Page 4724 – Christianity Today (2024)

Ann was ecstatic to learn she was pregnant again. For nine months she carried her child, experiencing all the various stages of her baby’s growth and development.

Late in her ninth month, she went into labor, and her husband rushed her to the hospital. The couple was sent directly into the delivery room. Their physician estimated that the baby would arrive in less than an hour.

Shortly after his announcement, the fetal heart monitor around Ann’s abdomen abruptly stopped.

“Suddenly, the entire atmosphere was charged with tension and anxiety,” her husband later recalled. “I was rushed out as nurses and doctors rushed in.” An emergency Caesarean section was performed, but despite the best efforts of the medical professionals, the baby was stillborn.

In shock, the father called me; I was their minister. I will never forget the moment I walked into their hospital room and saw Ann holding her child, a perfectly developed little girl.

“She was strangled by her own umbilical cord,” Ann told me, tears streaming down her face.

Ann’s pain, unfortunately, is not rare. Statistics indicate there is one still birth (defined as the death of a fetus between the twentieth week of pregnancy and birth) for every eighty live births. Often the cause of death is unknown.

Whenever a baby is born dead, nothing feels real except the pain. Here are suggestions for pastors helping those who have experienced stillbirth.

ENCOURAGE THEM TO SEE THE BABY

While this is a decision each parent must make, those who have held and viewed their child found it to be therapeutic. Here is one mother’s expression:

“My husband said we had a girl and she was truly beautiful. He encouraged me to see her and offered to bring our baby into the room. She was all wrapped up in a blanket like any other baby. He placed her into my arms, and I touched her. She was both beautiful and perfect. I’m glad I saw her and held her. That moment formed some closure for me.”

University of Nebraska professor John DeFrain has spent ten years researching how families cope with the death of an infant. In his recent book, Stillborn: The Invisible Death, he states, “We asked the parents in our study if they saw their baby, and slightly more than half had. Every one of these parents was very glad to have done so. Most of the parents who had not seen the baby wished they had.”

HOLD A FUNERAL SERVICE

Many couples request a funeral service. Often these are small, private rites attended only by family and close friends.

A funeral service brings the family’s grief out into the open and facilitates support from others. It also recognizes the baby as an individual who had a life and was part of a family.

Sharon, whose baby died in her eighth month of pregnancy, says the funeral ritual was “extremely” important.

“We called our minister,” she said, “and asked for a simple graveside service. He admitted he had never done a funeral for a stillborn, but readily agreed. The day itself was beautiful–bright and sunny. We were surrounded by our parents, extended family, close friends, as well as our pastor.

“Although I cried through much of the ceremony, I felt much, much better for the tears and for the service. When it was over every person there reached out and embraced me tightly. As strange as it may seem, I felt a lot of hope. As a result, I encourage anyone who has a stillbirth to have a memorial service of some kind.”

LET PARENTS TALK

Allowing parents to talk about their child is critical for a healthy adjustment to stillbirth. Here is one woman’s tribute to her supportive pastor after she lost a baby:

“Talking was the only way I could deal with my anguish. Thank God for my pastor who allowed me to talk and talk and talk. He must have found me extremely repetitious, yet he never stopped me or judged me for anything I said or felt. Talking and sharing my feelings was profoundly therapeutic. It seemed that every time I told my story a little bit of pain was peeled away.”

Often, those who flounder for years after a stillbirth have failed to acknowledge or express the powerful emotions connected to the death of a child. One woman’s pain lasted for more than two decades and did not subside until she found a sympathetic listener.

“Twenty-three years have passed since I lost my baby,” she said. “Until last year, I was not free to even discuss my little boy. My salvation came through a new neighbor who had gone through an identical experience. She initiated the conversation without knowing what I had been through. Finally, after all those years I am able to talk and receive some comfort.”

RECOMMEND ACTIVITY

For many people, activity is an excellent coping device. A consistent theme I hear from the bereaved in my support groups is, “Keeping busy really helps me.” Getting involved in a job or a project is a gentle way of forcing oneself back into the mainstream of life. This was true for Ellen, the mother of one school-aged child. When she became pregnant with her second child, she quit her job on a doctor’s recommendation. Unfortunately, her baby died in the seventh month.

“A good friend, who is also a therapist,” she said, “urged me to get a job since my other child was in school all day. I followed her advice and got a sales position in a retail store. That entry-level, minimum-wage job became my lifeline. It forced me to have a schedule, to get up and get dressed every day. That simple job took the edge off my depression and allowed me to begin recovery sooner.”

PROVIDE SUPPORT FOR DAD

Too often the father is the forgotten or silent partner in grief. Because the woman carries the child, she receives most of the support. Yet, the lost child has two parents. David and Martha were expecting twins. One was stillborn–the other died within two hours of birth.

Over the next few months, family and friends would often ask David, “How is Martha doing?” Confiding in his pastor he said: “No one seems to be aware of my pain. I am feeling more isolated with my feelings because people don’t think I feel any loss or grief over this.”

Expressing grief is hard for many men. As odd as it sounds, some men need “permission” to mourn. Permission may be granted by saying simple statements such as “It’s okay to cry,” “It’s natural to feel depressed after a loss like yours,” and “I don’t blame you for feeling angry.”

It is also helpful to remind men that emotions are universal and normal, not particularly feminine.

SUGGEST RESOURCES

Each person grieves differently. There are no clear turning points or predetermined deadlines. Fortunately, we are created to recover and heal. One man states it this way:

“While we still have many bad days, both of us have an occasional good day. It has now been eleven months since we lost Danny. As the time passes we seem to be doing better and are now just beginning to look more optimistically toward the future.”

Some parents, though, may experience long-term denial, constant and repressive depression, ongoing sleep and eating problems, intense feelings of anger, guilt, blame, and worthlessness.

These signal that a parent needs more care than a pastor can normally provide. An inexpensive and effective way for them to receive that help is to join a support group. Those who have experienced a stillbirth have found it beneficial to talk with others who have lost a baby.

“I never will be able to take my son to a ballgame or playground,” said one mother, “but I can take him and my memories to my support group. There I can talk and cry and share broken dreams openly. There no one would ever interrupt me and say: `Don’t you think you should be over this by now!’ Those who have lost a baby understand in a way others cannot.”

PROVIDE SPIRITUAL AFFIRMATION

The death of a child is a profoundly painful theological issue. One mother, whose child died during labor, asked me: “My little daughter didn’t have a chance at life. No one will ever know her. She was so small, so vulnerable. Does God know or care about my daughter?”

Her comments were a twentieth-century version of the ancient psalmist’s refrain: “What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?” (Psalm 8:4).

This verse helped her understand she was not alone in questioning whether God sees and cares. Then she and I were able to talk about the certainty of God’s love, loyalty, and concern for her and her stillborn daughter.

Writer Susie Blackmun’s first child died during labor. The baby had anencephaly, a defect in which the brain does not form properly.

She writes, “Losing a child has to be the purest form of hell that exists for a parent, yet I would rather have been pregnant with Julia and lost her than never to have carried her at all. She made her own mark in my life and in the lives of my family and friends. During her brief foray into the world, my first daughter contributed more than most people give in a lifetime. I am proud to be her mother.”

No matter how deep the hurts, the human spirit has a tremendous capacity for healing.

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Victor Parachin is a grief counselor and ordained minister living in Claremont, California.

Copyright (c) 1995 Christianity Today, Inc./LEADERSHIP Journal

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Copyright © 1995 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

WORRY

Rick Majerus, men’s basketball coach at the University of Utah, recently captured a common concern: “Everyone’s worried about the economy this year. Hey, my hairline is in recession, my waistline is in inflation, and altogether, I’m in depression.”

HONESTY

Two brothers had terrorized a small town for decades. They were unfaithful to their wives, abusive to their children, and dishonest in business. The younger brother died unexpectedly.

The surviving brother went to the pastor of the local church. “I’d like you to conduct my brother’s funeral,” he said, “but it’s important to me that during the service, you tell everyone my brother was a saint.”

“But he was far from that,” the minister countered.

The wealthy brother pulled out his checkbook. “Reverend, I’m prepared to give $100,000 to your church. All I’m asking is that you publicly state that my brother was a saint.”

On the day of the funeral, the pastor began his eulogy this way. “Everyone here knows that the deceased was a wicked man, a womanizer, and a drunk. He terrorized his employees and cheated on his taxes.” Then he paused.

“But as evil and sinful as this man was, compared to his older brother, he was a saint!”

