6 Preaching & Teaching Tips for Easter
Some good advice from mark Driscoll:
For most churches, Easter is the biggest Sunday of the year. It is an occasion to celebrate the resurrection victory of Jesus Christ over Satan, sin, death, hell, and the wrath of God, while also seeing lost sheep return home and lost people become Christians. For some preachers, though, it is a difficult time because they struggle with the weight and pressure of preaching an Easter sermon in fresh ways year after year. Having now preached on every Easter at Mars Hill Church since 1996, I relate, and I would like to offer the following six preaching tips for Easter in hopes of serving those who serve others by preaching and teaching the gospel of Jesus Christ.
1. Keep your Easter message short.
It is very difficult to get children’s workers on Easter because so many of your key people want to bring family, friends, and coworkers to church and then go enjoy brunch or some special time together. So, it is wise to do the Easter service “family style” with no childcare. This gives your kids’ workers a day off, allows you to turn services around more quickly (as Easter requires multiple services for many churches), and also allows the service to be uniquely fun. For little kids, perhaps some crayons and coloring sheets as gifts would be helpful. Let the parents know in advance that the service will be short, that some noise from the kids is welcome—indeed, the sound of children is a good sign of God’s grace and the church’s future—and that there will be lots of singing and celebration that the kids will enjoy. So, keep your Easter sermon short.
2. Keep your Easter message simple.
Easter is not a time to get fancy. The goal of the Easter sermon is not to impress your people with your oratory skills, your Greek syntax expertise, or your clever cultural insight. Easter is a time to boldly, loudly, passionately, gladly, and publicly proclaim the resurrection of Jesus Christ! So, keep your Easter sermon simple. Hearing the good news of Jesus is something your people will delight in if the Holy Spirit resides in them, so make it plain. They know you will tell them Jesus is alive, they are coming to hear it, and it sounds good every time, much like a wife whose husband often tells her he loves her and is devoted to her—she never tires of hearing it and rejoices every time.
3. Keep your Easter message invitational.
Make sure to clearly, winsomely, persuasively, and passionately invite people to repent of sin and trust in Jesus as God, Lord, and Savior during your sermon. Do not assume that everyone in attendance is a Christian, or assume that they will figure out salvation by themselves. Be an agent of the Holy Spirit who instructs people about the finished work of Jesus and what it means to repent of sin and trust in him for new life. Be bold, take a risk, and do the work of an evangelist like Paul commands.
4. Keep your Easter message special.
For believers during the Old Covenant era, Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement) was referred to simply as “the Day.” For Christians, the chain of events from Jesus’ crucifixion on Good Friday to his resurrection on Easter Sunday is the fulfillment of Yom Kippur. This makes Easter “the Day.” To celebrate the Day, the entire Easter service should be special. Some examples of special aspects to incorporate are a greatly decorated stage, fantastic joyful songs to sing, and a choir. Also, everyone on stage should be dressed up for the special occasion (for casual churches like Mars Hill, this is particularly noteworthy, and so I always wear a full suit, including a tie, on Easter and request that all our elders-pastors do the same).
In addition, you should baptize people to show the personal application of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ in our place for our sins. At Mars Hill, we baptize more people on Easter than any other time of the year. Some people sign up to be baptized in advance and come ready to share their salvation story in a few minutes from the stage during the service. Others are invited to repent of sin, trust in Jesus, and be baptized on the spot, and it is not uncommon to see men in suits and women in Easter dresses being baptized in response to the power of the gospel. We do baptisms after the sermon while taking communion and singing loudly together. We even like to have the bapto-cam positioned to show people going in and out of the water on the screens for everyone to see. On the Day, people are singing, crying, laughing, and cheering after the sermon. The celebration of changed lives erupts into something of a sanctified resurrection party. I would encourage every pastor to do something similar.
