Another Andy fan here. My thought is church services are first to bring the lost to a Saving knowledge of Jesus AND GIVE THEM OPPORTUNITY TO MAKE THAT DECISION, and then disciple them.  But,,,,,,,,,

why is an invitation to accept Jesus so absent in most churches, even those that are “evangelical” in name and/or purpose?

Kind of curious about the phrasing of the question - “what is your church’s goal when preaching....” The church that I serve doesn’t preach - I do, and I do have a goal of taking God’s eternal truth and applying it to the culture in which we currently live.

I too, am a fan of Andy Stanley’s view of application for life change with regards to preaching. I know others have espoused this in the past but it seems as with other things in life we need to be reminded of it from time to time. I do have to disgree with our brother Harold’s comment though. A worship service by definition is not first and foremost for the lost. scripture teaches as much. That said, I do belive that the lost can be convicted of their lostness and saved through the hearing of the Word in a worship service.  Our job as shepherds/teachers is to communicate in such a way that people can apply it’s truth to their everyday lives. We are to help them learn “how” to study scripture and apply it in their lives in order that they leave changed and better able to impact their world and the lost around them.

I’m not convinced Andy has gotten us much further down the road with his focus on life change. I appreciate his efforts to move beyond dispensing information, but he is still talking about what people need to do in the future, once they leave church. Derek is on to something with his concern that we focus so much on the person and miss God in the process. I say feed people at church - give them a taste of the gospel that nourishes their soul, at church, and then make the connection to the rest of the week.

Personally I believe that all three come into the pulpit on any one Sunday. To teach the people the Bible, to teach the Bible to people and to teach/preach for a change in their lives. I pray that every pastor wants to see change in his church’s life. The Bible is a book of change and a book of wisdom and knowledge. I recently saw an article about acrostic math:

What Equals 100%? What does it mean to give MORE than 100%? Ever wonder about those people who say they are giving more than 100%? We have all been in situations where someone wants you to give over 100%. How about achieving 101%?

What equals 100% in life?

Here’s a little mathematical formula that might help you answer these Questions:

If:
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Is represented as:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21
22 23 24 25 26.

Then:

H-A-R-D-W-O-R- K
8+1+18+4+23+15+18+11 = 98%

and

K-N-O-W-L-E-D-G-E
11+14+15+23+12+5+4+7+5 = 96%

But,

A-T-T-I-T-U-D-E
1+20+20+9+20+21+4+5 = 100%

AND, look how far the love of God will take you

L- O- V- E-O-F-G-O-D

12+15+22+5+15+6+7+15+4 = 101%

Therefore, one can conclude with mathematical certainty that:

While Hard work and Knowledge will get you close, and
Attitude will get you there, it’s the Love of God that will put
you over the top!

Put God first in your life and He will take care of the rest.

Ideas like this get the point across too.

Well, it seems Mr. Stanley has set up a nice false dichotomy and some straw men and knocked them down.  As I was reading his comments, I was just waiting to hear how “Andy does it” because that was obviously going to be the “one way” to communicate effectively.  (Funny, I thought Jesus taught scripture...).  Sure enough, I was correct and of course, the other methods are the “easy” way out.  Two things came to mind - I was reminded of my first pastor who criticized me for brining the Bible to church - it wasn’t necessary with the way he preached (for application).  I was also reminded how much the Word of God is supposed to written on our hearts and how we are to meditate on God’s Word day and night and how Paul tells us to meditate on all things that are good, pure, holy etc...So Andy can criticize those who want knowledge (only) but some of us strive for understanding so that we may more fully live out Jesus Christ in our lives, so that we may better be used by God to fulfill His purposes in this world, so that we may truly glorify Him and enjoy HIm forever.  2 Timothy 4:1-5

Well it seems to me that we have kind of come to a concensus here in this blog regarding NOT overemphsizing any one tenet of preaching. Am I right? 1. Preach the Word, (so they know about God) 2. Teach the Word (so they know what to do about what they know)
3. Application (Creatively endeavor to show them how to apply the truth to their lives in practical, life altering ways) WOW, That is a high calling indeed!

In repsonse to the statment, ‘I thought Jesus taught scripture’. Jesus words are the scripture but he did not go back and teach verse by verse to his audience of the Old Testament.  He actually at times took verses or segments and explained them but he did not work through whole sections as some preacheres today think preaching should only be. Our goal as Christ followers and preachers of His word, is to preach the word not for information sake but for transformation.

