EDITORIAL: Six things to know about preaching

Marv Knox

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Our pastor took a trip earlier this month, and he asked me to preach in his absence. While I enjoy preaching just about anywhere, my favorite place to preach is our own church, First Baptist in Lewisville. These are my friends and extended “family.” I know the joys and sorrows, hopes and dreams, and opportunities and challenges of our church far better than I know the dynamics of any other congregation. The times when I preach at my home church are the times when I come closest to feeling like a pastor, because that’s when I look out into the faces of people who have walked life’s journey with our family for nearly 15 years. They have shared our pain and gladness, and we have shared theirs.

Editor Marv Knox

As I prepared for this latest sermon, I realized I’m sort of a hybrid church member. Most Sundays, I fill the role of a regular church member—a deacon and Sunday school teacher and hearer of sermons. But I also preach quite a bit, and I’ve earned a seminary degree. My father and brother are pastors, and many of my closest friends are pastors, and so I understand their lives and tasks about as well as any non-pastor, except pastors’ wives.

As I pondered this dichotomy, I thought about what I wish laity knew about pastors and what I wish pastors knew about laity—particularly when it comes to preaching.

Laypeople should know:

Preaching is much harder than you think. The Bible is God’s word, the greatest book ever written. It’s filled with powerful poetry and prose, stunning stories and tremendous teaching. It’s also thousands of years old. The time, effort and intellect required to understand the ancient text is enormous. And the challenge of taking what it meant then and applying it to life today is even more ominous.

Preparing to preach is harder than you think. A pastor’s life is filled with infinite distractions—most of them important things we all want our pastor to do—that can postpone, if not outright prevent, thorough sermon preparation. A pastor’s week can be dominated by events and factors that were unforeseen when the final “Amen” was said last Sunday. And many of those distractions can’t be explained away, because the pastor maintains confidences.

Telling people what they don’t want to hear can be downright scary. Sometimes—no, often—the enemy of a great sermon is the pastor’s knowledge that folks don’t want to see the places where the Bible shines light in our lives. So, pastors who aren’t blessed with innate courage and pastors who aren’t blessed with strong laypeople who defend their right to preach can be tempted to soft-sell their sermons, which misses the point.

Pastors should know:

Preaching is much harder than you think. If you excel at exegeting Scripture but you don’t apply it to our lives, you haven’t really preached. And if you talk knowingly about life today but don’t ground your guidance in the Bible, you haven’t really preached. A great sermon requires both. You must exegete both the Bible and society. And that requires time, courage, wisdom, insight and empathy.

Give it to us straight. We can take it. Sure, some folks want sugar-coated sermons, little homilies that make them feel better. But most laypeople really want to know what God has to do with their lives. They thirst to know what the Bible says that helps them with their relationships, teaches them how to make better decisions, makes them more like God created them to be. Even when it hurts, if it’s delivered in love, we are grateful to hear it.

You reach us best when you identify with us. Of course, some irrational church members expect you and your family to be perfect. But we know you’re not, and we don’t expect you to be. Your sermons convey healing truth when you are transparent and vulnerable, so that they reflect your own honest struggle to be an authentic-yet-flawed human being and an honest-to-God follower of Jesus—in the real world.

Marv Knox is editor of the Baptist Standard. Visit his FaithWorks Blog.

 


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