5. Keep your Easter message personal.
Before we preach or teach, those entrusted with this high honor need to first have a deep encounter with God the Holy Spirit to ignite in us an ever-deepening thankfulness and passion for the living Jesus. In the week before you preach, you will be busy with all the details of services for Good Friday and Easter Sunday, plus the family plans you must juggle with your ministry responsibilities. So, it is imperative that you intentionally set aside some sacred silence and solitude time to get with Jesus and remember his death, burial, and resurrection in place of sin for salvation. During that time it is good to read your Bible, repent of your sin, pray, invite the Holy Spirit to meet with you, read a good Christian book on the gospel, sing, and journal what God reveals to you. It is good to remind yourself of who you would be and what your life would be like had Jesus not saved you. It would also be beneficial to remind yourself of the evidences of God’s grace you have witnessed in your own life, family, and ministry because of Jesus’ death and resurrection.
Personally, I like to think of those people who have shed tears over sin they have committed and sins that have been committed against them and picture Jesus wiping every tear from their eye on the other side of resurrection as Scripture promises. I like to think of those people I know who are disabled one day being free to run and leap for joy on the other side of the resurrection. And I remember the deceased whom I love and I look forward to seeing them again on the day when we rise together to walk into the kingdom that never ends.
6. Keep your Easter message biblical.
Most importantly, your Easter sermon must be biblical because the Word of God about the Son of God is the means by which the power of God is unleashed to transform lives by the Spirit of God. The following list of Old and New Testament Scriptures regarding resurrection is by no means exhaustive, but is offered in hope of helping preachers and teachers find a section of Scripture in which to root their Easter sermon:
•Genesis 22:13 and Hebrews 11:19 show how the story of Isaac is a type of the resurrection.
•2 Samuel 7:7–16 contains the Davidic Covenant, which promises that Jesus will rule over an everlasting kingdom, and Romans 1:3–4 shows the fulfillment as God the Father anointed God the Son as Davidic king at his resurrection.
•Psalm 16:10 promises that Jesus would not be abandoned in the grave.
•Isaiah 26:19 promises that the dead will rise.
•Isaiah 52:13–53:12 is the entire prophetic promise of Jesus’ life, death, burial, and resurrection, with the resurrection emphasized in 53:10–12.
•Ezekiel 37:1–10 gives an illustration of the resurrection of the dead.
•Daniel 12:2 is one of the clearest Old Testament Scriptures on the bodily resurrection of believers and unbelievers.
•Hosea 13:14 speaks of resurrection victory over death and is quoted by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15.
•Jonah 1:17 and 2:10 and Matthew 12:40 speak of Jonah’s three days in the fish as a type of Jesus’ resurrection after three days in the grave.
•Matthew 9:18–26 records Jesus resuscitating a young girl from death (unlike resurrection, in which the risen never dies again, resuscitation is followed by a second physical death). This passage could be used to show how one day Jesus will also cause believers to rise from death, despite mockery from the world as Jesus experienced at that event.
•Matthew 11:1–6 records that, as evidence of his divinity for John the Baptizer, Jesus appealed to the fact that he could raise the dead.
•Matthew 12:38–40; Mark 8:31; 9:31; 10:33–34; and John 2:18–22 all reveal Jesus prophesying his resurrection in advance.
•Matthew 22:23; Luke 20:27; and Acts 23:8 all report that the Sadducees denied the resurrection in arguments with Jesus.
•Matthew 28:9 and John 20:17, 20–28 all report that Jesus rose physically from death, not just spiritually.
•Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John all close with large sections reporting the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ from death, and any of them, or portions from them, could make a good Easter sermon.
•Luke 14:12–14 is a parable Jesus told about the repayment that will come to the just at the resurrection.
•John 5:19–29 records Jesus teaching that we will stand before him for final judgment and rise for eternal life or eternal death.
•John 11:1–44 records the death of Lazarus and Jesus resuscitating him from death. Jesus also declares himself to be the resurrection and the life who can also raise us from death.
