Make It Textual

Christians will never understand doctrine apart from a grasp of the warp and woof of Scripture. A steady diet of exposition teaches both the metanarrative of the Bible as well as the underlying truths. Narrative passages were “written for our instruction” (Rom. 15:4; 1 Cor. 10:11) and as examples to us. They generally hold some sanctifying truth to emulate or some sin to avoid, but even the behaviors exhibited in the text fit within a doctrinal framework that reflects the character and the will of God.

"Every time a pastor preaches a narrative text, he should connect theological truth to the inherent attraction of a good story."

The fourth chapter of Jonah, for instance, is fascinating and has an incredible narrative appeal. One might expect that chapter three concludes the story. After initially defying the Lord, Jonah undergoes God’s chastisement in the belly of a great fish, cries out for deliverance, relents and goes to Nineveh where he delivers a message of judgment and the people repent and turn to God. Nothing could fit Aristotle’s analysis of drama better than that: exposition, complication, climax, reversal, and denouement. Jonah is a prophet (exposition), he refuses to obey God (complication), he is swallowed by a whale (climax), he cries out to God and goes to Nineveh (reversal), and as a result of his preaching the people repent (denouement). 

The fourth chapter is completely unexpected and does not seem to fit. Just when we thought the tension was resolved we are taken to an unanticipated destination: the very heart of God. The prophet who received God’s mercy pouts like an impetuous spoiled child because God has shown mercy to undeserving Babylonians. God exposes Jonah’s ridiculous and misplaced affections and then exposes his own heart, naked and raw and bleeding, for the people of Nineveh. If God destroyed Nineveh for their sin, even though justified, he would also destroy children and people of diminished mental capacity who “do not know their right hand from their left.” He even cares about the innocent animals (Jonah 4:11).

This unexpected turn after what one might expect is the end of the story is a “zone of turbulence,” a rhetorical device that directs the reader’s attention and drives home the main point of the text by dropping something entirely unexpected into the narrative, something that does not at first seem to fit. A preacher must never preach merely the event, but must make clear the meaning of the event. The book of Jonah ends with an intimate glimpse into God’s heart of mercy and how he thinks about his creatures. That is not narrative for the sake of a good story alone. That is doctrine revealed in a beautiful narrative form. Only a heart like this would send his son to die for his people. The God who spared Jonah and the people of Nineveh did not spare his own son but freely gave him up.

Every time a pastor preaches a narrative text, he should connect theological truth to the inherent attraction of a good story. Stories often raise questions like, “Why would God do that?” or “How can someone who claims to know God behave like that?” Good preachers answer those questions even as they preach the pericope within the metanarrative.

Similarly, didactic passages such as the epistles also reveal truths about Christ, about man, about salvation, and other categories of theology. The doctrinal content may be much nearer the surface and therefore easier to mine, but connection to other passages and doctrine still demands careful exposition and correlation. Faithful teaching of doctrine always begins with the text, not a system. If you want to avoid dissension and division in the church, always point to the Scripture as the authoritative source of doctrine.

Make It Biblical

As obvious as this seems, pastors find themselves in a divisive church situation because they use loaded theological jargon rather than the language of Scripture. The problem is not so much that a pastor teaches unbiblical doctrine, but that he uses extra-biblical language. If a church accepts the inerrancy of Scripture, then the pastor’s task is always to show what the Word of God, and not a theological system, actually says. 

If a pastor preaches a system, relies on theological insider language, or employs faddish expressions he is far more likely to create needless controversy. A parishioner can pack the word theologically and incorrectly or, at the very least, differently than the preacher intended the word—and find 100 websites that confirm him in his wrongheaded understanding of what the pastor meant and warn him against such “heresy” that some author warns is part of a satanic plot.

For example, some members of my church have come from denominations that warned them about the dangers of “once saved always saved” because it grants permission to believers to pray the sinner’s prayer and then live as they want with no regard for sanctification. While our church does not hide our belief that a person who is genuinely regenerate and born again by the Holy Spirit can never be unborn and ultimately lost, we also do not believe that a person can simply pray a prayer or walk an aisle and live for the flesh with no change from before salvation and go to heaven. 

My best move as a pastor, therefore, is to avoid any terminology that implies something other than I mean to my congregation and to default to a strictly biblical vocabulary. I can talk about being born again to never be unborn or rejected. I can show them in the Scripture that nothing can ever separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus. I can point them to Paul’s confident word even to the Corinthians, with all of their sin and disobedience, that Jesus Christ “will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor 1:8). I can explain clearly and decisively that once one becomes a new creation in Christ Jesus (2 Cor 5:17) becoming an old creation again is impossible. I can show passages about perseverance in faith and holiness and deal honestly with warning passages because I do not reduce the issue to one banal buzzword or facile phrase but rather strive to say precisely what the Bible actually says.

Make It Personal

Doctrine, even the most controversial doctrine, does not exist in as antiseptic quarantined ecclesiastical space but in the grit and grime of life and spiritual struggles. The pastor who preaches a sermon on the doctrine of Christ’s humanity which merely describes the hypostatic union and its role in church history will face yawns or, worse yet, divisiveness from the armchair theologians in the church. 

"Belief always drives action. Faith inevitably leads to works. Doctrinal preaching requires application in real life and in the real world."

When a pastor relates theology to the lives of listeners, when he connects doctrine and duty, then congregants more readily catch the consequence and significance of the teaching. Just as the writer to the Hebrews relates that Christ’s humanity makes him a faithful high priest who actually feels our weaknesses, so the wise pastor will always show the practical aspects of doctrine. Belief always drives action. Faith inevitably leads to works. Doctrinal preaching requires application in real life and in the real world.

