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Preaching from the World

There are two places to stand when you preach, and I'm not talking about "in front of" or "behind" the pulpit. I'm thinking "In the world" or "in the Word". Now this is not the typical "we should be in the World but not of it" kind of posts. This has to do with starting points.

Some preachers position themselves by standing in the World: understanding it, its culture, current events, immediate fads and fashions, pressing circumstances/ "breaking news", etc., and then lean into the Word to find something to bring out for the World they live in.

The opposite position is standing in the Word: understanding it, its culture, historical events, pressing truths, and timeless perspective, etc., and then leaning out to the World to offer it to others, saying "Come up here and see for yourself."

The clearest way to tell where a preacher is standing is to measure how much time he spends in a sermon head-down, drawing your attention to what's in the Word, or head high drawing word-pictures and telling funny stories or contemporary parallels/analogies to things in the Word.

Some of you might be objecting, "But you have to apply the Word!" I heartily agree. I think it was Spurgeon who said a sermon should be 50% interpretation and 50% application. The critical distinction is mistaking applications, analogies, illustrations, etc., for interpretation. If you haven't said what the Word says, you can't apply it accurately.

When a preacher short-circuits the process of digging deep and offering his hearers something substantial before heading to the contemporary parallel or insightful example, like a mother who serves a child a plate of food and then cuts it into small pieces so the child can manage it by himself, the preacher ends up just tossing bite-sized nuggets or appetizers to the "children", and ultimately ruining their appetite for God's Word.

Additionally, depending on the preacher, the World they are standing in may have extreme deficiencies. If a preacher is saturated by regional, cultural distinctions (South, West Coast, etc), economic or racial concentrations (predominately White, Latino, Middle Class, or economically poor), rural, cosmopolitan, etc., then much of his preaching is only going to be incestuous (taking from a particular lens and projecting that same lens onto Scripture and holding it back up for his people to see). This can be clearly seen in the Liberation Theology church of Barack Obama, the Health and Wealth preaching of some megachurch, or even as extreme as the "Redneck Bible".

Or maybe a preacher has not so isolated himself into one culture as clearly as this, but simply falls into the more common "Western/American" cultural lens. So when you hear a preacher explain a verse from the Bible, you wonder, "How would an African woman hear that? Or a Filipino Boat Person?" This is the hazard of preaching from the World. If the universal truth of God's Word is not explained first, the application becomes the truth and people walk away thinking the Bible teaches their worldview or cultural distinction.

But when you preach from the Word, you can interpret what it says and then apply it in a relevant way to your immediate audience, whether a group children in Sunday School, young mom's Bible Study, or a large outreach event in a third-world country. The meaning of Scripture is communicated faithfully, and the application of Scripture presented accurately and powerfully.

Finally, for those who would object that this doesn't seem to take sufficient consideration of the audience, including their lack of familiarity with Christianity or ability to comprehend hard, theological concepts, I would suggest that this may indicate that you haven't understood these enough yourself if you can't explain them simply and clearly to the youngest audience member without sacrificing Biblical truth for cultural relevance. Quoting Oliver Wendell Holmes, "I would not give a fig for simplicity on this side of complexity. But I would give my right arm for simplicity on the other side of complexity."

The Bible may be even the most complex of all "complexities", if you will. But that's why it's so critical for preachers to give it simply (the simplicity that comes after wrestling through it, not the simplicity that comes by avoiding it).