–Greg Asimakoupoulos

Naperville, Illinois

Leonard Sweet, in his Soul Cafe newsletter, included this list of “Top 10 Liars’ Lies”:

10. We’ll stay only five minutes.

9. This will be a short meeting.

8. I’ll respect you in the morning.

7. The check is in the mail.

6. I’m from the government, and I’m here to help you.

5. This hurts me more than it hurts you.

4. Your money will be cheerfully refunded.

3. We service what we sell.

2. Your table will be ready in just a minute.

1. I’ll start exercising (dieting, forgiving, … ) tomorrow.

IMPATIENCE

A young woman’s car stalled at a stoplight. She tried to get it started, but nothing. The light turned green and there she sat, angry and embarrassed, holding up traffic. The car behind could have gone around, but instead the driver added to her anger by laying on his horn.

After another desperate attempt to get the car started, she got out and walked back to the honker. The man rolled down his window in surprise.

“Tell you what,” she said. You go start my car, and I’ll sit back here and honk the horn for you.”

GREED

At a birthday party, it came time to serve the cake. A little boy named Brian blurted out, “I want the biggest piece!”

His mother quickly scolded him. “Brian, it’s not polite to ask for the biggest piece.”

The little guy looked at her in confusion, and asked, “Well then, how do you get it?”

–Olive Freeman

The Christian Reader

MARRIAGE

“Does this mean you won’t be cooking dinner tonight?”

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Copyright (c) 1995 Christianity Today, Inc./LEADERSHIP Journal

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Copyright © 1995 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

People today expect a pretty low level of intelligence and a pretty high level of arrogance from the pulpit. They expect to find a low level of sincerity and a low level of vulnerability. If we just flip the highs and lows on each of these, we will be a fairly compelling spokesperson. If we speak intelligently and humbly with sincerity, genuineness, and an openness about our struggles, the walls come crumbling down. People listen.

Yet there are times when we must put on the prophet’s hat. We proclaim “Thus saith the Lord,” and if there’s a steady stream of people going out the exits, that’s their problem.

But we’ve got to pick our spots to become highly authoritative. Some preachers pull “thus-saith-the-Lords” for voting Republican and rooting for the Cubs. I choose to invoke prophetic authority only in areas that are clear-cut and beyond the possibility of being misinterpreted.

When I preached on the Ninth Commandment, “Refuse to lie,” for example, I told everybody there are four airtight truths that come from the lips of a God who cannot tell a lie.

1. Every single one of you is a sinner. You’ve failed the moral test. You have violated the standards of the holiness of God. That’s airtight; that’s true.

2. There’s a judgment day on which you’re going to stand before a holy God and give an account of your life. You can tell yourself until you’re blue in the face that it isn’t going to happen to you, but it is.

3. People who repent of their sins and trust Christ will, on his merits, gain eternal life. Those who don’t will pay for their sins in hell. Two options. That’s true.

4. What you decide about the first three truths determines where you go for all of eternity.

Those are four absolutely airtight truths, but people don’t want to hear them, and they don’t want to decide on them. But they must.

There comes a time when you just step up to the plate with the bat in your hand and say, “You’re gonna hear it, and you’re gonna hear it straight. I’m not going to apologize, mince words, or get crafty about it.”

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–Bill Hybels is pastor of Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Illinois

Copyright (c) 1995 Christianity Today, Inc./LEADERSHIP Journal

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Copyright © 1995 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

In a Roman Catholic hospital in our town, in the elevator hallway, stands a life-size statue of Mary. Her face is perfect serenity. Her body is upright but not tense. Under one of her feet writhes a thickly muscled serpent; in its open mouth, fangs drip poison.

That's what preaching is. Preaching is stepping on the snake.

Children leave during the hymn that precedes the sermon. I enter the pulpit, read the Scripture, and fiddle with my notes; I gather my wits. Nervousness gives way to adrenaline for battle; it swells my awareness. I lift my eyes, open my mouth: the sermon begins.

I've heard of the art of preaching, and I've heard of the art of war. Preparation for preaching and for war requires human creativity. Both activities are acquired crafts. Hand-to-hand combat is not a recital, and neither is preaching. Preaching is an art, but it is not an art show. It isn't a concert, it isn't a speech.

Preaching is a form of aggression. As we preach, Yahweh, the God of war, conducts holy war to conquer territory. The field of conflict is the human heart.

PIERCING OFFENSE

I begin slowly, letting the words come as they will, following my outline section by section. I lay the groundwork for the thesis by commenting on the text and introducing the thesis slowly. I methodically scan the eyes in the congregation. I read every reaction.

As the sermon progresses and the thesis is revealed, the congregation divides up, splinters into individuals. Some are comforted, others are in distress. Some are angry or stubborn. I feel the battle engage. A line must be drawn in front of every listener.

One person looks offended. I've touched a nerve in a person who is normally self-possessed. What can I say to offend their pride even more? This is where preaching really begins. The offense is what counts. Stepping on a snake is an offense to the snake. Its pride must be mortally wounded.

It's easy to back off from the offense. The flesh will scream, and the Devil will bare his venom-dripping teeth. The human heart is the most fiercely guarded piece of ground in the universe. The fortress is built through years and years of self-justification and rationalization. The soul in sin feels alive, but it is dead. The sermon must shed light on the soul's dire circ*mstance so it may turn from sin and live. The people must hear the indicative of the sermon–"Thou art the man!"–if they are to hear the imperative of the sermon, "Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit."

I feel the offense of the words as they pierce hearts. I cannot stop until the whole truth is known: they are lost. Damnation must be preached. As Forsyth says, "There are not nearly enough preachers who preach, nor people who take home, the reality of damnation, or the connection of liberty with it."

I am a mainline-denomination preacher, quite shy by nature. I don't give altar calls. But when the battle for the human heart is pitched, the line scratched in my soul by that hellfire preacher leads me unfailingly where the sermon must go. The sermon needs to go to Christ. The line needs to be drawn. The demand needs to be made. Christ crucified must be placarded before every listener. There is a light, a calling, a demand, a raised voice, a pounded fist, the stamp of a foot. The snake is crushed.

Now the gospel. At the right moment, with the end in sight, the gentle voice. The Savior who would never snuff the smoking flax or break the bruised reed must also speak and make the plea for the soul to cross the line to life. Grace comes unexpectedly. The Way presents itself. The law raged, the gospel gently beckons. The law has condemned, the Savior pleads for mercy and peace. The corridor opens for the listener, the opportunity presents itself: receive the Savior; cross the line; enter life.

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When he wrote this, David Hansen was pastor of Belgrade Community Church in Belgrade, Montana. Adapted from The Art of Pastoring by David Hansen. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press, P.O. Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515

Copyright © 1995 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

One day, perhaps, when we look back from God’s throne on the Last Day we shall say with amazement and surprise, “If I had ever dreamed when I stood at the graves of my loved ones and everything seemed to be ended; if I had ever dreamed when I saw the specter of atomic war creeping upon us; if I had ever dreamed when I faced the meaningless fate of an endless imprisonment or a malignant disease; if I had ever dreamed that God was only carrying out his design and plan through all these woes, that in the midst of my cares and troubles and despair his harvest was ripening, and that everything was pressing on toward his last kingly day–if I had known this, I would have been more calm and confident; yes, then I would have been more cheerful and far more tranquil and composed.”

If we want an illustration of how this certainty works out in a human life, we have only to look at the Lord Jesus himself. What tremendous pressures there must have been within him to drive him to hectic, nervous, explosive activity! Must he not begin immediately to set the fire burning, to win people, to work out strategic plans to evangelize the world, to work, work, furiously work, unceasingly, unrestingly, before the night comes when no man can work? That’s what we would imagine the earthly life of the Son of God would be like, if we were to think of him in human terms.

But how utterly different was the actual life of Jesus! Though the burden of the whole world lay heavy upon his shoulders, though Corinth and Ephesus and Athens, whole continents, with all their desperate need, were dreadfully near to his heart, though suffering and sinning were going on in chamber, street corner, castle, and slums, seen only by the Son of God–though this immeasurable misery and wretchedness cried aloud for a physician, he has time to stop and talk to the individual.

He associates with publicans, lonely widows, and despised prostitutes; he moves among the outcasts of society, wrestling for the soul of individuals. He appears not to be bothered at all by the fact that these are not strategically important people, that they have no prominence, that they are not key figures, but only the unfortunate, lost children of the Father in heaven. He seems to ignore with a sovereign indifference the great so-called “world-historical perspectives” of his mission when it comes to one insignificant, blind, and smelly beggar, this Mr. Nobody, who is nevertheless so dear to the heart of God and must be saved.

Because Jesus knows that he must serve his neighbor (literally, those nearest here and now) he can confidently leave to his Father the things farthest away, the great perspectives. By being obedient in his little corner of the highly provincial precincts of Nazareth and Bethlehem, he allows himself to be fitted into a great mosaic whose master is God. And that’s why he has time for persons; for all time is in the hands of his Father. And that too is why peace and not unrest goes out from him. For God’s faithfulness already spans the world like a rainbow: he does not need to build it; he needs only to walk beneath it.