More than that, however, a pastor needs to make it personal in relation to Christ. All true doctrine ultimately finds its expression in the person and the work of Jesus. When a pastor shows how the doctrine in view relates to Christ and a proper understanding of it leads us to follow him, doctrine comes alive.

Make It Proportional

Pastors sometimes make the mistake of preaching what they love or what they are most passionate about to the exclusion of the rest of God’s revelation in the Bible. One can find a lot of passages in the Scripture about social justice, for instance, but to preach those texts exclusively without the balance of justification, prayer, or evangelism a church would soon begin to list dangerously toward a social gospel that only makes the world a better place from which to go to hell. 

Expository preaching that systematically goes through books from both testaments, from multiple genres, and with a balance between law and grace is the best steady diet for a congregation. Expositional series through major sections of Scripture help both the pastor and the congregation gain a strategic grasp of the metanarrative of Scripture. One cannot adequately appreciate the whole without a knowledge of the parts, but the inverse is equally true. 

Some churches and denominations focus on specific doctrines above and to the exclusion of all others. Churches and ministries will define themselves by their obeisance to those specific things, even while they tend to ignore themes and theological movements that are much more pronounced throughout the Bible. It might be footwashing, women’s hairstyles, missions methodologies, or some other minutiae, but they nonetheless strain at gnats and swallow camels. The best doctrinal preaching refuses to ride a hobby horse and deals with the grand sweep of God’s Word.

Make it Loving

"The pastor whose knowledge of doctrine has swelled his head rather than his heart will find himself without a church or, perhaps worse, with an arrogant church and a distorted gospel."

Nothing should be more obvious, but 1 Corinthians 13 is for preachers as well as practitioners of glossolalia. Without love, no doctrine will matter. The pastor whose knowledge of doctrine has swelled his head rather than his heart will find himself without a church or, perhaps worse, with an arrogant church and a distorted gospel. 

Sometimes I have had tough doctrinal conversations with church members who disagree with me. If I remind them that I have a PhD in New Testament, that I know the biblical languages, and that I have been a seminary professor for twenty years and in ministry for nearly forty, they are not impressed or moved one bit—nor should they be. If I lovingly thank them for taking the time to meet with me, remind them that above all else I want to honor Christ and His Word, and tell them that I love them even if we don’t reach agreement, they tend to be much more open to what I teach. Even if they don’t see things my way in the end, they usually still leave as my friends and Christian brothers and sisters. Would Jesus have it any other way?

Following a pastor who has run well and gone the distance is only a problem for those who lack the character or the stamina to do the same. Taking the baton of leadership from someone who has served the church for twenty years or more is certainly not without daunting challenges and discouraging obstacles, but the advantages of stability—even when “stability” has morphed into apparent intransigence—are usually preferable to following a rapid succession of pastors who did not stay long enough to lead the people in any meaningful sense of the word. 

    In 1990 at only 30 years old I was called to be the third pastor of the Ashland Avenue Baptist Church in Lexington, Kentucky. My two predecessors had served for fifty and twenty-three years respectively. One of them, Clarence Walker, was legendary. Both Jerry Falwell and W. A. Criswell told me about his impact on their lives. My immediate predecessor, Ross Range, was the quintessential pastor, a dignified and refined man who mowed his yard wearing a tie. 

    The church I now serve, Buck Run, has a very different history, one marked by a long succession of very short pastorates with one notable exception: my immediate predecessor, Dr. Bob Jackson. He served the church twice for a total of two decades (his last tenure was thirteen years) and under his expert leadership the church exploded with growth and grace, morphing from a sleepy rural church on the banks of the Elkhorn Creek to one of Kentucky’s most vibrant and missional congregations. He led Buck Run to found the Romanian American Mission, which today has planted over 400 churches and continues to impact Europe. His emphasis on prayer and evangelism led Thom Rainer to include a chapter, “The Miracle Called Buck Run” in his book on church growth, Eating the Elephant. When Dr. Jackson resigned, many members grieved his departure, even years later.

    I am acquainted with the ups and downs, the blessings and not-so-blessings (curses is too strong a word!) of following long-tenured legendary pastors. While I have benefitted from the stability and unity that it brings, I have faced the monolithic intransigence it fosters as well. Here’s what I have learned.

The Two Great Challenges

    You aren’t him. Furthermore, you are never going to be him. You don’t have his abilities, convictions, wisdom, skills—you can simply fill in the blank here. In fact, church members will do this for you. I lost count of how many times someone looked me in the eye with no intent to hurt or discourage but flatly stated something like, “Now I think you’re really good at __________ , but when it comes to _________ , you’re no (Clarence Walker, Ross Range, Bob Jackson).

    Everything in a man wants to defend himself at this point, to point out one’s own strengths and value added, but the best move is simply and humbly to plead guilty. “I aspire to be as great a pastor as my predecessor. He certainly sets the bar very high. Would you commit to pray for me that the Lord might, for His glory, make me the best shepherd that I can be to His flock? I desperately want to be.”

    If the goal were to be more loved or revered than the previous pastor, one might have a tough and trying tenure, but the objective is faithfulness, and that lies completely in one’s own control. I do not have to be revered, applauded, or appreciated to be faithful. I simply have to submit to God’s will. The example of my predecessor, even the humiliation of constant reminders that I am not him, motivate me to cast myself on Christ and beg the Holy Spirit to help me be faithful. 

