If, as John Stott says, effective preaching is building a bridge from today’s culture to the Scriptures, then, arguably, one of the bridge pylons on the near side would be a television. For ill, for good, television molds Our culture like nothing else.
Television has molded communication. The average person in the pew, who grew up watching “The Andy Griffith Show,” “The Tonight Show,” and “Sesame Street,” listens to a sermon differently than people did before television.
To get some insight into television’s influence on both the content and the form of preaching, the LEADERSHIP editors sat down with three communicators:
Everett L. “Terry” Fullam, after serving as rector of Saint Paul’s Episcopal Church, Darien, Connecticut for seventeen years, has been released to minister nationally and internationally. His latest book is Thirsting (Thomas Nelson, 1989).
Joel Nederhood is speaker for the radio broadcast “The Back to God Hour” as well as the television program “Faith 20.”
Joseph Stowell is president of Moody Bible Institute of Chicago. He speaks weekly on the international radio broadcast, “Moody Presents.” He previously pastored Highland Park Baptist Church in Southfield, Michigan. His most recent book is The Upside of Down (Moody, 1991).
Leadership: Have you ever consciously adapted your preaching because of TV’S influence on your listeners?
Stowell: In some ways we have to accommodate preaching to our culture. Christ accommodated his message. The rich young ruler got a totally different spin than the woman at the well. Christ understood where his listeners were from, their cultural context, and he adapted his approach.
Jesus ministered in an oral culture, not a literate culture. Though religious leaders were highly educated, the common man was a storyteller. Christ preached with most impact when he told stories. That was an adaptation to the culture. So I am not against adaptation. I think you have to know where people are, reach them where they are, and then take them where they need to be.
Terry Fullam: We preach to people who are for the most part secularized, tragically secularized in their thinking and their definitions. We live by our definitions. How can we preach in “the language of Zion” and not preach a foreign language to the secularized individuals sitting in our pews today?
Every discipline, however, develops some vocabulary. To be a lawyer, you have to learn one vocabulary. To be a medical doctor, you have to learn another. A mechanic, another. There is such a thing as the language of Zion, which is biblical terminology.
But that terminology is not current, and I am not just talking about the strange imagery of the Book of Revelation but the ordinary language of the Bible: grace, redemption, holiness. When people read or hear these words, they often realize that God is doing things quite removed from where they are.
My desire is to talk within the language of Zion. It’s easier. It has framed my world of reference. Yet I realize it is the “strange new world of the Bible,” as Karl Barth said, for secular people.
We want to be relevant. We don’t have to make Scripture relevant; it already is. But we need to exhibit its relevance.
Joel Nederhood: A friend of mine always said you should never preach a sermon that could just as well have been preached in the first century. I agree. I want the sermon to be faithful to the first century text of the Bible, but I also want it to be relevant to the century in which I preach.
Leadership: How has TV made it more difficult for you to preach?
Fullam: Viewers of television are awash in data and impressions, some important, some trivial. They are disparate, disconnected impressions. People learn not to deal with everything.
In order to survive, people make selections of the barrage of impressions that assault them in a single day. That’s why there is so much disjointed, unsystematic thinking. People lack a thorough understanding of important subjects.
Nederhood: I wonder if we aren’t developing a generation of Christians who are like people on artificial respirators. We have lived with such heavy external stimuli in our culture and in the church, such an oxygen-rich environment, that if you ever pulled the plug, Christians wouldn’t know what to do. They couldn’t sit quietly before the Lord, considering the riches of his person and meditating on the truths of his Word.
Stowell: How can I possibly compete in thirty-five minutes on Sunday morning with what the congregation has seen in thirty minutes on Saturday night? They have seen buildings exploding, cars driving off cliffs, near naked women running across the screen. The scenes, all in full color, change every seven seconds.
I stand up on Sunday morning in a single, dignified posture for thirty-five minutes and try to communicate to people who watch glitzy, high-budget presentations all week.