•Twelve of the twenty-eight chapters in the book of Acts report that the continual refrain of the preaching in the early church was that Jesus had risen from death, and all or some of these sermon snippets could make a good Easter sermon.
•Acts 9 reports the dramatic conversion of Saul—who had overseen the murder of the early church deacon Stephen—when he was confronted with the risen Jesus.
•Acts 17:32; 23:6; and 24:11–15 report how belief in the resurrection can result in mockery and persecution.
•Romans 4:25 connects Jesus’ resurrection and our justification.
•Romans 6:5 says that we are united with Jesus by his resurrection.
•Romans 8:1–11 speaks of the new power we have, through the Holy Spirit, to say no to sin and yes to God because of Jesus’ resurrection.
•Romans 8:11 and 2 Corinthians 5:15 say that believers have the same power as Jesus did for his resurrection through God the Holy Spirit.
•Romans 10:5–13 speaks of how to be saved through Jesus’ resurrection.
•Romans 14:8–12 describes how Jesus is Lord of the dead and the living because he was dead and is now alive.
•1 Corinthians 15 is arguably the most comprehensive treatment of resurrection in all of Scripture. While one sermon on the entire chapter would likely be impossible, there are innumerable options that could be emphasized in an Easter sermon.
•2 Corinthians 5:1–10 teaches about the state between death and resurrection as well as the kind of body we will have after resurrection.
•In Galatians 1:1–2, Paul declares that the resurrected Jesus Christ gave Paul his apostolic authority.
•Ephesians 2:1–10 explains how we are dead in sin but made alive in Christ through his resurrection.
•In Philippians 3:1–11, Paul teaches that the resurrection is infinitely better than religion.
•Colossians 1:15–20 speaks of the preeminence of the risen Jesus over every created thing.
•Colossians 2:6–15 and 3:1 say that we have been raised with Christ.
•1 Thessalonians 1:2–10 encourages Christians to wait patiently for the second coming of the risen Jesus.
•1 Thessalonians 4:16 teaches us that at the second coming of Jesus Christ, the dead in Christ will rise like him to be with him.
•2 Timothy 2:1–13 reveals Paul using the resurrection of Jesus Christ as motivation for a life of faithful ministry in the midst of suffering and trial.
•2 Timothy 2:17–18 actually names false teachers who denied the resurrection, and Paul declares them to be heretics for doing so.
•Hebrews 6:1–2 lists the doctrine of the resurrection among the most elemental and essential of Christian truths to learn.
•Hebrews 13:20–21 reminds us that the same God who raised Jesus from death is faithful to keep his promises to his people as well.
•1 Peter 1:3–9 speaks of the inheritance that Jesus has purchased for us through his resurrection and how our suffering in this life reminds us of him until we rise in his kingdom.
•1 Peter 3:21–22 and Romans 6:5 explain how the Christian act of baptism shows us the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, which cleanses us from sin.
•1 John 3:2 says that a Christian’s resurrection body will be like Jesus’ risen body.
•Revelation 1:17–18 reveals Jesus as the Alpha and Omega who was dead and is now alive.
Tuesday, 30 March 2010
Tuesday, 2 March 2010
5 Big Issues facing the church
I recently came across this - it was posted on the Resurgance, from Tim Keller's blog. It's quite interesting. What do we as the church need to do in order to face the big issues that we will be facing?
1. The opportunity for extensive culture-making in the U.S.
In an interview, sociologist Peter Berger observed that in the U.S. evangelicals are shifting from being largely a blue-collar constituency to becoming a college educated population.
His question is, will Christians going into the arts, business, government, the media, and film
•assimilate to the existing baseline cultural narratives so they become in their views and values the same as other secular professionals and elites?
•seal off and privatize their faith from their work so that, effectively, they do not do their work in any distinctive way?
•or will they do enough new Christian 'culture-making' in their fields to change things?
2. The rise of Islam
How do Christians relate to Muslims when we live side by side in the same society? The record in places like Africa and the Middle East is not encouraging! This is more of an issue for the Western church in Europe than in the U.S., but it is going to be a growing concern in America as well.