    Preferences become convictions. The longer a pastor stays and does things a particular way, the less congregations distinguish between biblical mandates and pastoral quirks. Consequently, some members will be prepared to defend the practice to the death when a new pastor suggests an alternative. Children’s ministries, worship styles, Sunday School practices, altar calls, and even the way the offering is received might become sources of tension and division he will encounter. 

    Since longevity and faithfulness were the source of the last pastor’s credibility, any new pastor would be naïve to think he can make significant changes without enough time to establish them. Some problems—even some people—must be outlived or outlasted. No pastor gets a shortcut to character or credibility because they are forged in the furnace of life and experience.

The Two Great Benefits

    Stability means predictability. Long-tenured pastorates usually indicate a stable church family. A pastor typically does not have new crises that threaten his position arise after about ten years. Through the years of his ministry those who opposed him left or changed, and every new member came in at least partly because they resonated with him. The effect is that over the course of years, the congregation coalesces behind the pastor’s leadership and enjoys great unity.

    While a new pastor certainly will feel the pressure of change and even of possibly disappointing all those people, he also has a church with established patterns and habits that make them predictable. Whatever challenges follow a long and successful tenure, they aren’t as bad as those presented by the church that cycled through 10 pastors in 20 years. Those churches grow accustomed to instability. They typically place far more trust in key lay leaders than in any pastor because so many pastors come and go while a key leader or two seem constant and dependable. That kind of congregation may even see those lay leaders as their protectors from pastoral overreach and vicissitudes. 

    While one can always find exceptions, the general result is that the steadiness of a church accustomed to a long pastorate is easier to lead than the instability of one that has cycled through multiple short tenures. In the strength and consistency of the former, a pastor will at least get the opportunity to build bonds and relationships in a congregation that knows what long-term commitment looks like.  

    They know how to overlook faults. Like any lasting committed relationship, the bonds between a pastor and a congregation work best when they love one another across their differences and disappointments. Frankly, the necessary skill is even more stark than that. People in happy relationships that endure acquire the ability not even to notice one another’s faults. Pastors will find that true in church life as in marriage, otherwise, no pastor could last long because all men have great flaws. 

    Following a pastor who stayed at a church a long time means, at the very least, that this church learned how to follow a man in spite of himself and his weaknesses. Greater still, they may have learned to love him so much that they didn’t notice or dwell on his flaws. If they have done that for one man of God, perhaps they can learn to do it for another.  

The Two Great Moves

    Never criticize your predecessor. If he went insane one night and slaughtered a local herd of goats with a machete, you brag on his ability to sharpen a blade. That may be an overstatement, but the point of the hyperbole is to drive home a hard and fast rule: just don’t criticize him at all. Find the good things that you can say about him and say those things even if they are small. Do not be fooled by the church members who feel comfortable criticizing him to you. They will still think you petty and insecure if you join in. Just don’t do it. Ever. You gain nothing and lose a great deal.

    Even if a predecessor did much worthy of criticism, anyone who follows him should leave that to the Lord and others to judge. No successive pastor ever had to suffer criticism because he was not critical enough. A man with a lengthy tenure did enough right things that he survived all the business meetings, crises, funerals, deacon elections, and church splits for a long time. Do not discount that. Even if his tenure ended in shame and sin, speak only of your commitment to purity and transparency, but never in contrast to him. Everyone either already knows the truth about him, thus you need not say it, or they believe him to be better than he is, and you only anger and frustrate them when you say it. 

    If you are blessed to follow a man who was faithful and honorable and whose service ended well, then thank God for him, honor him, bless him, and speak well of him openly and often. I have been blessed to follow men of character and distinction in my pastorates, and I have taken every opportunity to praise them sincerely, thank God for them, and invite them back for special occasions. Even after the death of Dr. Jackson, when we dedicated our new campus 13 years after he left, I publicly thanked God for him and made sure that his widow and family were present to receive our gratitude and honor and to witness the continuing fruit of his ministry. Honoring my predecessors has never taken anything from my leadership. To the contrary, it has added value and leadership currency. The people who were loyal to my predecessors did not see me as an interloper trying to deprive their beloved pastor of his legacy, but as a fellow admirer and a grateful servant happy to build on the great foundation that they laid. They easily and quickly gave me that same loyalty and respect because I gave them permission to keep loving the man who had shepherded their hearts faithfully. I learned long ago that people have a great capacity to love and I don’t even have to be their favorite pastor so long as I am a faithful pastor.

    Stay a long time and be faithful. Every time I had someone give me the “you’re no Bob Jackson” speech, I knew that if I would just be faithful to love the people, preach the Word, and point people to Christ, the day would come in which someone looks at my successor and says, “You know, you’re a good guy, and we like you, but you’re no Hershael York.” In all candor, I take no solace that anyone might ever be compared unfavorably to me, but I understand human nature well enough to know that will happen if I am a faithful shepherd who walks through life with the precious people God has entrusted to my care. After a few years of preaching the Word, loving the people, and shepherding hearts, I have earned trust and leadership collateral, and, I pray, so will my successor. So I end where I began: following a pastor who has run well and gone the distance is only a problem for those who lack the character or the stamina to do the same.

My father, Wallace York, was a faithful husband, father, grandfather and pastor who touched many lives before his death in 2009. He pastored many people in the course of his life and, though he was only a sinner saved by God’s grace, nearly everyone who was fortunate enough to have him as a shepherd will attest that he loved the Lord, He loved God’s Word, and he really loved people.

