(See earlier posts here)
2. Light Relief
‘Light Relief’ (LR) is fast becoming the caffeine of sermons. A sermon just can’t seem to start the day without an early hit of LR. Congregations have become dependent on the smooth sounds of the personal anecdote, the funny Herald story or the quote from the Castle. And what’s worse, the LR hit seems only to last five minutes before another one is needed to keep the sermon going. Maybe the best way for us to get back into shape and into a healthy lifestyle is to detox. Kill the opening gag. Ditch the feel good news story. Get straight into the grueling task of being woken up by God’s word.
April 15, 2009 at 10:55 pm |
You go girl! The best sermons I can remember got straight into it.
April 16, 2009 at 9:06 am |
Hey dude I agree with your post but why does the task of understanding Gods word have to be gruelling? I think if your sermons are gruelling to listen to you suck as a preacher!
Just a thought
April 16, 2009 at 10:07 am |
Hey hans,
Does that mean Paul sucks (Acts 20.9).
But I don’t take grueling to mean ‘boring’, but more ‘demanding’. Requiring mental energy and exertion from the hearer. A sermon can be both grueling and exhilarating at the same to time. Much like church planting. Or climbing Everest.
April 16, 2009 at 10:11 am |
Yes please, but be mindful of your audience.
The unfortunate thing about the over use of analogies at church is that most are actually disanalogies.
April 17, 2009 at 11:02 pm |
Oh absolutely agree with the LR thing. Have been discussing this recently with my wife and we find that the analogies very rarely make the point as well as the actual bible passage, and usually distract from the flow.
Also I hate when you come away remembering someones personal ‘funny’ story more than what the semon was meant to be about.
April 20, 2009 at 6:04 pm |
[...] 5 things we overuse in our preaching: Light Relief [...]
April 21, 2009 at 2:54 pm |
[...] 5 things we overuse in our preaching: The World as one big bad guy 21 04 2009 (See previous post here) [...]