PROPAGANDA EVANGELISM

So, because Jesus knows which way the switches are set, because he knows what the outcome of growth and harvest will be, the words he speaks are not prepared, tactical propaganda speeches. The propaganda of men, even when it masquerades as a kind of evangelism and becomes an enterprise of the church, is always based on the accursed notion that success and failure, fruit and harvest, are dependent upon our human activity, upon our imagination, energy, and intelligence. Therefore the church too must guard against becoming merely a busy enterprise, and pastors must beware of becoming religious administrators devoid of power and dried up as far as spiritual substance is concerned.

Jesus is not a propagandist. And there is one fact which shows that he is not, and that is that for him speaking to his Father in prayer is more important than speaking to men, no matter how great the crowds that gather around him. Just when you think that now he must seize the opportunity, now surely he must strike while the masses are hot and mold them to his purpose, he “passes through the midst of them” and withdraws into the silence of communion with the Father.

Why was it that he spoke with authority, as the scribes and Pharisees did not? Because he was rhetorically gifted, because he was dynamic? No; he spoke with such power because he had first spoken with the Father, because always he came out of silence. He rested in eternity and therefore broke into time with such power. That’s why he is so disturbing to time. He lived in communion with God; that’s why his speech to men becomes an event of judgment and grace which none can escape.

Jesus’ powerful speech derives from the power of his prayer life, and the very reason why he can afford to pray so diligently and give the best hours of the day to this communion with the Father is that he knows that while he rests in eternity, it is not that nothing is happening, but that in doing this he is rather giving place to God’s Spirit, that then God is working and the seed is growing. Woe to the nervous activity of those of little faith! Woe to the anxiousness and busyness of those who do not pray!

Luther once said, “While I drink my little glass of Wittenberg beer, the gospel runs its course.” That is truly the finest and most comforting thing I have ever heard said about beer. The conversion of a man is not something that can be “produced.” The new life comes into being only by letting God work. Therefore, Luther can cheerfully and trustfully step down from the pulpit; he doesn’t need to go on incessantly crying, shouting, and roaring around the country. He can quietly drink his little glass of Wittenberg beer and trust in God. The Lord “gives to his beloved in sleep.”

In most cases today, we do not sin by being undutiful and doing too little work. On the contrary, we ought to ask ourselves whether we are still capable of being idle in God’s name. Take my word for it, you can really serve and worship God simply by lying flat on your back for once and getting away from this everlasting pushing and producing.

PRESCRIPTION FOR QUIET

Now, some of you may say, “All this may be so, but how do I go about achieving this detachment in which I stop allowing myself to be carried away by busyness and simply let God work?” This is the problem, after all. How can we attain this stillness?

There are some things which cannot be appreciated merely by understanding them; they must be practiced. For example, I may have listened to a piano concert of Mozart music and had a clear insight into its musical structure, I may even have plumbed its spiritual depths intuitively or intellectually; but I am still miles away from being able to play this piano concert, for I have not practiced it.

In exactly the same way it is possible for me to have understood the mystery of the seed growing secretly (Mark 4:26-34) and still not be able to let God’s seed really grow in my life. I know very well that I should drink my little glass of Wittenberg beer now, that I should be trusting enough to disconnect the gears and let myself relax. But I cannot do it; I cannot find the switch by which I can turn off my own activity and my own compulsive desire to do everything myself.

I should like to suggest, therefore, a little prescription, even though prescriptions always have something shady about them, since they may give the impression that there are certain tricks, certain forms of self-training by which one can learn the art of faith. As if faith were an “art” at all! Faith is nothing but being quiet and receptive when God speaks, being still when God acts. What I have to say, then, applies only to this quiet receptiveness. Or, to express it in a different way, it is suggested only in order to help us stop putting ourselves in the limelight and asserting ourselves when God wants to turn on his light and enlighten us.

When we are sitting in a train or bus or the back seat of our car, when the telephone is silent for a moment and secretaries and appointment books are gone for a time, we should try for once not to reach for the newspaper or the next file folder or for some kind of button, be it a radio knob or a bell push. Then we should try taking a deep breath and saying, “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost; as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.” This will give a sense of distance and peace.

We may then go on and ponder these words meditatively. Glory be to “the Father.” This means: Glory be to him who has brought me to this moment in my day’s work, who has entrusted to me my fellow workers, and in the last analysis makes the final decision with regard to every decision I am now obliged to make.

Glory be to “the Son.” The Son is none other than Jesus Christ, who died for me. Dare I–for whom he suffered such pains, for whom he opened the gates of heaven–dare I go on frittering myself away on trifles and futilities? Must not the one thing needful be constantly present in my mind, and must it not show up the merely relative importance of these many things which I do? For whom, or for what, did Christ die; for my cash register, for the roving eye of the boss whom I must please, for my television set, or for any other such trivialities? Or did he not rather die for the fellow beside me who is struggling with some burden in his life or for my children whom I hardly ever see? And as far as the children are concerned, did he die for their food and clothing or for their souls, which I do not know at all, because the “many things” are always getting between me and their souls?

Glory be to “the Holy Ghost.” Oh, I’m full of spirit, I am not unenlightened. I also have feeling, heart, sentiment, and imagination. But do I ever hold still in order that the wholly Other may fill me with his Spirit and give me a sense of the true priorities in life?

“As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.” Here we are encompassed by the everlasting arms, overarched by the rainbow of a faithfulness we can trust, founded upon a foundation which the shifting sands of daily routine can never provide.

If we perform this little exercise repeatedly, we shall soon find that it is not merely a mystical rigmarole and much less an inward flight by which we escape from daily duties. Oh, no; we shall go back to our job renewed, we shall become realists in a new way, for then we shall know how to distinguish what is great from what is small, the real from the false. The fanatics who believe that man can “make” everything are really fools at bottom. They are not realistic at all, even though they have the cold, sober eyes of hardheaded men of fact.

But the man who has grasped the mystery of the seed growing secretly and, like the farmer in the parable, goes out and does his part of the job and then commits the fields to God and lies down to sleep in his name–that man is doing not only the most godly but the wisest thing. For godliness and wisdom are far more closely related than our philosophy and the wisdom of the “managers” ever dream.

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Helmut Thielicke was rector and professor of theology at the University of Hamburg in Hamburg, Germany.

Copyright (c) 1995 Christianity Today, Inc./LEADERSHIP Journal

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Copyright © 1995 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

In this new column, Montana pastor Dave Hansen reflects on how reading pastors from the past can mentor us today.

The congregation had recently endured a bitter fight. It fractured every which way, the ecclesiastical equivalent of a California fault zone. I paid one of my first pastoral visits to an octogenarian teacher and church saint. She was dying. She gathered her strength, sat up straight in bed, fixed her eyes on mine, and spoke a warning I would rue ignoring: “Be careful; this town kills teachers and ministers.”

She laid her burden down, and it came and rested on my shoulders. It was a lot for a first-timer to hear.

What do you preach when every conceivable stance involves taking sides with people you don’t agree with and against people you desperately want to pastor? It’s one thing to stand up for what you believe. But what heals? What redeems? What unites?

A few sentences from Dietrich Bonhoeffer provided me with perhaps my only option: “Upon Christ, however, who is the proclaimed Word, should fall all of the need, the sin, and death of the congregation.”

There was need, sin, and death aplenty. Somehow, practically, I had to give it to Christ. Could this really happen in preaching?

Bonhoeffer’s answer: “The proclaimed word is the incarnate Christ himself. … Therefore the proclaimed word of God is not a medium of expression for something else, something which lies behind it, but rather it is the Christ himself walking through his congregation as the Word.”

I conflated the sentences into my own vision of preaching. I saw Christ, during the sermon, walking up and down the aisles of the church forgiving sins, healing, challenging, defeating the Devil. Not in my words or ideas, but in the proclaimed Word, in the fusion of Holy Scripture and Holy Spirit in human words that is somehow, miraculously, the divine, creative Word of God.

Bonhoeffer’s theology of the Word was intellectually exhilarating, but would it work? Was the preached Word actually the ministering presence of Christ? I knew the people would never unite around ideas or causes. Given the number of pastors they’d gone through in the last fifty years, I would certainly not be the catalyst. But Christ? If Christ was preached, would they rally around him? I decided to give it a shot.

The decision forced me to shift the critical mass of my homiletics from creating an effect in the congregation to bringing Christ to the congregation. This changed my ministry forever. And I believe it is the critical distinction for all preaching.