Especially children. Any kids who were ever around my father for even just a few minutes were treated to his fake French, watching him take his thumb off, or hearing him talk like Donald Duck. He could carry on an entire conversation and sound just like Donald Duck. He even joked that his mother was a duck because she waddled when she walked. Kids absolutely loved to run to him as soon as they got to church and to plead for him to talk like Donald Duck. No matter what was going on, he always obliged. He loved children.

I miss my father every day. I miss our Sunday night phone calls telling one another what we each preached that day and how it went. I miss cheering for Kentucky Basketball with him, or commiserating over Kentucky football, or hearing the same five corny jokes that were the extent of his comedic repertoire. Every time “No Time for Sergeants” comes on TV, I yearn to see his eyes squint with laughter. I really wish he could be with me on November 13 for the first public worship service in Buck Run’s new building. I know he would be overwhelmed with joy at what God has done and his voice would choke with emotion in some expression of praise.

I have wanted to honor my dad in some tangible way and now I have the perfect venue. The indoor playground equipment for our children’s wing cost $38,000, and I think it would be appropriate and fitting for people who knew and loved my dad to help me raise that amount to honor him and to bless the children who are growing up under his son’s ministry with a place to play and expend their energy in a safe, loving, Christ-centered environment. By God’s providential grace, some of my father’s own great-grandchildren are among those who will play and be taught there.

If those who knew and loved my father will do this in his honor, we will purchase high-quality, safe play equipment that will stand in the Wallace York Play Area as a tribute to the man who taught me God’s Word and will be used to help Buck Run Baptist Church train and teach children to love the Word of God that he faithfully taught and preached for so many decades before God called him home.

I intend no pressure on anyone, only an opportunity to honor my father and bless the children whom God will bring to Buck Run. If you can give, the process is simple and easy to complete online by clicking the link below or simply by mailing your donation to Buck Run Baptist Church, 3894 Georgetown Road, Frankfort, KY 40601. Once the goal is met and we can purchase the equipment, this opportunity will disappear. We are seeking only enough to meet this goal and no more. If you feel led to be a part of it, your gift is completely tax deductible and you will receive a receipt from Buck Run Baptist Church for tax return purposes.

Thank you for your tribute to my father and your investment in our children.

View all other Pastoral Pointers HERE

Listen to a sermon where I coached my own church on how to do this very thing.

View all other Pastoral Pointers HERE

For your convenience here are links to some of the resources mentioned in the video.

Books

The Entire Malcolm Gladwell Collection

• Malcolm Gladwell: Collected
• What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures
• Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
• The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
• Outliers: The Story of Success
• David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants

Freakonomics [Revised and Expanded]: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

Around the Web

The New York Times Trending Page

The New York Times' Most Popular Content

Podcasts

The Moth

This American Life

Hidden Brain

Radiolab

Serial

And for organizing it all...

Evernote

If you liked this video by Dr. York, view the other Pastoral Pointer installments at HERE

If you liked this video by Dr. York view other Pastoral Pointers here

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To put it mildly, I sympathize. I know exactly what that feels like. With years of ministry experience and a Masters degree in Classical Languages, I once served as the janitor at the Kirby Woods Baptist Church in Memphis, Tennessee. I argued with God and explained to Him why so many churches out there needed my particular brilliance and expertise, and the Holy Spirit kept humbling me until I was willing to honor Christ through cleaning toilets. Only when I found joy in that was I ready to serve the Lord through ministry elsewhere.

So with empathy and experience, here is the answer I give to my young pastor friends:

Dear Friend,

I am sorry that you are going through such a difficult struggle. By this I mean that I am sorry you have to endure the emotions of it. I always find it hard to see someone I care about hurting. 

On the other hand, I often have had to remind myself that my Father has denied me no good thing, that His promise is, in every circumstance, to work everything together for my good. He so carefully superintends the events of my life, including the denials, that every stream of experience results in a confluence of grace even when they seem more like floods that may drown me.

As always, I will do whatever I can to share your availability with churches and ministry opportunities, but I encourage you simply to be faithful. Faithfulness when no one is paying you and ministry when no one is asking you are marks of genuine love and devotion to Christ. Live out your calling to the best of your ability with whatever time you have after working in a job you do not like. 

I have been there, and I know it’s not fun, but in retrospect I think I learned more about honoring Christ with my life during that time than at any other. I have seen that same phenomenon in the lives of many others. Don’t fail to see what God is teaching you in this. Embrace the lesson. By all means, keep sending out the resumes and looking for the right fit, but try—as hard as it may be—to do even that as unto the Lord in the same way you would do some church ministry itself. If our dependence on Christ rather than self is the goal, then anything He does to make us lean on Him is ultimately a good thing, regardless of how it feels. 

We usually walk much better after God has touched us in the hollow of the thigh and given us a weakness that reminds of our striving with God than we ever could in the strength (or naiveté) of youth or natural abilities. Jacob had a limp, Joseph a prison cell, Paul a thorn, Ezekiel a spouse’s death, Peter a failure. 

Jesus had a cross.

 You and I are not going to escape that pattern of preparation in our lives.

I remember when I was in your situation years ago I called my dad one night and poured my heart out to him and told him that I was sick of being a janitor, that I thought my talents and training were being wasted, and I did not understand why I had invested so much only to see my family living on rice and beans. He offended me a bit when he replied that he wouldn’t change it if he could because he knew that God was doing a work in me that would make me much better prepared to shepherd His people in the future. 

