PreacherTalk

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THE STATE OF PREACHING 2022

Posted on Jan 11, 2023 in BLOG |

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.

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

Posted on Jun 20, 2022 in BLOG |

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?

EXPOSED BY COVID

Posted on Apr 29, 2022 in BLOG |

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.

Subtraction: The Key to Powerful Preaching

Posted on Mar 17, 2022 in BLOG |

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.

COVID AND CONFLICTING CONVICTIONS

Posted on Jan 11, 2022 in BLOG |

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.