Self-Inflicted Sermon Wounds - Christianity Today

1. MISSING THE MASSES

I have a preacher friend who likes to read great literature, and he often fills his sermons with literary illustrations. Unfortunately, he has been in churches where people don’t read even the newspaper. As a result, he has lost church after church.

Why exclude anyone in the congregation by either your illustrations or manner of speech? You want to make sure that everybody is invited to participate.

Obviously, you cannot speak to all people with every illustration. Neither can you remove your personality from the sermon. It would be wrong for my friend never to use a literary allusion or never to appeal to the educated.

A question we must ask ourselves, though, is For whom am I preaching? Perhaps as my friend prepares a message, he thinks about his Greek professor, imagining his response because he is significant to him. Or he may have in his congregation a handful of people who are well educated, and he seeks their approval.

If he’s not careful, though, he can give the impression by his illustrations that the taxi driver or the hairdresser in the congregation are not significant. They can tell if someone is not preaching for their approval.

Or perhaps he hasn’t accepted that mass culture has changed. A generation ago, preachers were expected to quote Herman Melville. But how many people these days have read Moby Dick? For better or worse, movies, television, and comic strips are the media of exchange in the world of ideas. So in preaching today, you forget Moby Dick and quote from “Home Improvement.” Even if I had a literate congregation, I’d take illustrations from a wide range of sources–the Boston Red Sox, literature, and television. That way you touch a wide element of the congregation and increase your credibility.

2. STRETCHING THE STORY

I knew a pastor who worked many different jobs before entering ministry. Once he worked for a week in a restaurant. When he mentioned that in a sermon, though, he implied that he knew the restaurant business inside and out. Later, he worked for Burpee Seed Company for two or three years, but he made it sound like he and Mr. Burpee got together every morning to make the decisions. He directed a conference one summer but talked about his work as though he owned a resort for years.

I don’t think he tried to lie, but he made every experience sound like an extended career. People who heard him over time knew that nobody could have had five careers at his age. As a result, his credibility was damaged.

Once, after I spoke at his church, he said, “Haddon Robinson and I have been close. So many nights we have stayed late to pray over this ministry.”

If we did stay late to pray, it was only once. He made it sound as though every night we were on our knees, begging God to pour blessings on the church.

People these days have an uncanny ability to smell deceit of any kind. If you consistently overstate or embellish the truth, you will be found out.

No matter how much preaching changes, we’ll never move beyond the fundamentals of knowing the audience and speaking with honesty.

*********************

Haddon Robinson is consulting editor, LEADERSHIP

lecurrmrj5L40645A2g