July 22, 2009
Knowing Your Audience
Our Sunday morning sermons keep getting better and I don’t think it’s just because the preacher is gaining more experience in writing and delivering the message. Because we have new faces with unknown hearts, none of us can assume that everyone in the worship service knows the Lord as their personal Savior. I think we’re on our best Christian behavior and preaching the Good News rather than ‘preaching to the choir’.
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Gail;
-----One of my Bible college professors often likened a principle of the street corner sermon to an earthworm. People are constantly stopping for a few moments to hear what is being preached, then moving on about their business. The audience is continually changing, such that few are there to hear the whole sermon, he would say. Since each person only takes away a section of the sermon, the street corner preacher must repeat over and over in it the basic elements of the gospel. Then each section of the earthworm delivered can live in the mind of the hearer where it might grow into a whole earthworm.
-----Although everyone in the church service will hear the entire sermon, the generic principle still applies to serving a mixed audience. The “choir” needs a sermon as much as does the uncommitted. When the makeup of the audience is carefully considered, it becomes clear that the predominant element of the message is more appropriately directed to the “choir“, for the lesser reason that there are many more of them present, and for the greater reason that a competent body is composed of competent members. A functional preacher does not think he is paid only to preach, as some we have known have felt. He is paid so that he will have time to become intimately acquainted with the individuals of the congregation, and thereby with the congregation’s weaknesses and problems. By that acquaintance he is then able to bring appropriate Scripture to bear upon the significant issues of the congregation, and hence to raise the competency of the members to a level that inspires non-believers to seek the Lord. The “choir”, having been effectively inspired and taught, then becomes a more convincing illustration of the minor, evangelizing sections of his sermons.
-----I believe this is the drift of Hebrews 5:11-12, “About this we have much to say that is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of God’s Word. You need milk, not solid food; for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their faculties trained by practice to distinguish good from evil.” The teaching element of the sermon delivered by a preacher who is in touch with the spiritual acumen of the congregation produces a competency in the congregation that not only ignites further learning through the practice of what has been taught, but also frees further sermons to speak more to the uncommitted. I think I hear you saying this about your congregation, that its spiritual competency has risen to the level that the evangelistic element of the messages can increase.
-----And that is good, no, its great! But please do not forget, while we are yet in this temporal life, we must remember every time we have arrived, it is only to a sub-station. The station of our final destination only comes at the end. So eventually the sub-station to which we have arrived must be left for the journey on to the next, and preaching to the choir must continue to be at least a significant portion of the messages.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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