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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.


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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?


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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]


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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?


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