A comment & two questions:

prichett4 wrote:

Kind of curious about the phrasing of the question - “what is your church’s goal when preaching....” What the church usually gets on Sunday morning is exactly what THEIR goal was for the preacher when they hired him in the first place. As a layman & interim pastor, I’ve sat in on far too many search committee meetings where the emphasis was on the Bible knowledge of the candidate & will he “feed” us as opposed to “what will his messages bring that will grow us, change us (the dreaded “C” word), & help us become more effective & committed (another “C” word) Christians in our daily lives. Unfortunately, most church members would rather be fed than changed. As a pastor, I’ve also taken the heat when my preaching goals morphed from “feeding” to life change - because I was “meddling.” So churches do have preaching goals after all…

Q1:  Why do Wyeth & Gino & so many others assume that the Holy Spirt leaves when creativity (yet another “C” word) is mentioned? Jesus was effective when he preached precisely because he was creative in his use of metaphors, parables, & examples from everyday life to shake up people’s conventional thinking & change them. Was he not guided by the Holy Spirit to do so? Will the Holy Spirit not also guide & annoint those those among us who want to follow Jesus’ example?

Q2: Is the goal of the preacher really communication or is it change? You can be a great communicator of content, but if people aren’t changed, what has been accomplished?  On the other hand, it’s hard to be an effective agent of life change without also being a good communicator. Thank God the Holy Spirit takes what we have to offer & uses it according to his own purposes, but that’s not a reason for us to sit back & not be changed ourselves.

Well, given the “noise” I caused by actually saying something critical of what I read and because I want to clarify some points, here goes.

Actually Todd, I do not know Andy and I was just commenting on the segments that you had in the article.  I was disappointed that he seemed to so easily dismiss the ministries of men like Jonathan Edwards, Charles Spurgeon or more modern John MacArthur, John Piper, Alistair Begg (and I could go on).  These are all men who have preached expository and apparently don’t cut the mustard. (or at least have taken the “easy way out") That was my comment - Andy assumed too much in his comments.

Sadly many others have as well.  They have assumed that I do not believe in creativity - where did that come from - because I believe the Bible should be taught in units, especially the units in which they were written.  How many times have you heard a verse or two taken totally out of context in thematic preaching?  Far too often.  Why are so many assuming that you cannot be creative when preaching expository sermons?  Why do others assume that I believe that the Holy Spirit is not active in any other kinds of messages?  Obviously there is a bit of lumping together here that is unnecessary.

Finally (& I could say much more), maybe we should take a lesson from the Apostle Paul.  Paul’s letter are incredible, but too often in thematic or similar preaching most pastors skip the first chapter or 2 and go right to “how to live in light of these truths.” Why?  Because Paul opens up his letters with some of the most remarkable truths about our God and who we are in Christ.  I doubt he wrote those things because he did not believe they were transforming or worthy to ponder.  In fact, it seems that all his exhortations only made sense, were only possible and done in the proper spirit once he told them all these things first.  Now I know emergents don’t like Paul; they like narratives & Jesus, but it’s all God-breathed…

Okay, enough.  I am sure there will be other comments.  I will let them come.  May we all pray for transformed lives by the power of God, by the Spirit of God, by the Word of God.  May we all say with Paul - I am not ashamed of the Gospel for it is the power of God for salvation…

To Him be the glory forever and ever.

Good comments on this.  I was out of town and unable to comment last week.  Sorry for the delay.

Todd--I think you’re being too hard on Gino.  Some of his comments seemed legit.  Everyone laces their comments with over-the-top stuff from time to time (even Andy)...but I know you’re trying keep it from getting too personal...so…

The best I’ve heard is

1.) One does NOT need to preach verse-by-verse OR topically to be “more biblical”....although people who teach topically seem to be much more prone to taking texts out of context.  If your hermeneutics aren’t refined yet (or if you tend to start with a subject and look for proof-texts), you probably ought to stick with verse-by verse until you can approach the scriptures differently.

2.) The Dr. Phil comment was perfect by Jacob Van Horn.  The goal CANNOT be lifechange.  Cancer changes your life...being a buddhist changes your life...overdosing on ex-lax changes your life.  I worry that this “goal” just produces more moral people much of the time...but not followers of Jesus.

3.) The comments referring to modeling the faith for others are awesome.  We will always do soooo much more for making disicples by modeling and walking with people--all Christians can/should be doing this with younger Christians.  Unfortunately, most people won’t get good “didactic teaching” from anyone unless they get it from their pastor--so I’m concerned that we would de-emphasize teaching the Word.

Unfortunately, the one area that Andy missed is “heart-change”.  How can we quantify or better ensure heart-change in a person through preaching?  Heck...knowledge of the word AND application of the word are tied to heart-change, but neither confirm this 100%.  Seems like we should be on our knees more--I’m just as guilty of not doing this.  The Holy Spirit is the only heart-change agent...not us.  We just get to come along for the ride if we’re faithful and preach the word.

Jacob Van Horn--good words.  Are you the same Jacob from TVC?

Rick, thanks for shout out.

I am the same Jacob Vanhorn from TVC.  I saw a post from you recently and wondered the same about you.  I pray things are going well at CityView.  Did I see correctly on your website that Kris is now preaching on Sunday mornings for the next year?