Why our faith is shallow IV
If people agree with my concerns about what I’m calling the discipleship crisis, it’s fairly common that they finger our preaching as the culprit. I think there’s something to this, which is what this post is about, but I also think it’s an easy mark. Not only is there some great preaching out there, but I don’t think it directly correlates to more fulsome Christian formation.
I have a high view of preaching, it is encountering the living Christ in the pages of the texts as your Pastors expound the words to you. Preaching is not primarily about instruction in the faith, though that is one of its secondary purposes. I also think we’re naïve if we think half an hour of instruction every week will cut through a bombardment of messages. That’s not how formation works (more on that in the future).
But we can accuse our preaching as a culprit. I’ve sat through preaching that was ‘thin’ or essentially a TED talk, or more of a testimony. That’s not great, but my concern today is with the way we think about application: we both over and under apply the text, because we get application in the wrong position. If application is the cart we place it before the horse.
Overapplying
I don’t mean in the wrong position within a message, but in our thinking. Essentially, I mean this: preaching is not about application, it’s about seeing Jesus. Our preaching should show people Jesus in the text—and I won’t get into it here, but we should find Jesus where the text intends us to find him rather than pasting on a turn at the end—but I think we often are thinking about how to apply this to people in front of us.
“There wasn’t much practical application,” we might critique. That can be a problem as I’ll turn to in a moment, but my biggest concern is this: if you make Christ look glorious that is practical application.
We need preaching to open our eyes to the truths of the world, the most central of which is the beauty of King Jesus. Don’t just tell people he’s wonderful, show them he is. Wonder teaches us to see, and our ability to see the truth will grow and be shaped by seeing Jesus.
I’ve known preachers to scratch their heads at more ‘theological’ sections of scripture wondering how they’re going to ‘apply’ the text. Show us Jesus, that is application. If people leave seeing and savouring Christ more than they came in, you have achieved very practical application for their lives. Don’t let the need for application rob you of the riches of the text.
Underapplying
Application is needed though; the horse shouldn’t run around without his cart. I fear that our applications tend towards the psychological and the individual. The scriptures have many psychological insights, which we should apply when those are our passages, but those of us at the more expository end of preaching also need to remember that the Bible speaks to everything in our lives.
It’s OK to speak about the ordinary earthy stuff of life, as well as the corporate applications to both church and society. There are, I hear, sections of the church where marriage advice is all you really get in your preaching. That’s not what I’m advocating for, but those of us at a more expository end could talk about how to apply these truths about Christ to our hearts (yes!) but not only to our hearts but also to specific situations in our lives, the life of this church, and the life of this place our church is in.
I haven’t really seen this modelled, though there must be many preachers out there who deftly do this. I find I can get trapped in the desire to apply to too many things, leaving my application vague, or fear that honing down into one thing ends up with my pet concerns being the ones voiced.
Without being an expert, I think there are two things to aim for here: firstly, and most importantly, we preach Christ, we preach the cross, we preach the resurrection. If your specific application flows from there then your sermon did apply to everyone. Secondly, we try to be attentive readers of the text, allowing our application to rise from the text’s concerns, and attentive readers of culture, speaking to the concerns and sins of our day.
That does mean that we probably have to talk about sexuality more often than a preaching series every five years, even if we’d really prefer not to: our applications should touch the reigning cultural idols more often than when we just preach on that subject. We do need to speak about things that are offensive often, like the Christian idea of authority. We also should target the sins we see most prevalently in our churches (which, sadly, I think are often those the Pastor struggles with most).
In my experience it is much easier to figure out the best applications by talking it over with others. At one of the churches I was an elder at, it was common for a preacher to meet with one or two other preachers to talk over the message before it was quite finished. I always found this very helpful, and particularly for me in the area of application. I’d be challenged where I was vague and would need to sharpen it, I’d be told where I was missing how this would land in this congregation, or which applications of this text would be particularly helpful from someone else’s point of view. The range of perspectives—and I don’t think it’s required, but I find it helpful when I met with a man and a woman—would help me to see through others’ eyes. If we start with the assumption that it’s almost impossible to see what you don’t want to, then asking for others’ help is a good idea.
Preach Christ
To circle back to the beginning, it can be tempting to catch hold of the idea of the discipleship crisis and think that we need to fix this by ‘preaching into’ it, which usually means designing a preaching series on these topics. That won’t hurt, but it is naïve in my opinion. We need concerted, consistent, and holistic approaches—and not solutions, as I’ve discussed before—that will yield slow fruit in decades or longer.
Instead, commit to preaching Christ week by week. You may well already be doing this. In itself that will be an immense spur and solace to the people of your churches. It won’t solve these problems, but it will mean they become more visible. It may convict some people to change. It isn’t a ‘solution,’ but it is what we’re called to be doing week by week as we worship the Lord in word and sacrament. So, friends, let’s do that.
Photo by Randy Fath on Unsplash
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