Preaching to Those Walking Away

N. Graham Standish

• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781506471716
• eBook ISBN: 9781506471723
• Topic: Teologia e religione
• Subtopic: Ministro del culto cristiano

Preaching to Those Walking Away will help pastors adapt to a world of YouTube, TED Talks, and video marketing in which traditional preaching styles no longer feel authoritative, engaging, or compelling.

N. Graham Standish has long been passionate about reaching out to those who call themselves "spiritual but not religious." Determined to help the church connect with them, he shares methods he has tested, refined, and proven effective--approaches to preaching typically not taught in seminaries.

Rather than grounding preaching in traditional homiletical theories and practices, Standish integrates insights from postmodernism, generational theory, multiple-intelligences theory, marketing, communications theory, brain/neurological research, counseling, spiritual formation, TED Talk presentations, motivational theory, and the history of communication styles. Standish developed his ideas about preaching during more than two decades as senior pastor of a healthy, growing congregation that consistently attracted people who had walked away from Christianity and church.

More than half a century ago, Canadian communications theorist Marshall McLuhan said, "The medium is the message." But mainline Christianity has been slow to adapt its message to new mediums. The population at large will not adapt to traditional Christian ways of preaching, however, so Standish helps pastors understand the thinking of those walking away and shows preachers how to adapt their thinking about their craft, instead of demanding that those walking away adapt to ours.

Chapter 1

The Problem of Present-Day Preaching

It was November 1991. I was a young associate pastor taking part in an interdenominational Thanksgiving Eve worship service at a nearby Methodist church. We were a collection of solo and senior pastors and me. I may have been part of this congress of clergy, but I was the insignificant one because of my youth and position. I was assigned the role typically offered to associate pastors in ministerial gatherings—look humble, look holy, and keep my short prayer after communion very short. I was literally given the “least of these.”

An older pastor, who definitely looked the part of a pastor with gravitas, gave the sermon. I don’t remember much of what he said, but I clearly remember how he said it. Speaking in a shaky vibrato voice, he said, “We are here todaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyy to be graaaaaaaaaatefuuuuuuul for everything Jeeeeeeeesuuuuus has given usssssssssssss.” It’s impossible to capture in writing how strange his voice was. It quivered as though he was constantly on the verge of tears, which made me study his face to determine if those were tears on his cheeks or just light reflecting through his bifocals.

My immature, snarky mind kept wondering, “Where’d that voice come from? Does he talk with his wife like that over dinner? Does he really think it helps people listen better?” His voice was exactly like one of those old-time preachers I’d heard in recordings of radio programs from the Great Depression. Why would he want to sound like a 1930s radio preacher in 1991?

Ignoring his words but transfixed by his voice, I had a sudden insight: this guy’s preaching in the wrong era. He was preaching for people long since dead. That led to another insight: What if we’re all preaching to the wrong era? What if all our styles of peaching are thirty or more years behind? I’ve been wondering about this ever since, but it’s become more of an observation rather than a question. We’re all preaching for a bygone era. We’re all at least thirty years behind.

His voice and style actually got in the way of his message. Was his message one that might have made a difference in my life? Who knows? I was so caught up in his odd intonations that I have no idea what he was preaching. His style obscured a deeper message. In fact, his problem is shared by many people with searing and potentially transforming insights. If the manner of the message doesn’t resonate with the listeners, then the message will never be given a chance. Having studied at the master and doctoral level, I have been transformed by some of the greatest thinkers alive, but it took a lot of work for me to get there because some of them are the worst writers alive. I’ve had to work to be available to their transforming insights. Unfortunately, those listening to our sermons rarely are willing to work that hard. If our style of preaching doesn’t resonate, our insights will be ignored. The important point is this: preaching is meant to transform lives, but if our style of preaching doesn’t resonate with the audience, it will have little transforming power, even if the foundational message is the greatest one of all time.

A millennial pastor recently validated this particular insight to me. I was leading a workshop, “Preaching to Those Walking Away,” which is the foundation for much of what I’m writing about in this book. During the second workshop, he said, “Graham, I realize now what my frustration as a preacher has been since I was ordained. In seminary, I was taught by baby boomer professors how to preach to baby boomers. You’re giving me permission to be a millennial preaching to millennials.” I was giving him permission—permission to preach to people of the era we’re in.

I had the chance a number of years ago to explore my insights about transforming worship for the present era in my book In God’s Presence.1 In that book, I explored how worship has constantly undergone transformation since the beginning of Christianity, noting how church leaders within each historical era crafted a different kind of worship experience precisely for its era. The art of preaching has similarly undergone a constant transformation. Delivering a sermon as part of worship has remained foundational, but the style of preaching—the veneer we laminate it with—has undergone constant transformation.

Whether we’re talking about furniture, siding, bathrooms, or kitchens, veneers change over time. We remodel all of them because personal tastes and styles change, and we have to update them for the age we’re in. Kitchen remodeling comes to mind as a metaphor because my wife and I remodeled our kitchen less than six months ago. When it was finally done, we were both amazed, in retrospect, at how outdated, inefficient, and shoddy our previous, comfortable kitchen had been. We kept commenting, “My gosh, we should have done this ten years ago!”