If I looked at it only that way, I would quit. I can’t compete. But preaching is a supernatural activity. The Word of God has a supernatural edge with which a million-dollar budget can never compete. If we sincerely, honestly preach the Word of God, the Holy Spirit will do something supernatural, and the Word will not return void.
We can’t be sharp enough-we’re not as sharp as the people on TV. We can’t be sophisticated enough. We can’t be edited enough. We can’t be fast paced enough. We can’t be as exciting. But as we stay close to God and preach his Word, there is a special anointing.
Fullam: People understand communication based on their presuppositions and frames of reference. When you watch cartoons, you may say to yourself, That’s stupid; animals do not drive cars and fly planes. Well, in cartoons they do.
I want people to understand the faith in terms of biblical categories that are provided for us. They have been worked out over generations and generations. The Holy Spirit has inspired them, so I have a strong feeling that we need to teach Christians as part of discipleship the language of the faith.
And yet even when the secularist of our day hears the gospel for the first time, it communicates. That is the astonishing thing. It is the truth. The secularist doesn’t see shepherds or sheep in daily life, but,t he can still understand it.
Leadership: How has TV made it easier for you to preach?
Fullam: Television brings issues to the fore. Something not that important to many-for example, the sexual harassment issue during the Supreme Court confirmation hearings-suddenly becomes a major topic. That presents opportunities for us. Television creates an awareness, and we can speak into it, bridging the two worlds.
We need to think often about what occupies the minds of our hearers, and television programming is a big part of that. We can recast the issues presented on television into a new perspective with biblical values. We can discuss issues in terms of right and wrong-which television desperately avoids. On TV everything is neutral.
Stowell: Let’s face it, TV is here, people will be affected by it, and we need to consider its effect when we prepare sermons.
As I preach, I’m trying to construct a biblical grid in the minds of believers through which everything-including what they watch on TV-is processed. I can use television to help build that grid by selecting examples from television and saying, “Do you realize how opposed this is to God’s truth?” In doing so, their discernment is enhanced.
Television also makes it easier to preach by providing a phenomenal number of illustrations.
Nederhood: On the one hand, you’re right. We can take the things on television and say, “Look, these contradict biblical values.” But it might be one of our obligations as preachers to wean people away from television.
Most programming today duplicates the idolatry of the biblical era, which was heavily sexual and sensational. You can draw direct parallels between what television communicates and what was involved in the worship of Baal. We are back in Canaan. Our people are being drenched by it, and we have to keep pleading, as John says, “Brothers, keep yourselves from idols.”
Leadership: Has television changed what makes for effective communication?
Stowell: I don’t think television has changed the core of what makes preaching effective: the clear proclamation of the authentic Word of God. In many ways, however, television has dictated a new wrapper. In order to reach people where they are, we have to be more anecdotal today. We have to know people’s language. We have to know our listener’s struggles.
Television has several distinctives that enable it to communicate effectively. Programs are edited. Every time someone stammers or clears his throat, it is cut out.
Television is a relevant medium. It’s market-driven. The only programs that survive are those that evoke emotions people feel right now!
Television is a fast-moving medium. For a while, television would break every twelve minutes for commercials. Now I hear it’s down to seven minutes. The ads are often more entertaining than the show.
All this has had a phenomenal effect on our audiences. Television is eclectic. People pick and choose what they want to hear and what they want to believe. Most people are somewhat cynical about the information they receive-from television or from any source, including preachers. People now have a wait-and-see attitude toward most messages and authority in general.
Nederhood: If we define effective preaching not in terms of whether people enjoy listening to us but in terms of people being converted or convicted of their sin or sanctified, then no, TV hasn’t changed our task.
The Bible doesn’t emphasize a preacher’s need to know those to whom he preaches. The results we seek will happen in spite of how little we understand listeners. When Paul spoke to the Philippian jailer, he preached Christ, and this man and his family were converted. Philip, speaking to the Ethiopian eunuch, preached Christ from Isaiah 53, and this man was converted.