How can Christians be at the very same time a) good neighbors, seeking their good whether they convert or not, and still b) attractively and effectively invite Muslims to consider the gospel?
3. The new non-Western Global Christianity
The demographic center of Christian gravity has already shifted from the West to Asia, Latin America, and Africa. The rising urban churches of China may be particularly influential in the future. But the West still has the educational institutions, the money, and a great deal of power.
What should the relationship of the older Western churches be to the new non-Western church? How can we use our assets to serve them in ways that are not paternalistic? How can we learn from them in more than perfunctory ways?
4. The growing cultural remoteness of the gospel
The basic concepts of the gospel—sin, guilt and accountability before God, the sacrifice of the cross, human nature, afterlife—are becoming culturally strange in the West for the first time in 1500 years. As Lesslie Newbigin has written, it is time now to 'think like a missionary'—to formulate ways of communicating the gospel that both confront and engage our increasingly non-Christian Western culture.
How do we make the gospel culturally accessible without compromising it? How can we communicate it and live it in a way that is comprehensible to people who lack the basic 'mental furniture' to even understand the essential truths of the Bible?
5. The end of prosperity?
With the economic meltdown, the question is, will housing values, endowments, profits, salaries, and investments go back to growing at the same rates as they have for the last twenty-five years, or will growth be relatively flat for many years to come? If so, how does the Western church, which has become habituated to giving out of fast-increasing assets, adjust in the way it carries out ministry? For example, American ministry is now highly professionalized—church staffs are far larger than they were two generations ago, when a church of 1,000 was only expected to have, perhaps, two pastors and a couple of other part-time staff. Today such a church would have probably eight to ten full-time staff members.
Also, how should the stewardship message adjust? If discretionary assets are one-half of what they were, more risky, sacrificial giving will be necessary to do even less ministry than we have been doing.
On top of this, if we experience even one significant act of nuclear or bio-terrorism in the U.S. or Europe, we may have to throw out all the basic assumptions about social and economic progress we have been working off for the last 65 years. In the first half of the 20th century, we had two World Wars and a Depression. Is the church ready for that? How could it be? What does that mean?
Copyright © 2010 by Tim Keller.
1. The opportunity for extensive culture-making in the U.S.
In an interview, sociologist Peter Berger observed that in the U.S. evangelicals are shifting from being largely a blue-collar constituency to becoming a college educated population.
His question is, will Christians going into the arts, business, government, the media, and film
•assimilate to the existing baseline cultural narratives so they become in their views and values the same as other secular professionals and elites?
•seal off and privatize their faith from their work so that, effectively, they do not do their work in any distinctive way?
•or will they do enough new Christian 'culture-making' in their fields to change things?
2. The rise of Islam
How do Christians relate to Muslims when we live side by side in the same society? The record in places like Africa and the Middle East is not encouraging! This is more of an issue for the Western church in Europe than in the U.S., but it is going to be a growing concern in America as well.
How can Christians be at the very same time a) good neighbors, seeking their good whether they convert or not, and still b) attractively and effectively invite Muslims to consider the gospel?
3. The new non-Western Global Christianity
The demographic center of Christian gravity has already shifted from the West to Asia, Latin America, and Africa. The rising urban churches of China may be particularly influential in the future. But the West still has the educational institutions, the money, and a great deal of power.
What should the relationship of the older Western churches be to the new non-Western church? How can we use our assets to serve them in ways that are not paternalistic? How can we learn from them in more than perfunctory ways?
4. The growing cultural remoteness of the gospel
The basic concepts of the gospel—sin, guilt and accountability before God, the sacrifice of the cross, human nature, afterlife—are becoming culturally strange in the West for the first time in 1500 years. As Lesslie Newbigin has written, it is time now to 'think like a missionary'—to formulate ways of communicating the gospel that both confront and engage our increasingly non-Christian Western culture.
