Like many so many who as a child have grown up in church, I learned how to endure the boredom of long sermons at a young age.
When I was five or six, I survived them by scrutinizing everything near that I could see: like the back of the heads of the people who were in front of me. I observed the misshaped heads, ears; hair do’s and saw every wart, spot, cut or sore on necks. The offering envelopes I folded into a small airplane; or made it into a tiny ball and I played with these while I endured another boring adult service. I played trucks, cars or trains with the song books. Then there were the half-length pencils whose tips I broke and made a toy out of them. Then there were times I poked my little brother, which provoked my mother and father and made things really interesting especially when I got home.
Then in my struggling teen years of fifteen thru eighteen, I then listened to some of the lengthy boring adult sermons, but even in my teen years my attention would come and go. I really did want to listen but I often daydreamed about so many things that pulled against my young mind. I often would wonder what the other teenagers in the room were thinking of me, especially the members of the opposite sex because I lived under such peer pressure and I did worry about what other teens would think about me.
I also remember in my teen age years of really watching and listening to our pastor as he would walk around the platform. He would stroll to one side of the pulpit nonchalantly, as if he were walking up to you as a friend. Then he would amble to the other side of the pulpit, like he wanted to say hello to a family who just arrived. Sometimes he would casually lean sideways with one hand resting on the pulpit. The whole thing intrigued me. It was so friendly and down to earth.
I really did listen to what he said. His name was Rev. D. T. Guillory and he would teach often from leather charts that someone had drawn for him concerning the Book of Daniel and the Book of Revelation. I still have a love for the study or prophecy today, because of this studious pastor who intrigued me as a teenager.
I want to be very honest. We live in a world with so much to offer our people, even those who attend church. The entertainment industry and all of the new electronic games, and toys pull for our entire attention span. It is not just the five-year-olds and fifteen-year-olds who struggle to avoid yawning in adult church. It is adults, also. We all go in and out during teaching and preaching at church. Maybe your brain gets stuck in a spin cycle about a conversation from yesterday. Maybe you start planning out Sunday afternoon's "to-do" list. To this very day, I can catch myself tuning out, especially when a preacher gets mired down in some boring biblical lesson for whatever the reason. But the moment he begins telling a story, my ears perk up. I know that happens to most of you?
All of this causes a person to ask whether preaching is that important to the lives of Christians and churches.
The church attendance and preaching made such a difference in my life during high school. I was called to preach at the age of sixteen and really did want to live for God before all of my peers. But in the lives of some of my friends at church and even some of their parents, church did not seem to do much for them. I left high school for college, which I did not complete. I married one year out of high school and began to try to find success for my young life. I had many of my friends from church and even high school who were wrapped up in reaching for their success. Church became secondary to me at this point in my life. By this time I had two young sons and a wife I was trying to make my way in this rough world but I was leaving God and church out, even though I never stopped attending, I was not involved and attended out of tradition. During those years I had a few encounters with the Lord, but my attention span was so short and I was always thinking of new ways to becoming wealthy and having success.
By God's grace, I had another encounter with Him in 1978 at the age of thirty years old. I went busted in my business and began to lose everything I had. I ended up moving to Lake Charles, Louisiana. On the second Sunday night of 1978 my family and I attended Apostolic Temple UPC. The pastor was Rev. Marvin Treece. This was the best thing that has ever happened in my adult life. This man was so studious and preached like a master teacher of the Bible. My wife and I became so involved in Apostolic Temple. We taught in the Sunday School, were involved in outreach, Bus Ministry and Bible Studies. We made a commitment to the working of the Lord and church became so intriguing and interesting. Bro. Treece was the greatest preacher I have ever set under, what a great man of God. Still to this day he is my pastor.
I look back at many of my friends who did not ever seem to have an encounter with God. Today they are stuck in agnosticism, materialism, alcoholism, drugs, perversions and more. Many of their parents I looked up to are now divorced and no longer involved in church either.
What good did all those sermons do that we heard back in our youth and teen years? Now that I am a preacher, pastor myself, I do not want to lose the children, teens or the adults who hear each of my lessons or messages. I have made up my mind I have to preach Bible truth. I have to preach it as it is written. I have to provoke the people and wake them up spiritually and get them involved with the church and the work of the kingdom. I have to put something in my preaching that will not be boring, but will help people grow spiritually.