Paul said that the word of the cross has power. It is foolishness to Greeks. It’s an offense to the Jews. But to those being saved, it is the power of God. When the Bible talks about how to preach effectively, it emphasizes the content of the message.
People are very often converted in ways that defy logic, in ways totally unexpected. I always feel that I am preaching to the elect. Ultimately I am preaching to people whom God has prepared.
Those who will be converted in your congregation have not been prepared by television to listen to the message of Christ. In fact, they will see everything in contrast to what they have experienced before. They will see Jesus Christ.
Stowell: When my son rode skate boards, I decided that to be a good father, I had to go out and ride his skate board. I did that because I realized my son had no interest in my world. The only way I was going to get to my son was to get into his world. Though my health was at stake, I stayed out there with him.
Television is the culture of many people; it is their planet. As a preacher, I need to understand their world.
God did that for us. When he redeemed us, he didn’t say, “Hey, I’m up here in this world. I hope you get interested in this world.” Rather he came and met us in our world. Then slowly but surely, he takes us to his world.
Without compromising the truth, preaching has to enter the world where people live so that we can take them by the hand to another world.
Fullam: We have to hear God’s voice and preach God’s truth, but we also have to know the people to whom we are speaking, where they are, what language they live in, what language they speak. If our people have been affected by this world, by television, we need to know how they have been affected so that we can speak to them.
Stowell: The Old Testament prophets used some memorable object lessons to get people’s attention. They communicated their message in a fashion their listeners would see and understand.
With the woman at the well, Christ adapted his application of the truth. To the rich young ruler, he approached the message from a different angle. At Mars Hill, Paul referred to the unknown God at the start of his sermon. He adapted the packaging to where the people were at that moment.
That’s all I’m pulling for, that we don’t just stand up and say, “Thus saith the Lord,” and let the biblical chips fall where they will without working hard to understand where these people are and how we can get to them by the Spirit’s power.
Leadership: Television tends not to coerce; rather, it charms. It places no demands; rather, it woos. Do those raised on television find it difficult to respond to direct appeals for conversion or conviction? Do people now need to be wooed?
Fullam: We need both. We must help people identify sin. That is not immediately clear to people these days. They lack a clear idea of the law of God and the mind of God, and we alone can reveal that to them. We need to summon them to move beyond where they are, to respond with repentance where necessary. And then we also want to call people to the many positive things of the gospel. The gospel has to come through sounding like Good News.
Stowell: Billy Sunday would have a difficult time in today’s arena because he was not sophisticated enough. We cannot call people to conversion or confront their lifestyles as we often could in the past. But it still rnust be done.
People need to hear more “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” sermons, but with tears running down our cheeks.
The Mosaic law was not just an arbitrary code designed to make life tougher for people, but the communication of God’s nature. We need to bring people back to a sense of righteousness, of what it means to be godly in this environment.
Nederhood: Television manipulates psychologically in insidious and subtle ways.
A while back, TV Guide had an article about why we watch certain commercials. They told of one car company that hooks people up to electrical equipment and cameras and runs images past them. Their vital signs are read. Their irises are observed. Whatever would get a big reaction became part of an advertisement. That’s manipulation.
Manipulation is the temptation of any great communicator. After you’ve preached for a few years, you know which buttons to push. Anyone who has learned to communicate, who has felt the adrenalin in a mass meeting, knows the critical ethical decision he faces at that moment.
A preacher’s responsibility is to communicate an awareness of God, not to woo people with his own personal charm. Am I pointing people to Scripture, or am I spotlighting myself?
Leadership: Do preachers today have to be more entertaining?
Nederhood: It depends on how you define entertaining. If you define entertaining as being engaging, as fully captivating people’s attention, preachers certainly need to do that.
When a communication event occurs and people are filled with the wonder of God’s grace, when a sermon is all over, and people just sit there not wanting to leave, they have been “entertained” in a way that no mere TV special could provide.