How do we make the gospel culturally accessible without compromising it? How can we communicate it and live it in a way that is comprehensible to people who lack the basic 'mental furniture' to even understand the essential truths of the Bible?
5. The end of prosperity?
With the economic meltdown, the question is, will housing values, endowments, profits, salaries, and investments go back to growing at the same rates as they have for the last twenty-five years, or will growth be relatively flat for many years to come? If so, how does the Western church, which has become habituated to giving out of fast-increasing assets, adjust in the way it carries out ministry? For example, American ministry is now highly professionalized—church staffs are far larger than they were two generations ago, when a church of 1,000 was only expected to have, perhaps, two pastors and a couple of other part-time staff. Today such a church would have probably eight to ten full-time staff members.
Also, how should the stewardship message adjust? If discretionary assets are one-half of what they were, more risky, sacrificial giving will be necessary to do even less ministry than we have been doing.
On top of this, if we experience even one significant act of nuclear or bio-terrorism in the U.S. or Europe, we may have to throw out all the basic assumptions about social and economic progress we have been working off for the last 65 years. In the first half of the 20th century, we had two World Wars and a Depression. Is the church ready for that? How could it be? What does that mean?
Copyright © 2010 by Tim Keller.
Thursday, 11 February 2010
Soup Week
Soup Week
So this week I'm trying to loose weight... and I'm having a lot of soup for lunch... well, not a lot - just having it every day.
I bought enough for 4 days, but forgot to bring some today. Thankfully Jamie had some spare... ham and pea.... this is a picture of it. NOw is it just me, or does that look unusually solid for soup?
I do feel a lot less bloated with soup for lunch every day. In fact it does feel like it's making a difference... but, my goodness - it's depressing. I'm craving solid food.
Wonder how long I can keep this up. I currently weight 12 and a half stone... which sounds light until you see that I'm only 5ft 5. I think 11 is a good target... will the soup get me there?
Wednesday, 10 February 2010
Masquerade Ball
Masquerade Balls.... strange things. You go to so much effort with your masks, ours here were home made and took a fair while to do. Then you wear a nice suit or dress... then feel very odd when you put a mask on.
Then you get to the party and realsie that if you actually wear the mask you will fall over a lot and can't really eat. So you have to take it off... and then where can you put it? I think mine ended up back in the car.
Fun... but curious.
Monday, 28 September 2009
Me at the Whitehouse
I took a little visit to the Whitehouse before catching the plane. There was a fair bit of hustle and bustle going on - it seems someone was making a movie or a TV programme there.
Not sure what it was, although I'd been standing around looking dopey before I realised I was in the back of shot. I then saw a sign saying that by standing there I was giving up my right to not have my image used. It wasn't made awfully clear I thought, but that seemed to be all the notice that they needed to give. Interesting...
Security was a big higher because of all this - those snipers on the roof looked really prominent. It's strange really - standing around taking pictures of yourself suddenly makes you wonder if you are acting suspiciously when you are in the presence of snipers....
Friday, 31 July 2009
Do we get it all a bit backwards?
I think most of us do church in around the same sort of format. Our styles or music and preaching and interaction may all be very different, but generally we use a similar format, with perhaps some variations.
But I’ve been wondering a bit recently, are our meetings… well a bit backwards? Is the order slightly wrong?
Let me elaborate. Out meetings usually follow this order (or something similar) Welcome and prayer, Praise songs, Notices, Worship songs, Breaking of bread, Worship songs, Word, Final prayer and final song. Give or take a bit that’s a pretty fair run down of how most churches have their meetings.
Now for me, there are some things in this that perhaps are not the best that we could do. First of all is the word. Everything flows out of the word of God. It’s the first thing mention in the list in Acts 2 when the fellowship of the believers is “Devoted themselves to the teaching of the apostles”. Everything comes out of the teaching of the word – worship after all is a response to His glory and goodness.