“Only where Christ is preached,” said Bonhoeffer, “is God present. Without him the sermon is at best nothing more than empty doctrine.”

The crucial instruction I needed for this shift came from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s lectures on preaching, delivered to his students at the Confessing Church Seminary at Finkenwalde, Germany, from 1935 to 1939. Clyde E. Fant edited and translated them, and appended them to Bonhoeffer’s Worldly Preaching: Lectures on Homiletics (Crossroad, 1991). The lectures are packed with practical instruction on the preparation and delivery of expository sermons.

Bonhoeffer teaches that preaching Christ comes with confident, expository preaching: “The preacher should be assured that Christ enters the congregation through those words which he proclaims from Scripture. …

“When we ask ourselves `What shall I say today to the congregation?’ we are lost. But when we ask, `What does this text say to the congregation?’ we find ample support and abundant confidence.”

Abundant confidence sounded good, but there was a price to pay. Never one to shirk his duty to detail the cost of discipleship, Bonhoeffer tells why expository preaching is so painfully difficult; his answer is spiritual.

“When the sermon is regarded as an interpretation,” he says, “then the involvement of the preacher is that of a man who puts himself to death for the sake of the Word, who dies to his own will and only wishes to be the handservant to God.”

These lectures are blatant about spiritual warfare in preaching. They had to be. Bonhoeffer’s students preached in a land possessed by Nazi hate. He knew what was at stake then and forever when Christ is preached. He wrote: “As a witness to Christ, the sermon is a struggle with demons. Every sermon must overcome Satan. Every sermon fights a battle. But this does not occur through the dramatic efforts of the preacher. It happens only through the proclamation of the One who has trodden upon the head of the Devil. We usually do not recognize Satan anyway. We do not find him, Christ finds him. The Devil departs from him. Satan waits nowhere so for his prey as where the congregation gathers itself. Nothing is more important to him than to hinder Christ’s coming to the congregation. Therefore, Christ must be preached.”

I realize that all this sounds rather highfalutin’ and hyperspiritual, but the result is quite the reverse. In upholding the radical distinction between what we do and what Christ does, we are freed to be ourselves. As Bonhoeffer says, “In the service of Jesus I become natural. I stand at the altar and at the pulpit as the person that I really am. And I imitate no one and nothing.”

Consequently I love Bonhoeffer’s advice on announcements in worship. “The announcements from the pulpit,” he says, “should include those things which are of significance for the entire congregation. Much effort should be devoted to these announcements. They are the life of the congregation as the body of Christ.”

Ultimately, it was during the announcement period that I sensed the first signs of spring. Announcements increased as ministries bloomed. They became buoyant and convincing as our congregational life became a sweet affair. There were droughts and deaths and disasters yet to come. But we were no longer alone. Christ preached had become Christ present and Christ alive, Christ the center, Christ the Lord of our life together.

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Dave Hansen is pastor of Belgrade Community Church in Belgrade, Montana.

HIGHLIGHTS OF BONHOEFFER’S WORLDLY PREACHING

“I preach because the church is there–and, I preach that the church might be there.”

“The sinister thing is that one can use the Word in a demonically suggestive way without knowing it. Dangerous, destructive powers surround the pulpit orator. Anyone who consciously works with his psychological capabilities can, with the help of the Devil, become a great ‘evangelistic’ preacher. If the preacher wants to be certain about the truth of his preaching he should devote himself exclusively to the text.”

“The text gives the sermon its form. Artificial organizational schemes and sermon forms produce pulpit orators. We don’t need model sermons; sermons that are according to the text are model sermons.”

“The basis of preaching is not flesh and blood, customs and culture … and its form is not one of cultural unity, but rather its basis is the Word and its form is obedience. To attempt to get close to the culture of the people and to the contemporary scene is actually to get separated from both the contemporary and the people.”

“The form of the preached word is different from every other form of speech. Other speeches are structured so that they have some truth which they wish to communicate either behind them or beneath them or over them, or else they are arranged so as to express an emotion or teach a concept. These human words communicate something else besides what they are of themselves. They become a means to an end.

“The meaning of the proclaimed word, however, does not lie outside itself; it is the thing itself. It does not transmit anything else, it does not express anything else, it has no external objectives–rather, it communicates that it is itself: the historical Jesus Christ, who bears humanity upon himself with all its sorrows and its guilt.”

Copyright (c) 1995 Christianity Today, Inc./LEADERSHIP Journal

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Copyright © 1995 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

In 1990, the year Gardner Taylor retired from preaching, Lee Strobel began to preach. By that time, Taylor had pastored historic Concord Baptist Church in New York City for 42 years. Today at 77 he still preaches almost every weekend, while Strobel regularly fills the Plexiglas pulpit at Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Illinois.

Taylor preached in a heyday of American preaching, when New York City pulpits were filled with the likes of George Buttrick, Robert McCracken, Fulton Sheen–and Gardner Taylor. In 1980 “Time” magazine declared him “dean of the nation’s black preachers.” The “Christian Century” recently quipped, “What was once alleged of Southern Baptist preacher Carlyle Marney may equally be said of Taylor: he has a voice like God’s–only deeper.”

Throughout his ministry Taylor’s love of preaching was surpassed only by his love for Laura, his wife of 52 years. “I sometimes see her lying in repose now,” he said, “and a great sadness comes over me because I know one of us must leave the other. But what can we do?”

Last February, several weeks after those words were published, Laura was struck and killed in a crosswalk by a city truck.

“My wife’s passing,” says Taylor now, “has given me a far larger confidence in the future life.”

Before Lee Strobel began preaching, he earned a master’s degree from Yale Law School and then became an award-winning reporter for the Chicago Tribune. The prototype Unchurched Harry, he began attending Willow Creek and moved from confessed atheist and irreligious journalist to a fully devoted follower of Jesus Christ.

Eventually Strobel joined the staff of Willow Creek and now serves as a teaching pastor; he, Bill Hybels, and two others share the responsibility of preaching to 15,000 people each weekend.

One thing didn’t change at conversion for Strobel, however: his investigative intensity. A while ago, his daughter said, “Dad, can we buy the house next door?”

“Why would you want to move next door?” he asked.

“No, no,” his daughter replied. “We wouldn’t move next door. You would move next door the weeks you’re working on a sermon.”

Strobel is the author of “Inside the Mind of Unchurched Harry & Mary” and “What Jesus Would Say.”

LEADERSHIP brought Lee Strobel and Gardner Taylor together to find out what makes preaching biblical–and how preachers present biblical truth in different generations.

LEADERSHIP: What was the first sermon that made an impact on you?

TAYLOR: It would have been around 1929. My father was a preacher in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He pastored a church that I later pastored. I was only 13 when he died, but as a boy I remember a sermon he preached, “A Balm In Gilead,” which touched me deeply.

STROBEL: It was January 20, 1980; I was 28 years old. I remember the date because I was an atheist. My wife had become a Christian through Willow Creek and encouraged me to attend. I rebuffed her attempts for several months but finally went. That Sunday Bill Hybels was preaching a message called “Basic Christianity.” For the first time in my life, I walked away understanding what grace is. I don’t want to say no one had ever tried to tell me before, but at least I had never heard it.

I came away from that service thinking two things: I don’t believe it’s true. But if it is, it would have incredible implications for my life. That sermon prompted a spiritual investigation that culminated in my coming to faith in late 1981.

LEADERSHIP: What changes in preaching have you observed during your ministry?

TAYLOR: There was much more a sense of the transcendence of God in the preaching of the forties and fifties.

There was also a much greater confidence in America–what it was and where it was going. I think we are in the midst of a great disillusionment about the land and about its future and about our future. So the emphasis has changed. Now one needs to preach about an authentic hope.

STROBEL: We’re seeing a difference in the kind of person that comes to our seeker service today compared to the person who came five years ago. Five years ago, people were more cynical; they arrived with arms folded, saying, “I dare you to communicate something to me that matters.”

Now they’re saying, “I’m in my third marriage, and it’s failing. I’ve got my second BMW, which hasn’t brought satisfaction. I’ve risen to the top of my company, but it doesn’t fulfill me the way I thought it would. ” They see the moral fabric of America coming unraveled, and they’re scared.

Therefore, the immanence of God tends to get communicated more–the closeness, the relationship that Christ offers.

LEADERSHIP: What do those listeners sense a need for?

STROBEL: There’s a lot of confusion. People don’t know what they feel. Many see themselves as victims as opposed to sinful. Some of the successful people I meet are desperate because their success has not brought them the soul satisfaction they thought it would. Others seem fearful.

TAYLOR: The great preacher George Buttrick was supposed to have said to Norman Vincent Peale, “Norman, don’t you think your people feel insecure because maybe they are?” (Laughter.)

