_at 08:08PM on 01.05.10
As you mention in the larger article, this doesn't happen by accident. Preachers must be intentional in their approach and preparation. People want Truth, not this watered-down garbage that many have been dishing out.
Life is not always about having a neat, pat answer.
People are looking for something real – something that issues real challenges, reflects real struggles, and prompts real examination. This is characterized by a continual pursuit of knowledge, experience, wisdom, intellect, understanding, and exploratory learning.
This means that the moralizing of our teaching past is out like the 80s. Our teaching should encompass more than do’s and don’ts. It should reach to the why and the how behind our proclamation. Great teaching requires mining truth down to its deepest core and assigning it to resonate within the hearts of our listeners. As a result, our teaching must go beyond appeals to behavior modification, beyond pithy platitudes on being happy and living well. Our teaching must wrestle with the meat and marrow of human existence, because this is what people are already doing. Otherwise it becomes like tossing a fortune cookie to a man starving in the desert.
This is an adapted excerpt from an article I wrote with Ed Stezer for SermonCentral entitled, "Preaching To The Younger Unchurched."
As you mention in the larger article, this doesn't happen by accident. Preachers must be intentional in their approach and preparation. People want Truth, not this watered-down garbage that many have been dishing out.