The trouble is we structure the meetings with “the word” as the main event. It’s something that the rest of the meeting leads up to. I think worship suffers as a result of this: I‘m sure everyone has experienced one of these; People arriving 20mins later during the worship “but it’s ok as they are here before the message starts”, An amazing time of worship cut short because the preacher needs to get up, aimless worship that really doesn’t connect with the word that’s going to be brought, interruptions from the notices that totally ruin the flow of the worship. I could go on.
Can I suggest that the reason that worship sometimes seemed rushed, or just an opening to the meeting or short changed in some way is that the best place for worship in a meeting is NOT before the word?
Worship after all is a response to Him. How much more meaningful worship is when we’ve got something to respond to. Whatever it is that the word brings, a call to repentance, an encouragement, a challenge – worship feeds of these things and a good worship leader can run off the back of a message and make the worship relevant to its context.
We’ve tried this a few times before, keeping the main body of worship until after the word and it really ignites. Could it be that the reason that we have worship before the word is because we always have done?
I’ve been encouraged a lot recently by this question – if you could do everything again from scratch, would you do it the same? And of course if the answer is no, why not change it NOW?
How about breaking bread? This fits into the time of worship, so in our church it takes place before the word. But surely communion is a time when we examine ourselves. Where we deal with issues. But yet our issues have not really been challenged yet in perhaps the way they will be later in a meeting during a word. Surely communion is something that should be done after the word, after a response and a time of repentance. Again, if the worship took place at this time then the two would still fit together.
No longer would the time of worship feel short changed by the Word, but instead it can thrive off the back of it. You don’t have people checking their watches if the speaker goes a few minutes over he should, because this no longer signifies the end of a meeting – but instead it’s the start of the worship. It’s amazing how little people look at their watches during a great time of worship.
I’m not suggesting for one second that this is the way we have to do it. However I am wondering if perhaps having the main body of worship after the word is beneficial to both elements. Do we only have the structure we have out of habit, or because the people may have to adjust to something different? Just a thought….
Friday, 19 June 2009
Application
Preaching can sometimes seem like a futile exercise. You can pour your heart and soul into a message that you believe is from God, deliver it with all the passion you can matter – people can really enjoy it… but then a week later nothing has changed. It’s either been forgotten or put to one side the second the meeting ended.
Now I’m not saying that it’s always like this, there are results that are seen. But considering most Christians are at church at least once a week – that amount of change that we see in people’s lives from that is proportionately low.
Why is this? People can listen to a message and have every intention of doing something about it, but then go away and perhaps the desire fades a little, other concerns creep in. And perhaps there is difficulty sometimes in actually following through.
The trouble is application. You can hear the greatest sermons ever, but if it’s not applied to your life then it makes no difference. We don’t just listen to messages for the sake of it, we do it so we can grow, so we can become more like Christ. We need to take what we hear and do something with it or it’s worthless to us.
And where it falls down most of the time is in application. We preach, we teach but once people leave the meeting we don’t really have a system of follow through. This to many means the message drifts away or perhaps they have trouble understanding how to apply it… this is especially easy to do when it’s something in your life you are not really keen to change.
What can the church do here? Cleary contact with a message needs to happen more than just the once on a Sunday – there needs to be a follow up. A chance to explore that which was brought, look at ways to apply it to our lives and re-enforce the main points. A chance to interact and find ways to take things further.
Clearly online has to be seen to be a great way to do this, as the online culture is becoming more and more important. Perhaps as a forum or a blog with feedback… there’s certainly potential in this. It allows interaction and a certain degree of anonymity. However this was something that was tried at our church, albeit in a VERY low key way, but I’m not sure one person looked at the “Sermon Blog”. I ended up removing it from the site after a short amount of time. That’s not to say this idea has no potential, I think it would change on a church to church basis, but I need to accept for now that my church has not yet embraced the online world as individuals, so the effectiveness of this is currently limited to me, however that’s not to say it can be a very effective was of allowing application in other, more tech friendly churches.
