For many sermons across the United States and around the world, the application section of a sermon consists of something close to the following words, “May the Lord apply to your lives what we have learned today. Let’s pray.”

Such “Application” is completely inadequate.

I understand that application is difficult to come up with, but if it is difficult for the pastor, it is doubly difficult for the person who has not been preparing the sermon all week. In a monologue message, the pastor must diligently strive to provide concrete and clear examples of how a message can be applied to the people who listen.

Thankfully, more and more pastors understand this, so that it has almost gotten to the point that some sermons are nearly 100% specific and concrete application. I am not sure this is any better, since application without specific truth from Scripture, is like skin on a body without bones. Application needs Scriptural truth for structure, balance, and validity.
[Read more…]

I do not care if you are more of a topical teacher, or a book-by-book teacher, I believe that we must move away from the monologue model, and allow interaction from those we are teaching. Here are a few ideas for helping your church move in this direction.

Small Groups as Primary

This may involve a complete reversal of the popular mindset in today’s churches that the Sunday morning service is the most important church event of the week, and the midweek gatherings of smaller community groups are secondary.

Near the end of my years as a pastor, as I was beginning to change some of my views and ideas about church and pastoral ministry, I started to try to impress upon the people of the church that if they could only attend one gathering of the church per week, I would prefer they go to a small group gathering, rather than to the Sunday morning service.

While I personally liked to see full pews on Sunday, it was at the small group gathering that they could get better community, encouragement, accountability, and service opportunities than they ever could in a church service on Sunday morning.

[Read more…]

Many pastors and church leaders are alarmed at numerous studies that frequently come out about a growing epidemic of biblical illiteracy in modern Christianity. While many people (even church goers) are generally familiar with the stories of Adam and Eve, Noah, Moses, and Jesus, few people can locate these stories in the Bible, and fewer still can accurately recall most of the details and events within the stories.

Questioning the Studies

Frankly, I’m not sure these studies are accurate, since up until the last one hundred years or so, the majority of the population of the world was unable to read or write. Since this is so, how does someone today determine the biblical knowledge of someone from the past? Could it be that these studies are actually comparing the average person in the pew today with the scholars and pastors of the past? If so, the comparison is hardly fair.

But whether the studies are accurate or not, the issue is still being framed incorrectly.

The Real Problem in Bible Study

The problem is not about how much people know or do not know about the Bible. The problem is what people do with the biblical knowledge they have, whether it is little or a lot. In other words, some people know very little about the Bible, and others know quite a lot, but in both cases, their lives look about the same. Since this is so, those who have no time for reading and learning the Bible see that the lives of the Bible scholars and pastors do not seem to be that much better, and have decided that gaining more Bible knowledge doesn’t matter.

[Read more…]

Much of the debate about preaching and teaching today focuses on methodology.

There are debates about expository versus topical preaching, whether women should be allowed to preach, how long the sermon should be, whether the teaching should be participatory or a monologue, how much time should be given to illustration and application, whether to use powerpoint and encourage sermon notes or not, and on and on.

While I have opinions on all of these issues, I am not sure that most of them really matter. All of these arguments over methodology point to an underlying foundational problem: fewer and fewer people live according to a biblical framework. People neither know what the Bible says, nor do they seem to care. Even among most of those who do have Bible knowledge, it seems to make little difference in their lives.

Is More the Answer?

Pastors, priests, and professors are rightly concerned about this problem, and try to correct it. Most of the proposed solutions focus on preaching more or better sermons. Some churches look back at the “Golden Age” of Christianity in the United States—the 1950’s—and notice that pastors preached on Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night. So it is believed that more preaching will lead to better Christians, and these pastors move their churches in that direction.

[Read more…]

Throughout most of the Scriptures, beginning with God in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve, and carrying on through Moses and the Prophets, all the way to Jesus and the apostles, the primary method for teaching was something I call “On the Way Teaching.” This teaching was similar to what we think of as “apprenticeship.”

The Jesus Model

Jesus was the best model of this. He invited twelve men to be His Apprentices, and as they followed Him around in His ministry, they watched what He did, asked questions about how and why He did it, and tried to accomplish tasks that were assigned by Jesus. While there were probably some times of formal teaching, it seems that most of the instructional times were either on the way to a place where Jesus would minister, or on the way back. He was either preparing His disciples for what they were all about to do, or was debriefing them about what had just happened.

[Read more…]