If entertaining, however, means people “enjoying” the experience, then I don’t think preachers can do that, because people don’t “enjoy” a message about the cross. In fact, every once in awhile, after a sermon someone will tell me, “I really enjoyed that. No, I didn’t enjoy it, but I needed it.”
I don’t think it’s a compliment if someone says, “Boy, did I enjoy that.” At one level, maybe. But if entertaining means that it’s been a fun, light experience, then we’ve probably failed.
Fullam: We have endlessly interesting things to talk about, subjects that grasp and hold people. As they interact with the truth and hear from the Lord, people become engrossed in a message, ignore their watches, and don’t want you to stop. In a sense, preaching entertains because people often leave with a sense of pleasure and well-being.
Television is very entertaining, but when people walk away from it, they often feel empty. Television is ephemeral, fleeting. People ultimately want something that brings them back to reality and is “entertaining” on a level that TV can never achieve.
They are searching for something satisfying, something that gives them a better feeling about themselves, something ennobling. Preaching does that, putting an eternal perspective on things temporal.
Television may have set us up in a way. People hunger for what is substantial.
Leadership: Has TV changed the standards of excellence for preaching, either in style or content?
Stowell: In many ways, yes. The conciseness of television raises a listener’s expectation for conciseness in all communication. The relevance of television raises a listener’s expectation of relevance in sermons. The stories, human interest material, and verbal precision of television raises the expectation for the same in a sermon.
And if television sets that kind of standard for communication, it’s good for us.
For example, TV has made our hearers more sophisticated about the preacher’s image. There was a day when a preacher in the pulpit could get away with a wrinkled shirt or a tie that didn’t match his suit, but not any more. Television portrays everything so well, the images so correct. If it’s not correct, it’s distracting, even jarring.
On TV whatever is not image-correct is used to picture someone who is irrelevant. But there is danger here. Image doesn’t energize preaching. Correct externals only prevent unnecessary barriers. What energizes preaching is my closeness to Christ, my understanding of the text, my shaping of the communication of the text by the power of the Spirit.
Sometimes we forget that. Television has nurtured a personality-oriented culture, a star-oriented culture. But effective communication depends on character, not position. Effective preaching helps listeners see Christ.
When I was a boy, if I looked in the back of my dad’s pulpit, I would see these words: “Sir, we would see Jesus.” I didn’t understand what that meant then, but I do now.
Fullam: Preachers today can’t get away with the kind of heavy reasoning you see in a lot of the divines of earlier generations. I’m thinking of Wesley and Spurgeon. That would probably be incomprehensible today.-Logical argument is no longer considered excellence in preaching.
Stowell: Still, we have to talk about substantive things. On television people hear about serious, complex issues in a surface way, often in a detached way. You watch a story about rape, and then the anchor comes back on, smiles, says, “We’ll be back in a moment,” and an advertisement comes on with a little rabbit drummer going across the screen.
That makes it difficult for us to preach on serious subjects for extended periods of time.
Television exalts style over substance. Our listeners therefore appreciate style over substance. Sometimes I hear a message and there is really nothing in it, but the speaker closes with a slam-dunk story, and people walk out saying, “Have you ever heard a greater message than that?” And I’m thinking, style over substance.
We need to be willing to deal carefully on a deeper level with serious issues, not to give in to the temptation to deal with a serious issue merely on the surface. Before I preach I have to ask myself, What is the substance of this sermon?
Substance is not a preacher’s opinion. It’s not the illustrations. It’s something listeners can count on, the non-negotiable principle in the text, the exposition of the text, the thesis of the text, what the writer of the text was trying to communicate with his audience. It’s the pure Word of God, delivered as purely as possible.
Nederhood: Television, the primary culture-forming component of our society, is powerfully capable of separating people from reality. A preacher’s great responsibility is to return people to reality by preaching the word of the cross.
We need to be students of the times as well as students of the Word of God, and somehow, by the grace of God, bring eternity and time together in a moment of truth that can change people’s lives.
That’s reality.
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