COVID’S IMPACT ON PASTORS AND CHURCHES

How did COVID-19 affect the church in the United States? How did pastors cope with the pandemic and its aftermath? Most of us understand the impact on a micro level – our local church or association of churches – but we don’t understand the impact on a macro level – the church in the United States.

Christianity Today published a year-long study of 1,164 pastors around the United States in 2023. The authors also utilized 17 focus groups with participants from 27 states. Finally, they conducted 9 case studies in 9 different cities to arrive at their results. The results have been published in an article entitled “The Impact of COVID-19 on the American Church.” If you want to read the complete report, you can access it here. https://pages.churchsalary.com/covidstudy

After reading the report, I have six summary observations about the results. Read more…



WHATEVER HAPPENED TO EXHORTATION?

I read, listen to, and watch many sermons. Expository sermons commonly include much application but little exhortation, and there is a difference. The typical evangelical sermon today follows a predictable pattern.

Read and explain the text.
Draw applications to our lives today.
End with Jesus and what He has done for us.

Whatever happened to exhortation? Read more…



THE DANGER OF PROPAGANDA PREACHING

A new communication tool emerges that can spread information to large groups of people more rapidly than ever before in history.  People use this communication tool for good and bad – to spread truth and promote falsehood. It sounds like social media today, doesn’t it? Over 500 years ago, the church discovered the power of popular pamphlets. Gutenberg invented the printing press around 1436 to print books, but in the 1500s, reformers like Martin Luther discovered the power of pamphlets to spread their message directly to the people, bypassing the control of the church. Pamphlets could be printed in two days and sold for next to nothing on the streets. Pamphlets became the Twitter (X) of the 1500s![1]

If the eight-page pamphlet was the Twitter of the day, wood carvings were the Facebook of the 1500s. Woodcuts were engraved pamphlets used to spread ideas in a visual format. The Roman Catholic Church used woodcuts to fight back against the Reformation in what became known as the “propaganda wars.” Hans Brosamer produced woodcuts picturing Martin Luther as the seven-headed dragon of the Apocalypse. The reformers responded. Lucas Cranach created woodcuts that caricatured the Pope as the Antichrist standing over an altar of money with Satan as the driving force.[2]

Read more…



IS THE BIG IDEA DEAD?

“Do we really have to have one main idea for a sermon?” A pastor voiced his thought to me a few years ago. “It seems to me there are many ideas in the Scripture, and we should cover all of them.” I have had two conversations recently about the same subject. One pastor specifically asked about Abraham Kuruvilla’s argument against the big idea.
 
Is the big idea dead?

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IS EXPOSITORY PREACHING A STYLE OF PREACHING?

I frequently hear or read people who reject expository preaching because it’s not their style. Articles and even textbooks on homiletics sometimes refer to the different preaching styles as topical, textual, and expository. “If you want to preach expository sermons, that’s your style, but it’s not my style,” some pastors say. Others go further and argue that the style of expository preaching will not work in today’s world.

Is expository preaching a style of preaching? Read more…



THE STATE OF PREACHING 2022

What is the state of preaching in the evangelical church in 2022?

Are we producing disciples of Jesus Christ?

The answers to those questions are both instructive and discouraging. Preaching today largely avoids doctrine and emphasizes felt needs and life apps. Doctrine divides, so we don’t want to teach doctrine. Felt needs and life apps are winning topics. People want to hear these ideas. Much preaching in the evangelical church today is about attracting people to church instead of teaching disciples to know the faith. We are seeing the results in our evangelical churches, as the 2022 State of Theology survey demonstrates. Read more…



CLICKBAIT OR FREEWAY SERMONS: WHAT KIND OF PREACHER ARE YOU?

CLICKBAIT OR FREEWAY SERMONS: WHAT KIND OF PREACHER ARE YOU?

Preachers often search the Bible to find some text that inspires them – that “will preach!” We want sermons with “pizzaz!” The result is that much preaching is driven by the audience more than the text. We are afraid we will bore people by talking about God and the Bible instead of their questions and needs. We are afraid that God-centered preaching will be old-fashioned and archaic. Text-driven preaching is becoming a dinosaur in the evangelical world.

What kind of preacher are you? Read more…



EXPOSED BY COVID

EXPOSED BY COVID

“We were exposed to COVID, but COVID exposed us,” one Christian leader told me recently. COVID certainly exposed the increasing politicization of the church and the elevation of our rights over the cross. Still, even more significantly, COVID exposed our flawed ecclesiology, as he pointed out. The fissures of a bad ecclesiology were already cutting deep into the western church. COVID merely exposed them.

A Pew Research Center study published on March 22, 2022, revealed that large numbers of people are not coming back to in-person church attendance despite the decline of COVID. Of those who attended in-person church services once or twice a month before the pandemic, only 67% have returned to church, and 36% of those combine in-person and online attendance each month. One in five people (21%) who had attended regularly before the pandemic now appear to substitute virtual church for in-person church. You can read the full study here. You can read James Emery White’s analysis of the study here. White predicts:

They are not coming back.

Read more…



Subtraction: The Key to Powerful Preaching

Subtraction: The Key to Powerful Preaching
 
Why is it harder to preach an effective 15-minute sermon than a 45-minute sermon? Answer: every word and every sentence count much more in 15 minutes than in 45 minutes. There are no wasted minutes. The truth is that many of our 45-minute sermons have distracting, unnecessary and extraneous information in them. We waste minutes because we have minutes to waste.

I watched a YouTube video on landscape photography this past week to learn some tips on composition. Andy Mumford is a professional landscape photographer, and he made a statement in the middle of the video that was so clear and powerful I wrote it down and posted it on my desk. Read more…



COVID AND CONFLICTING CONVICTIONS

A Christian brother launched a volley of convictions about masks and vaccinations at me in our telephone conversation. He did so without knowing my convictions, and he did not care to find out. He assumed that his convictions were right, so he had the right to express them. Last year, a local church advertised that they opposed the government mask mandate “by Christian conviction” as if those on the other side have no convictions. The reality is that many Christians hold opposite convictions about vaccinations and mask-wearing, leading to a divided church in a partisan world. Read more…



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