Some of the most successful are the most desperate. Rudyard Kipling gave an address to the graduating medical class of McGill University in which he said, “You’ll go out from here, and very likely you’ll make a lot of money. One day you’ll meet someone for whom that means very little. Then you will know how poor you are.”

When I was a young pastor, I was lecturing at an institute with A.J. Muste, the pacifist, with whom I roomed. I had three or four pairs of shoes. Muste had one pair, and one of his shoes had a hole in it. But something about the man’s spirit made me feel how poor I really was.

LEADERSHIP: Thirty years ago a sermon on Elijah and his desert experience at Horeb would have emphasized God’s sovereignty and provision. In today’s therapeutic climate, often the application is how to cope with burnout or depression. Is that a legitimate switch in emphasis?

TAYLOR: The psychologists and the psychiatrists have had their impact. Much of today’s psychological preaching has put an emphasis upon the problems within ourselves, obscuring repentance from what it was in an earlier day.

Any type of preaching that does not bring in the vertical aspect of the sermon–the impact of God upon human life–cannot be called a sermon. There’s no excuse for the preacher if he or she is not speaking to people for God–a presumptuous undertaking, to be sure, but one that we are called to do. And unless that is done I don’t think preaching has occurred.

STROBEL: There’s a continuum these days in preaching: On the one end are extremely vertical messages that emphasize doctrine or the nature of God but, unfortunately, lack application. These sermons generally don’t accomplish what I think the goal of preaching is, which is life change.

But I also have trouble with the other side of the continuum, which emphasizes application, but often just through human ideas. The preacher tacks on a verse or two to give it some legitimacy, but essentially it’s a man-based solution.

The answer is in the middle: Whatever we preach has to flow out of the truth of God, and, be applied to people’s lives as well. The Bible tells us to be not just hearers of the Word but doers. I want the sermon to help people do, to help people change.

LEADERSHIP: How do you determine whether the sermon you have just preached is biblical enough?

TAYLOR: When I was a lad, there was a woman who lectured around the country. She once said that she liked to see a preacher open the Bible when he or she starts preaching. Doing so may not do all that should be done, but it does something. It says that one is dealing out of the crucial context of the Bible.

I’m suspicious of preaching that is not biblically based, but I’m also suspicious of preaching that is biblically confined. If one doesn’t get out of the Bible and into people’s lives, I think one has missed it. If a preacher tries to change people’s lives without the Bible, I think he or she is something less than a Christian preacher.

STROBEL: It’s important to understand what does not make a sermon biblical–the number of verses quoted, for example, or a certain language that is used. Alan Walker, a former Methodist missionary, once said that in our churches there is “an idolatry of words”: When people don’t hear certain buzz words, they make the sometimes absurd criticism that the gospel is not being preached.

Nor do I think it’s necessarily whether the message is expository, topical, or textual. I did a message once that was unbiblical in the sense that I didn’t quote Scripture. I wanted to preach a simple message on the gospel, so we created a forest scene on the stage of the church. A little girl sat on my lap, and I read her a children’s book called Adam Raccoon at Forever Falls, a powerful allegory of the gospel. I was preaching to the children–but I was also preaching to their parents. I read the story, and then I closed the book; the little girl jumped off my lap. Then I looked out over the audience and said, “What you just heard was the gospel of Jesus Christ told in a story form.” I explained it and helped them crystallize what the gospel means for their lives.

Being biblical means the gospel of Jesus is presented in its fullness, with accuracy, and in a compelling way, calling people to action.

TAYLOR: Every preacher, every Christian for that matter, needs his or her sense of the whole range of Scripture. What is it all about? In The Scarlet Thread, I wrote there is a crimson thread that runs through all of biblical history–that God is out to get his Creation back. And a sermon needs to be tested by that.

Incidentally, Lee, about the amount of Scripture, the Scottish preachers used to say that you ought to use a large body of Scripture in case there’s nothing else in the message. (Laughter.) Someone also said that if there’s absolutely no value in a sermon, if that can happen, the people on that day are taught patience. (Laughter.)

STROBEL: I look at each message and ask myself, What kind of sermon is this? Is it a “What” message–primarily informational? Sometimes I need to communicate information. I once preached a message on evolution versus creation, which was largely informational.

Some messages are “Why” messages. For instance, why does God say we should not engage in certain sexual activity?

Then there are the “How” messages. If you preach a message on the power of God, for example, people will nod their heads and say, “Of course God is powerful. He created the world.” But their real question is, “How do I access that power in my life?” In these sermons, I fail people if I don’t help them know how to access the power that God offers us.

LEADERSHIP: How do you know if you succeeded in preaching the right kind of message?

STROBEL: At Willow Creek we’re honest about evaluating each other’s work.

I give each message three times. After the first time, a few elders and other discerning leaders of the church give me written feedback. So if there is a problem, I can correct it before I give it again. For example, once after I preached on a Saturday evening, Bill Hybels pulled me aside and basically told me the message didn’t work. If I hadn’t trusted him, it would have destroyed me, because he was brutally honest.

I stayed up all night fixing the message and then gave it again twice Sunday morning. Bill was right; I had not done enough work that week. I’m thankful he cares enough to give me a no-holds-barred evaluation.

TAYLOR: I think one needs that. During my wife’s lifetime, I was blessed with that. She talked very straight to me.

At one point, I had gotten too involved in Brooklyn politics because of the size of the church. After a while, my wife said to me, “Your preaching is getting very thin.” It was one of the most scathing things I’ve ever heard. I soon stopped preaching too much about politics. It’s something one needs to do, but for it to lay primary claim upon one’s life as a preacher is dangerous.

LEADERSHIP: How has modern media affected the listener of the sermon?

TAYLOR: A man who wrote for Lorimar Productions once said that in television you have fifty seconds to get people’s attention. If you miss them, they may still be there bodily, but they’re gone mentally. Of course, this has made a difference.

The preachers I knew in my early years, during the golden era of preaching in New York City, had such enormous gifts of communication. They seemed to preach with their whole being. Everything about them was a preacher. It was something to listen to, and people listened. Perhaps preaching was esteemed more; people were more attached to it. But I’m not sure the gothic kind of preaching that went on in that day would go over well today.

STROBEL: We may have to connect with people more quickly these days–we need to establish credibility and relevance right away–but I think people will stay with you if you speak to issues that make a difference in their lives. I don’t agree with the notion that people have short attention spans. People will sit in front of a TV for six hours at a time or attend a three-hour concert.

I do try to think through every sermon to see if I can supplement the boring image of a lone preacher standing and speaking. I try, for example, to integrate video into my preaching when I can.

For instance, when I preached a message called “The God of Hope,” I said that we have a God who will give us a do-over in life, like when a little kid plays baseball and strikes out, and everybody says, “Do over! Do over!” To drive home the point, in the middle of the message I showed a three-minute clip from the motion picture City Slickers. It was from the scene where the friends of one of the main characters, who had made a wreck of his life, talked about do-overs. Afterward, I said that God could give us the ultimate do-over. The effect was powerful.

Most sermons don’t lend themselves to movie clips; you don’t want to become gimmicky. But sometimes a slide or video or prop can illuminate God’s Word in a way that gives the congregation a fresh glimpse into what you’re trying to say.

LEADERSHIP: Does people’s general ignorance of Scripture change how we must approach the sermon?

TAYLOR: Today one has to assume there is an ignorance of the Scripture. The culture cannot help but affect everybody in it. But I find among older blacks, there is still a reverence for the Bible. Among younger blacks, there is curiosity.

More important, I think the preacher must have certain presuppositions about Scripture. It’s amazing that twenty centuries of preaching have come and gone out of the Old Testament and the twenty-seven New Testament pamphlets. That alone is reason enough for the authority and the divine nature of Scripture–twenty centuries of preaching from this thin volume. There is a quality about Scripture that is compelling and engaging. And it first ought to engage the preacher. If it does, and he or she deals with it faithfully, it will likely engage the people.

STROBEL: John Stott once said that good preaching begins in the Bible and then builds a bridge to the real world, which I think is true for believers, because they trust the Bible. Often for seekers, however, I find that the reverse works: I begin in the real world, connecting with their needs, and show them that I do understand where they’ve been and where they are. Based on that, I show the relevance of Scripture. I build a bridge from the real world into the world of Scripture.

TAYLOR: That was Dr. Fosdick’s method. He preached to a highly critical congregation–John Dewey and his crowd at Columbia University. And he went at it, as he said, from the human side toward the divine. Dr. Fosdick’s preaching has been widely criticized, some of it justifiably, but Fosdick went at a biblical truth as it relates to human life from life’s situations. That’s just the way he preached.

