Transcript
The fact of the matter is there is nothing more relevant to everyday life than the Bible. There is nothing more practical that you could ever be exposed to than the gospel of Jesus Christ. The mistaken notion is that theology is dead, boring, distant. It's just not true. It's living. It's beautiful. It's practical. It's transformational, so I want to display it in the pulpit.
Capturing Practicality in the First Few Minutes
Here's a couple of things that I do. In the first three or four minutes of a sermon, I try to capture that for people. Maybe I ask them two or three questions that are very practical. Maybe it'll be like this. "Have you ever looked at your life and wondered what in the world is God doing? Have you ever wondered why you read all these good books and you have your devotions everyday, but there are areas of sin that you just don't seem to be able to defeat?"
Those are questions that make a person pay attention, that announce to a person this sermon is going to be practical. Then I look for "real life out of the lives of the people that I'm preaching to" illustrations. I don't think it's wrong to use canned illustrations. I've heard canned illustrations that were very powerful, but I think there's something particularly powerful about grabbing illustrations out of the lives of people whom you're speaking because that says to me, "My pastor knows me. My pastor's paying attention to me. My pastor loves me. My pastor gets what I'm going through." So if I'm dealing with a group of university students, I want an example out of that culture; or parents, an example out of parenting -- something that puts the truths that I'm now talking to right next to where people live.
Here's what you know is true -- that the theology of the word of God is never an end in itself. The theology of the word of God is a means to an end and the end is a transformed life. It's practical. It's meant to be in the street. It's not meant to be distant and separate from life.
And so, I'm going to take the truths out of the word of God, I'm going to define them for people, and that I'm going to stick them in the middle of their lives with real everyday connectivity so that they can say, "What I've heard today speaks to what I'm going through. I'm so thankful I serve a Savior who is in me and with me and for me." That's what I want people to get.