I have been made to wonder what I needed to do to add something to my teaching and preaching that would impact and bring power, life and growth in the church I pastor and the people I minister to. There has got to be more that I can offer than a big guy standing up in front of them babbling over and over, talking about very little that will help these wonderful people.
My guess is that many people who attend churches desire to hear sermons, lessons and songs that are true and biblical. But I have come to the realization that a strong ministry of the Word is not a top priority for many who attend church services these types want just a feel good message all the time. I have also realized that a strong ministry of the Word is not a top priority to many who preach and pastor.
In trying to bring life to the church from the pulpit, there has to be life in the children’s ministry and the teen ministry of the church. As the Pastor I am to pass life to the teachers and leaders of all these age groups. These leaders and teachers have to bring life to those they minister to also.
When someone walks into one of our churches for the first time, their attention fixes on everything about the church, like the style and quality of the music and singing, the availability of good children's and teen ministry. They even look at the layout and the feel of the sanctuary. Honestly, people evaluate a church just like they would evaluate which café they would like to eat their next meal —"The feel of the atmosphere in our church, must be in our planning?"
So many people have seemingly have lost interest in church and many have little confidence in preachers or ministry leaders in churches, today. I am afraid that we who are in leadership are guilty, because we have lost sight of the vision and because of that the people under our ministry are now perishing.
Because of all that is happening around us today even many church leaders and pastors find they also have lost the confidence they once had to deliver the Word of God, because so many people seem to be bored by preaching and teaching. We now have so many things that we do so we can find ways to bring life back to our services. We read books, go on-line, and attend high energy conferences for pastors, preacher and church leaders. We try all of these ideas and often we are still in the same place with our church and our ministry. What has seemingly worked for all these other pastors and ministry teams does not even begin to work for our church and our ministry.
We read and hear that we need better pastor visitation, better music with dynamic worship, small group ministry, personal accessibility, adequate parking, solid financial resources, attractive programs, the presence of the Holy Ghost, passionate altars, spiritual gifts in full operation in the ministry, speaking in tongues, visionary leadership, strategic leadership, empowered leadership, loving relationships, contemporary music and singing, high-impact signing team, visible outreach and bus ministry, a sophisticated knowledge of every culture in our neighborhoods, and the list goes on and on. Not any one of these things bad? Most are fine and even good. The question is “Where are we placing our confidence as ministers of the Gospel?” As Preachers, we believe God created the universe by his word. We know Ezekiel spoke dead bones to life with preached spoken words. We know Paul commanded Timothy to "Preach the word." Yes, we know all that. But we must be realistic, today. We are living in the day that is captivated by images. It is the age for the eye, not the ear. "Give us flat screens and big screens," the people say. "Give us satellite feeds and video-on-demand." It's how our brains are wired.
Church pastors and leaders seem to be catching on. They are sharing their "messages of truth" through the watching of movie clip with Movie Stars from Hollywood, and gospel singing videos from Nashville, Country Music and Hard Rock Groups who do not even go to church themselves. Of course I do not believe it is just DVD clips that people desire. They want to see good deeds in the life and actions of the people they are following.
God's Word, working through God's Spirit, is God's primary instrument for growing God's church. We must understand and believe that God's Word is still the most powerful force in the universe.
God creates and grows his church through his Word. God grows us as individuals and as local churches through our hearing His Word. If you are a confident preacher of the Word of God then you must lead your church by the Word, structure your church by the Word, and grow your church by the Word of God.
One thing is necessary in our churches—hearing God's Word through preaching, reading, singing, and praying.
What about the power of sight? What about the fact that people today have been conditioned by an image-driven marketplace? There's nothing new in all of this. People have always been driven by sight. The Israelites felt fear at the sight of Goliath. The Lover feels attraction at the sight of his Beloved in the Song of Solomon. The temple was decorated with bronze pomegranates and gold flowers. And the apostle John warns in his writings about "the desire of the eyes." Sight moves people. It draws them and repulses them. It's how God created us.
Many of the books being published these days about the local church are looking for something new – Some new ways to engage with the culture, to structure our churches, and to appeal to outsiders. I will agree that there is a place for each of our ministry teams and churches to make some changes for the better. But I still propose that churches become healthy and saints become vibrant through the same things today as they did in New Testament churches: through evangelizing, preaching, teaching, singing, praying, praising, worshipping and discipling one another with God's Word. True life, kingdom life, exciting life, will be created in our church services through nothing new, but through something quite old, the preached Word of God.
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