I didn’t like it when he said it, but he was right. And my words to you may not make your frustration and weariness go away, but I hope they at least help you see that you are being trained by God every bit as much as when you were in seminary. Every situation has a way by which we can honor Christ. Ask Him for that more than for a job in ministry. The Holy Spirit has one ministry—to glorify Jesus. The Spirit is not interested in helping us get a church or find the right position or become a great preacher. The Spirit’s single focus is to glorify Jesus, and when we get so possessed of that goal, even when working as a janitor or bagging groceries or mowing lawns, that we can delight in it regardless of the venue, then He is willing to use us in ways we could never imagine.

So I pray for you to find the right fit and ministry through which you can bless many and use the great gifts God has graciously given you, but most of all I pray for you to find joy in exalting Christ in the frustrating, sorrowful, and mundane things of life. Do that, and you will have succeeded at the thing that matters most.

Obviously, fountain pens are available at many price points and you can certainly find a hobby (or an obsession) collecting them, but if you are just entering the world of fountain pens or need one that will serve you well without a great expense, I recommend the excellent LAMY Safari with a broad nib, coupled with a robust and eye-catching ink. For the best writing experience and another way to demonstrate a careful attention to detail, invest in some high quality correspondence cards. I found my custom letterpress cards on Etsy. And to make your letter really stand out in the recipient's pile of daily mail, round out your effort with a wax seal, on the envelope.

No matter how well you write or what stationery you use, the most important element of a personal note is the sincere love and concern you communicate. People have an uncanny ability to see the truth of a caring heart and the pretense of an empty one that's just trying to gain an advantage. That's the difference between a true shepherd and a a hired hand. Jesus put it like this:

"Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. He who is a hired hand and not a shepherd, who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. He flees because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep. And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father.”


(John 10:7-18 ESV)

That lament echoes through the Psalms, appears in Habakkuk, recurs in Revelation—and pervades the meandering minds of restless parishioners obliged to suffer the pastor’s preaching past the point of effectiveness and endurance. An expression of extreme suffering and bewilderment is hardly the response a pastor hopes for when he delivers himself of a week’s worth of preparation.

How long should a sermon be? As a preaching professor and a pastor, I’ve asked and been asked that question a hundred times. Today, after 35 years in ministry, I have a definitive answer: You can preach as long as you hold their attention.

Obviously (though perhaps not to everyone) that means some preachers are able to preach longer than others, not because of mere natural gifting, but because of faithfulness to biblical and practical techniques, which are not at all contradictory. In fact, they go hand in hand. Many preachers have on the one hand consoled themselves that their churches are filled with people who have itching ears, and on the other prided themselves that they don’t compromise the truth when really all they’ve done is preached God’s Word badly.

While such situations certainly exist—and my heart goes out to any faithful preacher who lovingly and skillfully preaches the Word to people with cold, indifferent hearts—we shouldn’t be so quick to assume the problem lies exclusively in the pew with no responsibility in the pulpit.

Lest I be misunderstood, I am not arguing for shorter sermons. If anything, I believe many churches need to devote more time to preaching, not less. The preaching of the Word is the central act of worship for the gathered church. The widespread biblical illiteracy among professed Christians neither will diminish because pastors shorten their exposition, nor will it change because pastors preach longer dull sermons.

How can one preach better and still afford to preach longer? Faithful preachers who are also interesting learn four key moves to delivering the kind of sermons that help listeners remain engaged.

First, fill your sermon with biblical substance. Perhaps it seems counterintuitive, but the way to keep the attention of disengaged church members is not by feeding them a steady diet of spiritual cotton candy. It may be sweet to the taste, but it has no nutrition; too much of it will make them sick! The Word of God is what will draw and keep them interested. Don’t dumb it down; serve it up! Christ promised that if He is lifted up He will draw them to Himself. So, point to Christ in text and type, in redemption and relationship.

Second, arrest their attention. Once you know the content of your text, think on the perceptual level in developing the sermon. Find a way to get their interest at the very beginning. Peter did it on Pentecost. Paul did it on the Areopagus. Ezekiel did it by building a model city and laying siege to it. Jesus did it in Galilee with eight promises of blessedness. Spurgeon did it. Jonathan Edwards did it. Listen to the preachers you admire and notice how they adorn the gospel with thought-provoking and engaging delivery.

Third, constantly weave personal application into biblical explanation. Peter’s sermon in Acts 2 drove his audience to ask, “What shall we do?” Explanation without application leads to frustration. Content without conviction breeds boredom. The inherent power of the Word and the Spirit demand a response, repentance, renewal. Without that, sermons may seem to be merely Bible trivia games.

Fourth, the best preachers develop audience awareness, always discerning how well folks are listening. Respond to their restlessness with energy, focus and excitement about the text. Is your voice lulling them to sleep? Change your pitch, pace and volume. Let the Word that has saturated you in your study overflow in your pulpit to them in the pew. You may preach as one who knows the Word, but do you preach as one who loves the Word? They’ll listen better—and sit longer.

This article was originally written for Preaching.com

This morning I will preach my father-in-law's funeral. 

For 32 years of our marriage, I dreaded this terrible task because he was not a believer. He wanted no part of Christ or his gospel. We prayed for him, witnessed to him, sent others to talk to him, and five years ago even took him to Manaus, Brazil to go fishing for tucunaré (peacock bass), but with the real intention of sharing Christ on the entire trip. We colluded, cooperated and conspired for his soul. 

While in Manaus we attended the Nova Igreja Batista, where our close friends David and Pennie Hatcher serve and we stayed in their home. They and all the members of Nova became co-conspirators in our redemptive plot. 