Another option is through small groups. There is a real potential here, certainly in my church. We run some small groups labelled “action teams”. One of the requirements of their weekly meetings is that it includes a time of teaching. This has been perhaps a little bit of a struggle for some of the leaders to keep up.
Perhaps a solution to this is to use these groups to help with the process of applying what has previously been taught. Now of course people can’t be forced to apply it, but they can certainly be helped as much as possible to apply it. A message with no application in reality has very little long term worth. A sermon that just tickles the ears but illicits no change is, frankly, pointless. I know that sounds a little harsh, but it’s true. The whole point in a sermon is to build people up – bring them closer to becoming Christ-like. Application of principles and ideas is vital to the growth of a Christian.
Now this of course requires addition work on the preacher – a follow up sheet with exploration of how to apply the message would be needed. Perhaps a few helpful hints or discussion topics.
But this has to be worth while, nobody can really be happy with a message that brings no chance – so anything that can help the application of it must be considered profitable.
It would also mean that every message brought on a Sunday has to have some form of practicality about it, but again this is a good thing – we should always be thinking about what change we’d like o see come from a sermon, otherwise why are we even preaching it?
Now I’m not saying that it’s always like this, there are results that are seen. But considering most Christians are at church at least once a week – that amount of change that we see in people’s lives from that is proportionately low.
Why is this? People can listen to a message and have every intention of doing something about it, but then go away and perhaps the desire fades a little, other concerns creep in. And perhaps there is difficulty sometimes in actually following through.
The trouble is application. You can hear the greatest sermons ever, but if it’s not applied to your life then it makes no difference. We don’t just listen to messages for the sake of it, we do it so we can grow, so we can become more like Christ. We need to take what we hear and do something with it or it’s worthless to us.
And where it falls down most of the time is in application. We preach, we teach but once people leave the meeting we don’t really have a system of follow through. This to many means the message drifts away or perhaps they have trouble understanding how to apply it… this is especially easy to do when it’s something in your life you are not really keen to change.
What can the church do here? Cleary contact with a message needs to happen more than just the once on a Sunday – there needs to be a follow up. A chance to explore that which was brought, look at ways to apply it to our lives and re-enforce the main points. A chance to interact and find ways to take things further.
Clearly online has to be seen to be a great way to do this, as the online culture is becoming more and more important. Perhaps as a forum or a blog with feedback… there’s certainly potential in this. It allows interaction and a certain degree of anonymity. However this was something that was tried at our church, albeit in a VERY low key way, but I’m not sure one person looked at the “Sermon Blog”. I ended up removing it from the site after a short amount of time. That’s not to say this idea has no potential, I think it would change on a church to church basis, but I need to accept for now that my church has not yet embraced the online world as individuals, so the effectiveness of this is currently limited to me, however that’s not to say it can be a very effective was of allowing application in other, more tech friendly churches.
Another option is through small groups. There is a real potential here, certainly in my church. We run some small groups labelled “action teams”. One of the requirements of their weekly meetings is that it includes a time of teaching. This has been perhaps a little bit of a struggle for some of the leaders to keep up.
Perhaps a solution to this is to use these groups to help with the process of applying what has previously been taught. Now of course people can’t be forced to apply it, but they can certainly be helped as much as possible to apply it. A message with no application in reality has very little long term worth. A sermon that just tickles the ears but illicits no change is, frankly, pointless. I know that sounds a little harsh, but it’s true. The whole point in a sermon is to build people up – bring them closer to becoming Christ-like. Application of principles and ideas is vital to the growth of a Christian.
Now this of course requires addition work on the preacher – a follow up sheet with exploration of how to apply the message would be needed. Perhaps a few helpful hints or discussion topics.
But this has to be worth while, nobody can really be happy with a message that brings no chance – so anything that can help the application of it must be considered profitable.
It would also mean that every message brought on a Sunday has to have some form of practicality about it, but again this is a good thing – we should always be thinking about what change we’d like o see come from a sermon, otherwise why are we even preaching it?
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