And, of course, it was tried in England, certainly, where they carried the evening service out of the church into theaters and other venues. The evening service was more of a guest service.

STROBEL: Back in the late eighties, during a slow news week, Time ran a cover story on Jesus that they had on file. It turned out to be their best-selling issue of the year. People are curious about the Bible and curious about Jesus. However, they’re not so curious about the church, which is the problem. A lot of people are turned off toward the institution of the church.

TAYLOR: That’s true, but that’s not all bad. There is in each of us a skeptical aspect to our personalities. I think this serves the preacher well, because there are skeptic-ideas, skeptic-moods in the people to whom we preach. I am suspicious of preachers who are completely sure about everything. I don’t think it’s real. There are doubts in life. There are questions, uncertainties, fears. And to speak with a bland assurance, I think, is to cheapen the gospel.

LEADERSHIP: Is increasing people’s knowledge about the Bible one of your goals in preaching?

STROBEL: It is a goal but not the goal. I see it as a means to an end, which is life change. What I hope my preaching does is help people become more like Jesus. That is life change.

There is an informational component to a message, but I don’t spend a lot of time trying to teach Greek or Hebrew words. I use as much biblical knowledge as is necessary to help people understand what the Bible teaches about the topic, so that they become doers of the Word. The classroom-type of teaching of biblical information is probably best done somewhere other than the main service. At Willow Creek, we offer other venues for in-depth informational teaching.

TAYLOR: There’s a story about a southern preacher who knew Greek and Hebrew and used it every Sunday. The chairman of the deacon board made a motion in a business meeting that they seek a new pastor on the grounds that nobody in the congregation except one person understood any Greek–and he knew only the Greek alphabet. The board recommended the pastor ought to be free to go somewhere where his talents might be more appreciated. The board was probably right.

LEADERSHIP: How important is it to communicate theological truth in a sermon?

TAYLOR: The Christian preacher is called upon to declare to people the theological truths of God, but he or she has to get the theology into the street where people live. That means knocking on the doors where people reside. The preacher must go see what their lives are all about.

STROBEL: Theology is especially important today, with so much relativism, with people saying, “Your truth is good, and my truth is good.” Unfortunately, many people have stopped looking for truth at all. Instead, they’re looking for something that works in their life; they don’t care if it comes from Buddhism or from Islam or from Christianity.

Christianity is not true because it works; Christianity works because it’s true. We must go to Scripture and show the transcendent truth. But I try to teach theology without ever using the word. Sometimes I’ll even stop in a message and say, “Time out. There is a word called sanctification, and this is what it means.”

Theological truths must be taught so we don’t veer off course. But the way they’re taught to the average person should be a hands-on kind of theology.

LEADERSHIP: Should preaching only proclaim truth? Or do you refute error?

TAYLOR: One does both. But I think one ought to proclaim truth more than refute error. And in proclaiming truth, one ought to be refuting error. I think sometimes we are called upon to face it directly.

I play golf (or try to play golf), and I run into men who are skeptical of the church. They arch their eyebrows and say, “I don’t go to church. I believe in the Golden Rule.”

I’ve said to them, “I had a Doberman Pinscher like that. A very fine animal, too. And he never went to church, either. But I know why he didn’t–he was a dog. Why don’t you?” (Of course, I’m old enough to say such a thing and get away with it, and I always make sure they don’t have a club in their hand.)

Sometimes you have to come at people that way. But I don’t think you can build your preaching around that. It must be a change of pace. I try not to attack continually on the issue of race, for instance. Constantly harping is not the answer, though to ignore it, I think, is to be unfaithful to the gospel.

LEADERSHIP: The ultimate test for a biblical preacher is probably when speaking to crises in the congregation or nation. What have you learned from those situations?

TAYLOR: The Civil Rights revolution was a great convulsion I had to deal with biblically. Another moment was the Sunday after Pearl Harbor. Still another was the Sunday of the missile crisis in Cuba. I have never known a congregation so tense. I could feel the tension throughout the sanctuary. More than ever in my life, there came over me the awareness of how people were affected by world events. They could not know what was going to happen.

As I preached during those difficult times, I wanted people to know that God is still on the throne. I couldn’t predict the future; I could only give them the assertion my old theology dean, Thomas Graham, used to make: faith is reason gone courageous.

It’s the same in a personal crisis, like the recent sudden death of my wife. I don’t know what people do without faith. I don’t always have a calm assurance about her death, but I believe with all my heart that God will not do us evil.

LEADERSHIP: Did the fact you were a preacher help you during the time of your wife’s death and the grief afterwards? Or did it complicate the grieving?

TAYLOR: I guess it complicated it in one way, because of the assurance I had passed out to people during my years in ministry. I thought I was sincere. I thought I understood what they were going through–but I did not. It was humbling. People reminded me gently that I had said things to them that now I had to deal with.

My wife’s passing made me realize that the veil between this life and the next is very thin. It has also given me a far larger confidence in the future life. I have gropingly come to believe that the Lord transfers our holdings on to heaven in advance of our arrival.

As we grow older, this life shows its true qualities of impermanence and unreliability. The young ought not feel that way; they ought to have the illusion of permanence. I don’t think you could live very well without that illusion, but it isn’t reality. As one gets older, God has ordained it so that as one must leave the world, it becomes less attractive.

LEADERSHIP: What challenges you about trying to preach biblically today?

STROBEL: A theologian named William Hordern said there are two ways you can communicate the gospel.

One way is transforming the message into something it isn’t because you’re trying to soft-sell it; you’re afraid to confront people with the hard truth. And so, the tough parts of the gospel like sin and repentance are softened. That’s not legitimate. I think we have to preach on sin. We have to preach on repentance.

The other way, which I think is legitimate, is not to transform the gospel into something it isn’t but to translate it into language and art forms and modes of communication that people in twentieth-century America can understand, relate to, and respond to.

One of the weaknesses of preaching today is a fear of confronting people. But I think people, deep down, want to be confronted; they want the truth. Some churches that do seeker services tend to back off on the tough issues like sin and repentance. I think the opposite needs to be true. We always need to communicate grace, but we should not shrink from challenging people.

TAYLOR: This is one of the tensions of preaching. In the sense that a preacher must perform, he or she is like an actor. But the moment a preacher becomes an actor, he or she is in trouble, because preaching becomes nothing more than manipulation. And, yet, in another sense, what we do approaches manipulation. The tension ought to keep the preacher humble.

In another generation, James Denny in Scotland used to say that it is difficult for one to prove at the same time that he or she is clever and that Jesus Christ is powerful to save. One may do one or the other.

This is one of the anomalies, one of the contradictions, one of the dangers of preaching. When one gets engrossed with the idea that he or she is doing something, the actual preaching diminishes. And, yet, one is doing something. It’s in that tension, I think, that we do our work best. The preacher has to be aware: Am I intruding myself too much into the gospel? But if I remove myself from the preaching, it’s eviscerated.

So many of us are forever pushing the Lord out of the center place in his church and trying to take that place. If we would let the Lord have his rightful place in his own house, he could do much more for us and with us. It’s a perilous work we’re in, perhaps more perilous for the preacher than for the people the preacher preaches to. Only grace can save us from either becoming too withdrawn or too assertive.

STROBEL: I like to use a baseball analogy. Wrigley Field in Chicago has a wind that blows out to centerfield. There are times when I have done my best, but the truth is that my preaching was like a pop fly that should have been easily caught by the centerfielder for the final out. But then the wind takes the ball out of the park.

I suddenly realize the whole process is governed by the Holy Spirit. I hit a pop-up. I prayed; I studied; I fasted; I gave the best message I could. But it wasn’t that good. Then God took it and did something miraculous.

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Would you like to talk with Gardner Taylor and Lee Strobel about the challenges of biblical preaching? They will lead a live, online discussion on Monday, November 6, at 8 p.m. (Central Time). In America Online, type the key words “CO Live.” To enroll in Christianity Online, call 1-800-413-9747, ext. 174021.

Copyright (c) 1995 Christianity Today, Inc./LEADERSHIP Journal

Copyright © 1995 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

CONFRONTATION

Roberta Croteau writes in Aspire, “In the mid 1980’s, singer Amy Grant’s life was not as charmed as it appeared. Troubles in her marriage–her husband Gary’s cocaine habit and their subsequent talk of divorce–left Amy in one of her darkest moments. She remembers:

“`For a few days, I just stayed in bed and mourned my life. The only hope I could seem to see was just junking it all, moving to Europe, and starting everything all over again. It was then my sister, in a last-ditch visit, marched up right beside my bed and said, “Fine, go to Europe, leave it all behind, start your life again. But before you go, tell (my little girl) how you can sing that Jesus can help her through anything in her life, but that he couldn’t help you.”‘

“The words hit home. Amy and Gary began marriage and personal counseling, slowly rebuilding their relationships with each others and with God.”