I will never forget sitting on the front row of their massive sanctuary surrounded by thousands of bouncing Brazilians worshiping and praising their Savior, smiles beaming from their brown faces. Gene could only recognize one word that they sang over and over--Jesus. He looked at Tanya and said, "These people really believe what they are singing." She took the opportunity to drive home the point that He had changed their lives and that is why they sang so fervently. 

When we got back to Kentucky, our niece met us at the airport and drove her grandfather home. She later told us that he did not stop talking—about the church and about David and Pennie. The three days of fishing the Rio Uatumã or seeing freshwater dolphins, caiman, howler monkeys or any of the things that he went to Brazil to see did not even merit a mention. Instead he was fixated on the obvious deep, meaningful belief in the gospel now so evident to him in so many people. 

A few months later his body failed him. One night his legs refused to work for him anymore and he never walked again. Too big and with too many medical needs for any of us to care for at home, the man whose life was as big as the great outdoors suddenly found himself limited to the four walls of a single room and flat on his back in a nursing home. 

For the first four or five days we had to go through red tape to get him a television and, coupled with his near deafness, he had nothing to watch or hear when we weren't there. The strange providence of God had twisted and brought him into the last place on earth he wanted to be but precisely where he needed to be and there, in the silence of that room, God brought to his mind all the times someone had shared the gospel with him, the simple message that Jesus saves by grace through faith. The effect in the lives of his children and grandchildren and his deceased wife and so many others that he knew was undeniable. 

The next day Tanya and I came to see him and were amazed by his attitude. Frankly, we had anticipated that he would hate the nursing home and might be terribly uncooperative. Instead he was positive, focused, and met this challenge with the same spirit that helped him survive World War II. We were, to be candid, stunned. 

As we got up to leave, Gene put out his hand and said something strange to me. "Preach to me, Hershey." He had never said that before. I thought he was confused or that asking me to pray for him was so unusual that he just didn't know how to do it. In 32 years, until this episode, he had never asked me to pray for him or with him about anything. A few days earlier he had held out his hand and said, "Say some good words for me," and I had taken that to mean pray for him and I had. Now I was trying to interpret, "Preach to me" and thought surely he meant for me to pray. 

So Tanya took one hand and I the other, and I prayed. I asked God to strengthen and heal him according to His will, but then I prayed for God to save him. I begged God to help him see that Jesus was the only way. I told God that Gene had had his way for far too long, and I pleaded with him to overwhelm him with His love and to overrule his stubborn heart and grant him repentance and faith in Christ alone. 

When I said, "Amen,” Gene patted my hand and looked me in the eye and said, “I've done that.” Tanya and I shot each other a skeptical and confused glance, both of us worried that he might say such a thing too lightly--though he certainly never had before. “What?” I asked. “I've done that!” “You're telling me that you have repented of your sins and you are trusting in Christ alone for eternal life?” “Yes,” he answered. "I have.” “Now, Gene,” I pleaded, “I really need to be sure about this because more than anything I want to spend eternity with you.” “Well you will,” he said, “because I have done that.” 

I wish I could tell you how sweet these last three years of his life have been, even in difficult circumstances none of us would ever choose. We saw God's grace at work in his life even as it had a profound effect on us as well. So today, I am not preaching the funeral I dreaded. I am preaching the funeral that I could preach for a Rahab, or a Ruth, or the thief on the cross. It's the story of redemption, of God's love extended to one whom many thought beyond His reach. It's the story of the five o'clock worker who gets the same reward as the one who's labored since dawn. It's the story of grace. It's the story of Jesus.

I recently met with about 80 contractors who will be working on a new building for the church I serve as pastor. I introduced myself and the 200-year history of our church, told them about our mission to glorify God by proclaiming Jesus Christ and serving others, and then I turned it over to our architect. From that point on, I might as well have been in Uzbekistan at a goatherders’ convention because I had no clue what they were saying. 

    The lingo that the architect and the contractors spoke was completely foreign to this seminary professor and pastor. Every now and then someone would use words and concepts that I understood, but soon they would leave me with a sense of isolation, completely out of my element once again, while they shared a camaraderie and enjoyed a fellowship from which I felt impossibly excluded.

    Preaching and worship can leave a new Christian or a visitor overwhelmed by that same perception of being an outsider and not a little unwelcome. Some pastors and churches have attempted to solve this problem by removing any insider lingo or theological terms, but they run the risk of losing the gospel itself since the good news of Jesus relies on concepts of sin, alienation from God, repentance, justification, propitiation, substitution, and sanctification. How can one’s preaching be true to the gospel but also accessible to anyone?

1) Don’t dumb it down, explain it.

    Murky enlightenment, vague clarification, and partial explanation are oxymorons! Preachers often underestimate their congregation’s intelligence and willingness to learn and consequently tend to reduce deep theological truths to something they can say in 140 characters. Twitterworthy and pithy sayings rarely go deep or far enough to elucidate robust biblical truth.  Followers of Jesus are indwelled by the Spirit and have a propensity toward learning spiritual things. Don’t assume their disinterest or inability to appreciate theological truth. Take the time to explain carefully and clearly.

2) Don’t avoid difficult theology, illustrate it.

Nothing puts a handle on theological truth like a narrative. Use vivid biblical, personal, or cultural stories that connect the intellectual content of revealed truth with the emotional experience of an appropriate enlightening illustration. To be sure, illustrating a sermon well is hard work and requires a lot of searching. Preachers may consider a hundred possible illustrations to find that one gem, but the congregation will be grateful for the effort of one who illustrates well. Remember the SHARP acronym: stories, humor, analogies, references, and pictures can serve well to make doctrinal truth memorable.