The struggle of preaching in the present era is similar to remodeling a kitchen. We become so comfortable with previous preaching styles that we don’t realize how outdated and inadequate they’ve become. The old pastor’s preaching during the Thanksgiving Eve service was like stepping into a kitchen from the 1930s—it was jarring how outdated it was. It was foundationally still a sermon, but the structural and vocal veneers were from a bygone era.

The problem for modern preachers, the reason we are preaching to eras that have passed away, is that we constantly confuse cherished preaching veneers with the preaching foundation. What’s the difference? The foundation of preaching is the exploration and explanation of Scripture in a way that helps people live lives aware of, open to, and in pursuit of God’s presence and guidance. That is the why of preaching, its purpose, and that purpose never changes, no matter what form our preaching takes.

How we preach, though, has changed through the ages. The style of preaching we use now is different from the style used by Jesus, Peter, Paul, the early Christians, the church fathers, or anyone from the first few centuries of Christianity. If we could transport them to the twenty-first century as guest preachers for this Sunday, we’d witness most of our church members zoning out, checking their phones, or falling asleep fairly quickly. Why? Because the early Christian style of preaching, honed during an age when people focused and listened better, wouldn’t work in an age of distracted thinking and multitasking. Their preaching had a veneer designed for their times. That veneer felt authentic in those times. Now they’d feel out of touch. In the same way, if we were transported to their times, our style would baffle them (assuming we could speak Aramaic fluently).

So what exactly is a veneer? It’s something created in a style conforming to a particular age or era that we affix or laminate onto a foundational support. It’s a style of flooring or furniture covering or siding that engages the senses of those living at that time. Anyone who has bought a house or moved into a new apartment understands. There’s always something we have to update to suit us, even if it’s just a new coat of paint.

Preaching veneers are the customary or contemporary forms of preaching we use to teach and preach the gospel. It is the structure of the sermon we employ (three-point? plot-based? four-page? twenty-minute?), where and how we stand, the kind of voice we use, whether we use a manuscript or outline, the facial and physical gestures we use, and more. A veneer reflects the cultural preferences of a particular age, and just as kitchen styles are always changing, preaching veneers change constantly over time too, forcing us to adapt or watch our congregations decline. The reality is that adapting over time is hard (for some it feels impossible), yet if we don’t adapt, younger generations will gravitate toward those who have. So what do we change to? The answer isn’t necessarily to adopt a completely new style that isn’t you—that wouldn’t work any better than your grandparents suddenly decorating their living room in a hip-hop style to make them seem more “hip” to their grandkids. The veneer we use is important, but it has to still be authentic to who we are.

Despite my having just said that our preaching has to be authentic to who we are, veneers are never truly authentic—at least not in an eternal way. They always reflect the personal tastes of a particular age or population. What matters is the foundation—its frame and its function. If the framing is good and allows it to function properly, then we can adapt our veneer to meet changing tastes. If the foundation is rotting underneath and it no longer truly serves its purpose, then nothing affixed to it can last. At its foundations, preaching is transformational. Its framing is a worship service designed to help people experience and encounter God. Its function is to open us to God’s guidance so that we can live wiser, more compassionate, more aware, and more consonant lives. Simply put, preaching opens us to God’s presence and calling. As long as that’s the foundation, we can then develop a preaching veneer, a preaching style that helps listeners feel both at home and ready to listen and learn. The veneer is what makes what we offer attractive, but the foundations are what transform listeners. The two are deeply intertwined, and one doesn’t work without the other. Still, only one changes over time. The function doesn’t, but much like an oven used to cook food, the style does. And the updated styles tend to be more effective in doing what it was foundationally built for.

A Short History of Preaching

Using the historical schema I employed for In God’s Presence,2 I want to trace the different veneers of preaching that have been employed throughout the ages. This is not intended as a scholarly look at the history of preaching. Instead, I’m going to explore both how preaching has evolved over two millennia and how adapting to each era has been a significant factor in Christianity’s growth. What’s allowed Christianity to endure has been how Christians across the ages have adapted their preaching veneers to new eras and even new cultures (I’m not going to explore the cultural aspect here), even if those adaptations have been painful for those who’ve loved the previous ones. Or, as I sometimes have kidded to a congregation while preaching, “Ah, those were the good old days, when sermons lasted two hours and people stayed awake.” The following sections trace preaching styles from Jesus to today.

Preaching in the Early Church

It’s hard to know exactly how the first Christian pastors preached, since it’s only the rare sermons that have been preserved, but we do get inklings of what early preaching may have been like by looking in both the Gospels and the book of Acts. In the Gospels, we quickly discover a style of preaching that was grounded in Scripture but utilized practical metaphors and personal testimony. For instance, Jesus used parables culled from farming, shepherding, and village experiences. Still, it’s hard to extrapolate from the Gospels exactly how Jesus preached, since they don’t quite present one style of preaching. Matthew’s, Mark’s, and Luke’s Gospels portray Jesus’s sermons as being either direct, simple teachings or metaphorical parables. In contrast, John’s Gospel portrays Jesus as presenting deeper, more complex teachings with few metaphors.

