivered in a Reformed lecture style. People in the contemporary services prefer a variety of learning styles, especially visual. From childhood they have been inundated with television and image-based advertising.
For example, in the traditional service I might take five minutes to explain that there is no such thing as a Christian who stands alone.
When I preached that theme to the contemporary group, I had a trumpeter from our praise band open the message by playing the theme from “The Lone Ranger.” I asked the congregation to guess the musical theme, and I quickly moved on to say that Christians cannot be lone rangers.
Be animated. The worshipers at the traditional service are far more interested in the content of the sermon than the method of delivery. And they are more comfortable when I stay behind the podium.
The podium isn’t even present in the contemporary services. These groups want action. So with them I am far more lively, using the dramatic abilities God has given me. I never use that ability, though, without serious forethought, and frankly, some reservation. I am not interested in getting laughs. My sole desire is to illustrate God’s Word effectively.
Be more sensitive to felt need. Because the traditional service grows almost exclusively by transfer growth, most of this worship group are believers. So I concentrate on the growth of Christians toward holiness and service, emphasizing sacrifice, commitment, self-denial.
In the contemporary services, we are trying to reach the lost for Christ, and so I address their felt needs as a doorway into their lives. In a typical introduction, I begin by talking about such things as the difficulties of raising children, fears about losing a job, communication breakdown with spouses. I want God to create an opening at the very beginning of the message.
After establishing common ground, I then show them what the Bible says are their real needs and how their deepest needs can be met in Christ.
Use personal illustrations. Personal illustrations help listeners identify with me; they help people see that I live in the same world they do and therefore understand them.
However, I don’t want to build the message around myself but around Jesus Christ, so I am careful to include personal illustrations that point toward my humanity and God’s grace in my life. I choose and craft these illustrations so that, on the one hand, I don’t present myself as more of a sinner than I am, and on the other, so that people won’t lose respect for the pastoral office.
One week I opened my contemporary sermon with, “Maybe you can tell I’ve had a haircut. My barber was a young Muslim woman. In the course
of our conversation, I told her that I was a pastor, that I believed in Jesus, and that later that day I was going to perform a funeral.” At that point, I told them about our conversation:
She said, “Once I was supposed to cut a dead man’s hair. They were going to pay me $150, but I wouldn’t do it.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“I don’t like to touch the dead. I’m afraid they’ll sit up,” she answered.
“I know one who did,” I replied.
“Ugh! You’re kidding.”
“No, I’m not.” Then I told her about the resurrection of Jesus.
When my hair was done, she asked, “Are you going to keep coming here?”
“Yeah, I’ll come back.”
She said, “I’d like to know more.”
When I told the story, it took five or six minutes to lead to the point. I began with lots of humor and made it personal, giving the reaction of my wife and children to my need for a haircut and the selection of the hair salon. The people warmed up because of this approach. Then I got to my text: Paul’s exhortation to the Thessalonians not to be ignorant about those who fall asleep.
Make only one point. In the first service, I can present a two- to six-point outline, and people take copious notes. On one occasion a man came up to me after the service and said I had messed up my outline (he failed to get the transition between points two and three).
No one in the other two services cares about my outline. For the contemporary services, I take the one point the text is communicating and preach it from two or three different approaches.
In the contemporary sermon, then, illustrations and historical evidence become even more crucial. So I have enlisted the help of two people in the congregation to assist me with research. My wife and children are my other informal researchers. They often tell me their opinions about the upcoming series of sermons. They let me into their world to see their reactions to things I may want to say. I let all these individuals know my preaching schedule months in advance so they can keep their eyes open for material.
Include emotional content. In the traditional service, people don’t appreciate a preacher who tugs at their emotions. They cry when the tears rise up, but the appeal to their intellect is motivation enough.
In the contemporary services, I’ll often close with an emotional illustration that the Spirit can use to open hearts. People like this. They are not as cautious about their feelings.
Give people an opportunity to respond to the challenge of the message.
The primary responses people can make after the traditional service is to fill out a prayer card or seek help from one of the pastors or lay ministers.
In the contemporary services, we have asked for a show of hands to receive salvation, invited people to come forward to make a commitment or recommitment to Christ, and offered the laying on of hands for healing and prayer.
Last summer, I preached a series on the biblical role of husbands. At the end I challenged husbands to be men enough to come forward and admit they were not properly husbanding their wives.
“All of you come on the stage, and let’s pray over you,” I said. No one responded.
I turned to our guest artists that weekend, Donny McGuire and Reba Rambo, and asked Donny to pray for me. I knelt, he placed his hand on my head and began praying, and in a few moments seventy-five men in the congregation were kneeling on the stage. Before the morning ended, nearly every husband was on his knees on or near the stage.
As that Sunday revealed, the extra work required to communicate to my contemporaries is worth late Saturday nights, early Sunday mornings, and a half-hour reshuffle of my sermon material. -Wallace Hostetter Faith Church
Rochester, Michigan
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