GRACE

Reader’s Digest wrote of the late Harvey Penick: “For 90-year-old golf pro Harvey Penick, success has come late. His first golf book, Harvey Penick’s Little Red Book, has sold more than a million copies, which his publisher believes makes it one of the biggest things in the history of sports books. His second book, And If You Play Golf, You’re My Friend, has already sold nearly three-quarters of a million. But anyone who imagines that Penick wrote the books to make money doesn’t know the man.

“In the 1920s Penick bought a red spiral notebook and began jotting down observations about golf. He never showed the book to anyone except his son until 1991, when he shared it with a local writer and asked if he thought it was worth publishing. The man read it and told him yes. He left word with Penick’s wife the next evening that Simon & Schuster had agreed to an advance of $90,000.

“When the writer saw Penick later, the old man seemed troubled. Finally, Penick came clean. With all his medical bills, he said, there was no way he could advance Simon & Schuster that much money. The writer had to explain that Penick would be the one to receive the $90,000.”

People often have Penick’s reaction to the fabulous gift of salvation offered in Jesus Christ. We ask, “What must I do?” God answers, “Just receive.”

–Eric Hulstrand

Binford, North Dakota

CONSCIENCE

Many electronic fire alarms have an internal switch triggered by a beam of light. As long as light is received unbroken by the photo-sensitive receiver, the detector is quiet. But if smoke or moisture or an insect obstructs the beam for even a split second, the alarm sounds.

Our conscience resembles such an alarm. When sin obstructs our connection with the light of God’s Spirit, the conscience signals us that there’s life-threatening danger.

–A.D. Sterner

Akron, Colorado

TRUST

In May 1995, Randy Reid, a 34-year-old construction worker, was welding on top of a nearly completed water tower outside Chicago. According to writer Melissa Ramsdell, Reid unhooked his safety gear to reach for some pipes when a metal cage slipped and bumped the scaffolding he stood on. The scaffolding tipped, and Reid lost his balance. He fell 110 feet, landing face down on a pile of dirt, just missing rocks and construction debris.

A fellow worker called 911. When paramedics arrived, they found Reid conscious, moving, and complaining of a sore back.

Apparently the fall didn’t cost Reid his sense of humor. As paramedics carried him on a backboard to the ambulance, Reid had one request: “Don’t drop me.” (Doctors later said Reid came away from the accident with just a bruised lung.)

Sometimes we resemble that construction worker. God protects us from harm in a 110-foot fall, but we’re still nervous about three-foot heights. The God who saved us from hell and death can protect us from the smaller dangers we face this week.

–Greg Asimakoupoulos

Naperville, Illinois

SPIRITUAL DISCIPLINE

In the movie Karate Kid, young Daniel asks Mister Miagi to teach him karate. Miagi agrees under one condition: Daniel must submit totally to his instruction and never question his methods.

Daniel shows up the next day eager to learn. To his chagrin, Mister Miagi has him paint a fence. Miagi demonstrates the precise motion for the job: up and down, up and down. Daniel takes days to finish the job. Next, Miagi has him scrub the deck using a prescribed stroke. Again the job takes days. Daniel wonders, What does this have to do with karate? but he says nothing.

Next, Miagi tells Daniel to wash and wax three weather-beaten cars and again prescribes the motion. Finally, Daniel reaches his limit: “I thought you were going to teach me karate, but all you have done is have me do your unwanted chores!”

Daniel has broken Miagi’s one condition, and the old man’s face pulses with anger. “I have been teaching you karate! Defend yourself!”

Miagi thrusts his arm at Daniel, who instinctively defends himself with an arm motion exactly like that used in one of his chores. Miagi unleashes a vicious kick, and again Daniel averts the blow with a motion used in his chores. After Daniel successfully defends himself from several more blows, Miagi simply walks away, leaving Daniel to discover what the master had known all along: skill comes from repeating the correct but seemingly mundane actions.

The same is true of godliness.

–Duke Winser

El Segundo, California

SERVANTHOOD

Writer Philip Yancey notes that toward the end of his life, Albert Einstein removed the portraits of two scientists–Newton and Maxwell–from his wall.

He replaced those with portraits of Gandhi and Schweitzer. Einstein explained that it was time to replace the image of success with the image of service.

PRAYER

In Point Man, Steve Farrar tells the story of George McCluskey.

When McCluskey married and started a family, he decided to invest one hour a day in prayer, because he wanted his kids to follow Christ. After a time, he expanded his prayers to include his grandchildren and greatgrandchildren. Every day between 11 a.m. and noon, he prayed for the next three generations.

As the years went by, his two daughters committed their lives to Christ and married men who went into full-time ministry. The two couples produced four girls and one boy. Each of the girls married a minister, and the boy became a pastor.

The first two children born to this generation were both boys. Upon graduation from high school, the two cousins chose the same college and became roommates. During their sophom*ore year, one boy decided to go into the ministry. The other didn’t. He undoubtedly felt some pressure to continue the family legacy, but he chose instead to pursue his interest in psychology.

He earned his doctorate and eventually wrote books for parents that became bestsellers. He started a radio program heard on more than a thousand stations each day. The man’s name was James Dobson.

“Through his prayers, George McCluskey affected far more than one family.

–Loyal J. Martin

Newton, Kansas

COMPASSION

One day a student asked anthropologist Margaret Mead for the earliest sign of civilization in a given culture. He expected the answer to be a clay pot or perhaps a fish hook or grinding stone. Her answer was “a healed femur.”

Mead explained that no healed femurs are found where the law of the jungle, survival of the fittest, reigns. A healed femur shows that someone cared. Someone had to do that injured person’s hunting and gathering until the leg healed. The evidence of compassion is the first sign of civilization.

–R. Wayne Willis

Louisville, Kentucky

COMMUNITY

A few winters ago, heavy snows hit North Carolina. Following a wet, six-inch snowfall, it was interesting to see the effect along Interstate 40.

Next to the highway stood several large groves of tall, young pine trees. The branches were bowed down with the heavy snow–so low that branches from one tree were often leaning against the trunk or branches of another.

Where trees stood alone, however, the effect of the heavy snow was different. The branches had become heavier and heavier, and since there were no other trees to lean against, the branches snapped. They lay on the ground, dark and alone in the cold snow.

When the storms of life hit, we need to be standing close to other Christians. The closer we stand, the more we will be able to hold up.

–Carl G. Conner

Elizabeth City, North Carolina

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What are the most effective illustrations you’ve come across? For items used, Leadership will pay $25. If the material has been published previously, please indicate the source. Send contributions to: To Illustrate … , Leadership, 465 Gundersen Drive, Carol Stream, IL 60188.

Copyright (c) 1995 Christianity Today, Inc./LEADERSHIP Journal

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Copyright © 1995 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

All conversation between men and women” according to Roy McCloughry, “is cross-cultural conversation.” If he’s right, any preacher may communicate well with only part of the congregation and miss the other part.

As a woman who has listened mostly to male preachers during the past six decades, I’ve reflected during many sermons on why some connect with my world and others don’t.

HOW MEN AND WOMEN THINK

Ruth Tiffany Barnhouse compares the male and female thinking processes to two kinds of vision we all use: macular and peripheral. Macular vision focuses on one thing to examine its details. Peripheral vision takes in the larger context. We use both every day; in fact, the two taken together allow us to see more fully what is there.

Barnhouse likens macular vision, focus, to the masculine way of thinking. Men tend to analyze problems, figure out their parts, and choose among the options.

She compares peripheral vision to feminine thinking. Women tend to consider the context, trying to keep all issues in view. This makes arrival at a “right” answer more complex.

For example, a couple talk about buying a car. He may check several models and compare prices, horsepower, extras included, etc. The decision looks pretty straightforward. When he brings up the subject at dinner, his wife asks a new set of questions he may consider irrelevant: What impression would the neighbors have if we start driving such an expensive car? Could Aunt Maude get in and out of the car easily when we take her grocery shopping? Would the pastor think we should increase our giving to the church if we’re able to drive such a nice car?

He looks at the car; she looks at the context in which the car will be used.

From birth, girl babies respond faster to human contact and are relatively uninterested in things. Boy babies like things from the start.

Carol Gilligan underlined the female tendency to put relationships before other values. In studies of children at play, researchers found that boys’ games last longer because they settle disputes by elaborating rules. Girls, on the other hand, end the game when disputes break out; relationships are more important than continuing the game.

Roy McCloughry concludes, “Men and women live in different cultures: he in a world characterized by independence, and she in a world characterized by intimacy.”

