The Connection
Most church members wonder what the church staff— especially pastors — do all week. After all, all the preacher does is preach a couple of times on Sunday and visit the sick in the hospitals. How hard could that be?
Actually, it’s a lot harder than people know. First of all, the rule of thumb for sermon preparation is an hour of study for every minute we preach. Digging through the languages, following the theological connections across the great story of God’s salvation, and finding the simple message within the text takes a lot of time and work. My friends who are professional speakers tell me it’s easier to get a different audience than it is to come up with a different speech every week. Pastors don’t have that choice.
Moreover, a lot of what we deal with we can’t tell anyone. We deal with family situations that the family doesn’t want anyone to know about. We deal with mistakes and sins of individuals that have life changing consequences. We deal with all of this on a moment’s notice and this doesn’t count the usual mile markers of life such as births and deaths, marriages and funerals, graduations and baptisms. Then, there are countless committee meetings that need decisions regarding finances and facilities. Some weeks, pastors will have to fight to make time to study for the sermon. The very thing the church will say is the most important thing for a pastor to do — preach well — is the last thing the membership will prioritize for the pastor’s time.
Pastors, likewise, rarely understand the demands every week places on our families. Between the requirements of homework, dance lessons, music lessons and whatever seasonal sport places on our families. Pastors are usually disappointed by how low the attendance is for the midweek Bible study and we become frustrated in trying to line up volunteers for various committees and service teams. Several years ago, our church did a time audit asking about the time we asked from our members. The results were highly embarrassing. The audit told us our church was one of the most anti-family organizations in town. We wanted the parents at church one night, the students at church another night and the children at church still another night. The whole time, I’m standing in the pulpit telling parents they are the primary disciplers of their children. I’m surprised they didn’t stand up and yell at me, “When are we supposed to do this? On our way to church?” Needless to say we thinned out our church’s calendar.
A lot of pastors don’t understand the daily lives of their congregations. They don’t understand the daily pressures their families experience. They don’t understand how hard it is for two working parents to find any quality time with each other or their children. They don’t understand how hard it is to stay on top of their children’s lives with phones and social media commanding so much attention. Because of this, a lot of sermons don’t register with our congregations.
Sermons are discussions of great theological ideas, treatises on current philosophical debates, but not anything the congregation can use in their lives throughout the coming week.
Harry Emerson Fosdick, the New York pastor of the early twentieth century, used to walk around with a little notebook in his pocket. As he would talk to people, he would write down their questions and comments and use these notes to craft his sermons for the coming week. He was widely criticized for his “topical preaching,” that is, sermons driven by the topics of people’s discussions rather than the truth of Scripture, but his sermons are still read and talked about today.
While any technique can be pushed beyond its usefulness, Fosdick had a point. Most congregants complain that sermons don’t do anything to help them in their daily lives. Yet, in reality, a lot of great sermons are in response to the questions the people are asking. Think about it, Jesus did a lot of teaching when He answered the questions the people around Him were asking.
Most pastors don’t fall short in their preaching because they don’t study enough. They fail because they don’t know their congregations well enough. They have great points from their study that don’t apply to the lives their congregations are living. The best sermons happen when the truth of Scripture is connected to the lives of those who are listening. This connection happens in the life of a preacher who loves God’s Word and the people in the pews with the same ferocity.
Moses begged for the lives of his people. Jesus wept over Jerusalem. The best sermons are born not in our study, but in our prayers. When the truth of God intersects with the tears and laughter of our people. It’s in the pastor where that connection is made. The Bible will tell us what to preach. Our people will tell us how to preach it.
This essay was first posted in Scot McKnight’s newsletter.