3) Don’t merely explain it, reword it and repeat it.

Preachers need to develop their vocabularies, not in the sense of using big words, but for the purpose of saying the same truth in multiple ways. The concept of justification, for example, might be defined, then pictured in a story, then reworded and restated in a more earthy way. Within the congregation are different kinds of learners. Preachers who connect well learn to restate, reword, and repeat in diverse ways in order to engage the entire audience.

4) Don’t preach to your church like you would to a group of seminary students.

After three or four years of sitting in classes with other students, listening to preachers in chapel preach to seminary students, and learning from professors who spend most of their time communicating with seminary students, young pastors may naturally expect that what nourishes them will also work with their congregation.  Preaching to the average church requires a slightly different approach, however. The preacher must not only convey truth, but also make it accessible. The congregation is not dumb, by any measure, but they live and think in different categories. A wise preacher puts the cookies on the lowest shelf, finding a way to teach deep biblical truth in such a way that the simplest believer and the educated church member can both feed on the richness of God’s Word.

The Supreme Court may settle disputes of American law, but cannot establish right and wrong. A bitterly divided Court can, by the slimmest possible margin, dictate what is legal but cannot determine what is moral. 

    Same-sex marriage is now the law of the land. The same institution that once justified slavery and defined African-Americans as less than human, that has bestowed personhood on corporations but denied it to unborn babies, that vacillates—and will again—on whether or not capital punishment is acceptable has found a way to read the constitution innovatively and differently than any previous generation of citizens or legal scholars. The majority has found something there that none of its authors intended or even thought about.

The heart of the argument is about hermeneutics, how a document is read and understood. Liberal justices contend that the Constitution changes meaning with the culture, while conservatives insist that the meaning is fixed and that the amendment process should be used as society evolves or modifies its views.

Within Christianity the same debate rages about the Bible and stands at the epicenter of the current impasse about homosexuality and gay marriage. Some of us believe the Bible is God’s Word, a special and perfect revelation of himself, written by humans inspired by the Spirit who wrote what God led them to record. We believe that the proper way to read the Bible is the same way we want our pharmacist to read our doctor’s prescription, discerning the author’s original intent rather than imposing any foreign meaning on the text. 

Furthermore, we believe that the sixty-six books of the Bible together form one book with one grand narrative, the story of God’s redemption. That story of creation, fall, anticipation, the gospel, the church, and Christ’s return to reign is a single story. Though many human activities and practices within that story are shameful and highlight the need for redemption, God’s moral will and standard of holiness revealed in Scripture does not change through time and is not subject to the vicissitudes of culture. At the beginning of that story is the marriage of a perfect man and a perfect woman. At the end of that story is the marriage of a glorified man, the Lord Jesus, and his sanctified bride, his church. 

Other Christians, however, see the Bible as stained by human frailty and riddled with error, requiring more enlightened thinking to discern the good parts from the bad. These Christians are embarrassed by and denounce parts of the same book that they read in weddings and funerals, sermons and Sunday school classes as a model for faith and life. They see no contradiction in quoting Paul’s lyrical description of love in 1 Corinthians 13 while at the same time denouncing his instruction on gender roles in 1 Corinthians 11. They fear no inconsistency quoting Jesus when he says “Judge not” in Matthew 7:1, though simultaneously judging Jesus calling people “pigs” and “dogs” in Matthew 7:6. Scavenging Scripture selectively like a picky eater at a smorgasbord, they consume only what appeals to their taste and what they have already learned to like. 

Ultimately, that approach to Scripture inevitably leads to the same understanding of Jesus. How can one claim that Jesus is Lord and yet insist that Jesus needed to be corrected for his insensitivity when he spoke to the Gentile woman in Matthew 15:21-28?

To be candid, I can accept that many people do not agree with historic Christianity that homosexuality is a sin. I understand when people not guided by a biblical worldview adopt a simple live-and-let-live mentality because they do not think in categories of God’s design and purpose. 

I cannot comprehend, however, how people who claim that the Bible is God’s Word and Jesus is their Lord can either ignore or pervert the clear meaning of Jesus’ endorsement of God’s purpose for marriage. When asked about the lawfulness of divorce, Jesus answered by going back to creation and looking at God’s design. What was God’s intent? Jesus answered the question about divorce by saying much more about marriage than merely its duration. “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?” (Matthew 19:4,5). 

Jesus could have answered the question about divorce by simply explaining that marriage is for a lifetime, but he went beyond that. He defined marriage by the number of people in that relationship as well as the sex of those in that relationship. Some may voice honest disagreement with Jesus’ words, but I cannot respect the kind of intellectual dishonesty that denies the plain and natural reading of his words. When someone says they take the Bible seriously but not literally, I take their words literally but not seriously.

Two thousand years of church history render a virtually unanimous opinion about the definition of marriage. It seems the epitome of arrogance for a Christian to hear Jesus’ words and the church’s verdict from antiquity only to say, “But I know better.” The Bible is not an instrument by which we justify the opinions of Christians, but the revelation of God in which we discover our justification in Christ.

Last year, while far away from home in Manaus, Brazil, I made the mistake of trying to run across the busiest street in that city of 2 million people. While dashing wildly across five lanes of traffic to reach a tiny concrete median and pause before sprinting the opposite five lanes, I recognized I had joined a real-life game of Frogger (to date myself) and that I faced the distinct possibility of being squished.