If I were to guess which versions were more authentic, I would suggest Jesus employed two different styles and adapted them to his audiences. To the crowds, he offered those direct, parable-based sermons, while with his disciples-in-training and followers, he offered sermons and lessons that were more deeply spiritual and that stretched them theologically.

Peering into Acts, we get a bit more evidence of the early church preaching style. For example, Peter offers a sermon at the beginning of Acts that is fairly Jewish in style:

Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:

“In the last days it will be, God declares,

that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,

and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,

and your young men shall see visions,

and your old men shall dream dreams.

Even upon my slaves, both men and women,

in those days I will pour out my Spirit;

and they shall prophesy.

And I will show portents in the heaven above

and signs on the earth below,

blood, and fire, and smoky mist.

The sun shall be turned to darkness

and the moon to blood,

before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day.

Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” (Acts 2:14b–21)

Afterward, Peter makes his biblical and theological case that Jesus was the fruition of Scripture. His sermon’s style would have felt familiar to his Jewish listeners, as he speaks to what they just witnessed, cites Scripture they are familiar with, and then tells them what is happening now and how it’s the fruition of prophecies they’d been raised with. It’s a pretty straightforward explication of biblical history and prophecy. It gives an indication that Jewish rabbinical preaching may have been more of an intellectual explication of Scripture than what we might find in modern preaching.

Later in Acts, we see how quickly preaching adopted a nuanced veneer. Paul preaches atop the Areopagus—Mars Hill, the traditional place for philosophers and thinkers to present new ideas to the people of Athens. That sermon is very different from Peter’s on Pentecost, and it isn’t necessarily because Paul is a different preacher. Paul knew he was preaching to those steeped in Greek philosophy rather than Hebrew Scripture. He offers no appeals to Genesis or Exodus nor to the words of the prophets or the history of the Jews. Paul preaches as a Greek philosopher might:

Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, “To an unknown god.” What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us. For “In him we live and move and have our being”; as even some of your own poets have said, “For we too are his offspring.” (Acts 17:22–28)

Paul and Peter each knew who they were preaching to and adapted their sermons to those gathered. As the early churches formed, preaching quickly integrated the scriptural approach of the Jews with the philosophical approach of the Greeks and Romans. They were foreshadowing how preaching developed over the next two centuries as preaching synthesized Jewish Scripture with Greek logic. When reading the preserved sermons of the church fathers, we see that they increasingly wrote and made arguments that corresponded with a Greek philosophical style, appealing as much to reason as to Scripture.

Ultimately, any dive into the preaching of Jesus and the apostles brings us face-to-face with a significant problem: their sermons in the Bible aren’t their real sermons. They are summaries of sermons by the authors of the Gospels and Acts. For example, I doubt that Jesus actually preached what we’ve come to know as the Sermon on the Mount. I seriously doubt that he preached in that bap-bap-bap manner, jumping from topic to topic—a style much more suited to slow and reflective reading than straining to listen to a man some distance away. Imagine listening to a sermon like the Sermon on the Mount on a Sunday morning. Sure, you’d be OK reading it in your den afterward, but would you have been able to pay full attention to it as it jumped quickly from topic to topic? Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount is a literary device used to share Jesus’s greatest hits in one sermon. It’s like a medley of an artist’s top hits. It employs a literary veneer to best communicate the messages Matthew and others might have heard in any number of sermons by Jesus.

What makes it even less likely to have been an actual sermon is that in those days, no one would have followed Jesus around—parchment, reed, and ink in hand—scribbling down his sermons. The same would have been true for the apostles’ sermons in Acts. The sermons we’ve received are summaries shared by the Gospel writers. Still, we get glimpses of the early church’s styles as they adapted to both Jewish and Greco-Roman listeners.

From these biblical beginnings, preaching styles adapted slowly, although asserting this is a bit fraught because I’m approaching it from a Greco-Roman historical perspective. I willingly admit that I have no idea what preaching looked like when the apostle Thomas (according to the oral tradition of his life beyond the Gospels) brought Christianity first to the Indus River Valley in what is now Pakistan and then onto what is now India. I would imagine he adapted his preaching to these cultures. The same can probably be said of Andrew, who according to tradition, preached around the Black Sea, went up the Dnieper River (where it’s said that he pr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: The Problem of Present-Day Preaching
• Chapter 2: Are We Transforming or Merely Conforming?
• Chapter 3: Preaching in a Postmodern Age
• Chapter 4: Preaching to Zillennials
• Chapter 5: Preaching Intelligently
• Chapter 6: SUCCESsful Preaching
• Chapter 7: Preaching Spiritually
• Notes