What are the implications of this for preaching? What types of texts or illustrations are most likely to resonate with female listeners? What emphases are they most or least likely to hear?

HOW TO TRANSLATE

During the years my husband and I worked as missionaries in Europe, I often served as an interpreter. With practice I could do that without thinking. One time I caught myself “translating” a French sentence into other French words. That was not my job! I was supposed to carry meaning from one language into another.

A woman in the pew goes through that process almost every time she listens to a man preach. Most of the time she isn’t aware she is doing it. If she has been active in church, she has developed such skill in translating, it has become second nature to her. But she is still translating. By attending to three areas, a skilled preacher can learn to speak in a woman’s “native tongue” and thus reach the entire congregation.

1. Translate masculine images into feminine images. While reworking a series of Bible studies for women, I chatted with Haddon Robinson about the project. He helpfully suggested illustrations for points I wanted to make. One was about a football player, another was a quote from a baseball player, etc. Gratefully, I included them.

But before the book went to the publisher, I took those illustrations out. They just didn’t fit. While some women follow sports, others feel that competitive sports violate the values they hold for relationships. The idea of winning is connected with somebody losing. And the violence of sports such as football or hockey does not communicate positively for many women. Unless a woman can translate illustrations from sports or business into relational values and experience, she may not connect emotionally with the point.

Several years ago a large Bible church invited me to speak at their Sunday services. During the first service, I used an illustration from my sewing machine. When I was about halfway through, I stopped and said gently, “I know that this baffles some of you men, but you need to know that this is my sweet revenge for all the sports illustrations I’ve had to listen to all of my life.” There was a titter, and then a roar of laughter, and then applause. Afterward, women came up to me and said, “Thank you for talking about the sewing machine. That connected with me.” The experience underscored for me that men and women live in different worlds. But the two worlds can be bridged.

Suppose a male preacher wants to speak on perseverance or determination, topics for which illustrations from sports would be ideal. He can still connect with women by reaching into the world of the Olympics, where usually an individual competes against a standard. Figure skating, for example, does not require violence against an opponent in order to win (besides, it is beautiful). In a similar way, an illustration from Chariots of Fire could show the necessity of discipline in order to achieve, while not being associated with violence.

However, after such an illustration from sports, it would be helpful for women to hear an illustration from another arena of life–for example, professional music. Here, too, great discipline and perseverance are required.

2. Translate abstract principles into terms of concrete relationships. When I listen to a sermon, I want to know how the biblical principles fit my life–not merely as an individual, but in my complex web of relationships. How does this point affect me in my role as wife, as mother, as grandmother, as neighbor, as church member? How will it change the way I speak to my husband in the car on our way home from church? How will it alter the decisions I make about the use of my time when women in distress call me on the phone? My life is about people, a lot of lonely, confused, and hurting people. I want to know how biblical principles work in my world.

Women want to hear the Word of God in a way that applies to our lives in relationship. Effective communicators to women translate abstract principles by using illustrations drawn from relationships.

Consider substitutionary atonement, a principle that can remain abstract for many listeners. Women will relate to it best when the preacher uses human illustrations–for example, a man who donates a kidney in order to keep a family member alive, or a woman who loses her life while giving birth to a child, or a teenager who rescues a toddler from a burning building but dies in the rescue attempt.

Even an abstract principle such as spiritual war (Eph. 6), which many men relate to positively, can be made appealing for women by explaining it in relational terms. If using an illustration from war, for example, it’s important to de-emphasize the bloodshed and emphasize what was at stake for the people involved. For example, if illustrating from the Second World War, emphasize the freedom from Nazi tyranny it won. Or women might relate to a war for independence that freed people from brutality and gave them security.

3. Translate masculine language to feminine language. Much biblical imagery is masculine. Jesus the Son called God “Father,” a masculine image. Christian women can hear that and, unless they were sexually or physically abused by a bad father, appreciate the rich image of relationship that Jesus gives us in that name.

But much more than masculine biblical imagery crops up in many sermons. Most Bible translators don’t discriminate between the Greek words for “male” and for “humanity.” A preacher can help women in the pew by clarifying what translators usually leave unclear. In 1995 it is no longer acceptable to use man or mankind as a generic word for humanity. Even for women so accustomed to translating that they don’t know they’re doing it, man or men doesn’t fully translate.

Perhaps a dozen years ago, I heard a woman speaker change the noun and pronoun from masculine to feminine as she quoted 1 Corinthians 5:17–“If any woman is in Christ Jesus, she is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.” I sat there stunned, then realized that tears were running down my cheeks. This meant me. I was included.

Had you asked me ten minutes earlier if I were included in the text of 1 Corinthians 5:17, I would have said, “Of course!” Intellectually, I can grasp that. Emotionally, I cannot. A preacher who cares about communicating to women will not draw back from reiterating the text with feminine pronouns here and there. Saying “men and women” or “women or men,” rather than merely “men,” helps women feel included.

We understand the need to communicate cross-culturally when we speak to different races or ethnic groups. Do we understand that it also applies when men and women attempt to communicate with one another?

Women in general are good listeners. It’s part of being relational. But they are often puzzled listeners. Preachers can make a difference in what women are able to hear as they work to include and affirm both women and men as they speak.

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Alice Mathews is dean of the Philadephia Center of Seminary of the East in Dresher, Pennsylvania.

Copyright (c) 1995 Christianity Today, Inc./LEADERSHIP Journal

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Copyright © 1995 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

LEADERSHIP asked its editorial advisers which books they’d recommend on biblical preaching. Their picks:

THE ANATOMY OF PREACHING

by David L. Larsen; Baker, 1989

“Builds a bridge between classic homiletics and contemporary preaching.”–Warren W. Wiersbe, writer and conference speaker living in Lincoln, Nebraska.

BETWEEN TWO WORLDS

by John Stott; Eerdmans, 1982

” … emphasizes the exacting task of building bridges between the Word and the world.”–Gladys Hunt, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, Ann Arbor, Michigan.

“Wonderful for reaching ‘left-brain’ types.”–William C. Frey, president, Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry.

BIBLICAL PREACHING

by Haddon W. Robinson; Baker, 1980

“Makes me think I can do it.”–Donald L. Bubna, pastor-at-large, the Christian & Missionary Alliance.

” … remarkable insights on the development and delivery of expository sermons.”–Edward J. Hales, national conference coordinator, Conservative Baptist Association of America.

CHRISTIANITY WITH POWER

by Charles H. Kraft; Vine, 1989

“A discussion of the neglected power needed today in the church.”–C.B. Hogue, executive director, The Southern Baptist General Conference of California.

HANDBOOK OF CONTEMPORARY PREACHING

edited by Michael Duduit; Broadman, 1993

“Fifty helpful chapters and a wonderful bibliography. I give it four stars.”–Stanley Long, pastor, South Bay Community Church, Hayward, California.

INDUCTIVE PREACHING

by Ralph L. Lewis and Gregg Lewis; Crossway, 1983

“A great manual for more `right-brain’ or intuitive people.”–William C. Frey.

MARKETPLACE PREACHING

by Calvin Miller; Baker, 1995

” … a helpful presentation on how to preach biblically and effectively to our contemporaries.”–Paul Cedar, president, Evangelical Free Church of America.

POWER THROUGH PRAYER

by E.M. Bounds; Worldwide Publishers, 1989

” … deals with the preparation of the preacher.”–Jack Hayford, pastor, Church On the Way, Van Nuys, California.

PREACHING CHRIST TODAY

by Thomas F. Torrance; Eerdmans, 1994

” … bursting with insights that almost stun you. A bold rationale for biblical preaching in our modern world.”–Warren W. Wiersbe.

PREACHING & PREACHERS

by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones; Zondervan, 1972

” … full of ideas to make one ponder the awesome responsibility of preaching.”–Gladys Hunt.

” … shares his method for preaching within the context of human personality.”–Edward J. Hales.

PREACHING THE NEW COMMON LECTIONARY

by Fred Craddock; Abingdon, 1985

” … how does anyone not profit from Craddock?”–Stanley Long.

SCRIPTURE SCULPTURE

by Ramesh Richards; Baker, 1995

“A very helpful do-it-yourself manual … “–Paul Cedar.

WE PREPARE AND PREACH

edited by Clarence Roddy; Moody, 1959

” … biblical sermons by eleven great preachers. Each writes a chapter about how he prepares.”–Donald L. Bubna.

WITH THE WORD

by Warren Wiersbe; Thomas Nelson, 1991

“Excellent background material for biblical teaching.”–Ted W. Engstrom, president emeritus, World Vision.

Copyright (c) 1995 Christianity Today, Inc./LEADERSHIP Journal

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Copyright © 1995 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.