When I finally made it across, the heart-pounding terror turned into triumphant exhilaration. As I entered the door of my destination and took off my sunglasses, I felt my shirt pocket for my very expensive no-line progressive trifocal prescription glasses so I could see indoors, but to no avail. They were gone. The short-lived elation gave way to the despair of realizing they had jostled out of my pocket and by now had been ground to dust under the weight of a hundred speeding cars.

A Brazilian friend, realizing my plight, offered to get me a pair of glasses that would suffice temporarily, but he only had three lens thicknesses from which to choose. He randomly chose the prescription that corrected my distant vision, so until I got home a week later, I felt handicapped. If someone waved to me from across the room, I could recognize them, but I couldn't recognize people 4 or 5 feet away; and when I preached, I constantly was taking glasses off or putting them on, sometimes alternating between reading glasses, my new stop-gap glasses and none at all. I only could see one distance, but life required more than that.

The congregation who only sees Scripture through one type of lens is missing something, too. Some pastors always look at Scripture with a wide-angle lens. They show their people the big picture of the book they're preaching, or perhaps the grand narrative of redemption history, yet fail to get the nuances, the warp and the woof, the grain of Scripture up close. On the other hand, some pastors are so oriented to a magnifying lens or microscope that their congregations never see the big picture.

Part of pastoral preaching not only is alternating texts between Old and New Testaments, between law and gospel, between different genres, but also switching lenses. While pastors should have a careful strategy to preach the whole counsel of God, that strategy should include different depths and fields of vision.

First, the Bible itself does this. God chose to reveal truth in different doses. Some passages such as Romans 8 are saturated with gospel content and require a closer look, a more deliberate pace. Others such as Joshua 13—21 (the allotment of the land to the tribes) don't require as much time and legitimately can be taken together without doing injustice to the text.

Similarly, congregations need to know the overall argument and application of entire sections or books, as well as the exegetical peculiarities and distinctions of individual verses or small passages. In other words, they need gospel trifocals. Pastors need to plan preaching that sometimes looks from a distance so it catches sight of the whole, other times from mid-range to grasp a smaller section, still other times exposing the text thoroughly and closely to provide an intimate look at an author's intended meaning.

So change the lens. Preach 12 overview sermons of the Minor Prophets that give the gist and application of each with a clear explanation of its place in the story of redemption. Follow that with a lengthy series in an epistle, carefully laying bare the meaning of each verse. Then preach a series of sermons in an extended Old Testament narrative such as the life of David, taking representative chapters of the great king's life to preach the story of redemption and to make your congregants long for the greater King.

If sameness and predictability are enemies of being interesting and engaging, changing the focal length of the lens through which we look at Scripture not only will make preaching more effective, but also more interesting.

            In 34 years of marriage, the most frequent cause of argument has been—and remains—not terrible words I utter, but the tone of voice I use when I converse with my wife. The argument might go something like this:

Me: (entering the house at the end of the day, and noticing that things are not in their place and the house is not as neat as usual) “What have you done today?”

Her: (taking great offense at the implication that she hasn’t done anything when, in fact, she kept the grandkids for four hours, spent a large block of time counseling a church member, and completed a major task in the office that I had asked of her) “I cannot believe when you come in the house that your first words to me would be so judgmental. You’ve got a lot of nerve . . .”

Me: (acting shocked at her response and now completely changing my emphasis) “What? All I said was, ‘What have you done today?’ Is it wrong to ask you what your day has been like?”

            Every married person knows what I did there, repeating the words but recasting their significance by altering emphasis and tenor. Tone conveys meaning, sometimes even more than words. Tone can completely overrule and alter the significance of the words. Tone can open hearts or close minds. As true as that may be in any marriage, it proves more critical in preaching.

            Sometimes, even when I agree with the content of a sermon I hear, I nonetheless find myself mad at the preacher because his tone is belligerent and disagreeable. At other times I’ve heard preachers undercut the inherent power of God’s Word by preaching with a timid and fearful tone, even though the message is firmly based on the authority of Scripture.

            The orality of preaching makes it a more powerful medium than writing. Words on a page lie flat and subject to whatever tone or emphasis the reader wants to assign them, but spoken words stand erect, communicating not only through lexical meaning, but also through pitch, pace, volume, emphasis, and especially tone. The listener immediately and subconsciously interprets verbal, vocal, and visual clues to interpret the meaning that the speaker intends to convey.

            When preaching about a particular sin, for example, the preacher may come across as harsh and judgmental or, with a different tone, as broken-hearted and empathetic.  The same words can result in radically different audience responses based entirely on the manner in which the preacher says them.

            Striking the right tone, like all aspects of preaching, requires persistent vigilance, but a few steps of action can promote a more balanced and helpful approach. First, watch others preach and specifically analyze how they speak as much as what they say. Consciously evaluate their tone as well as their content. Then, when you have developed sensitivity to the tone of others, watch a video of yourself. Video never lies. It will present exactly what you projected. Do you seem timid, or arrogant, or angry? Does your audience feel that you identify with their struggles or that you haughtily sit in judgment of them? Does your tone draw them in or turn them off? Try to be honest with yourself about yourself.

            When you are especially brave, ask friends with preaching or public speaking experience to watch a video of your preaching and appraise your tone. Ask them to be candid and to point out specific parts of the sermon where you did not strike the right tone, where the content of your words and the manner of your delivery were incongruent. Steel yourself against any defensiveness when they share what they see. Their perception matters more than your intent.

            Finally, if you think you are up to the ultimate challenge, if you are so consumed with preaching well that you are willing to suffer and sacrifice self in order to improve your tone, one pitiless but potent training method remains available to you: ask your spouse.