One Simple Piece of Advice That Will Immediately Make You a Better Preacher

I have never seen my students respond to the Bible as enthusiastically as they did at winter camp a year and a half ago.

Not necessarily to the sermons, mind you (though they responded to those well too). What I have in mind here is the Bible itself. My students left winter camp with a new appreciation for the power and beauty of the Bible, and they did it for one reason that is, in retrospect, very obvious and very simple: the preacher read the Bible like it mattered.

The text that he preached from on the first night of camp was Ephesians 1:3-14. The preacher, Dr. Erik Thoennes, spent roughly five minutes of his sermon reading those twelve verses. He carefully and slowly emphasized key words. He articulated sentences according to their structural rhythms. He inflected the whole text with passion and conviction.

That is, he did exactly what you would expect someone to do if he believed that the most important part of his sermon was the part that God wrote.

I was hanging around students after that first night, and I asked some of them what they thought of the preaching. Again and again, I heard the same piece of feedback: “It was awesome! I’ve never heard anyone read the Bible like that!”

Compare that to my preaching through Haggai for the month just before camp. I knew that Haggai would be confusing at points because it is an obscure Biblical book and its message is so dependent on its historical context. So I would get to the text in my sermons and I would read quickly, figuring that my students would be so confused that it barely mattered if they heard it read. The part where I explained it to them–the part that I wrote–that was the most important part of my sermon. That’s apparently what I believed, and that’s almost certainly what I conveyed to my high schoolers.

Here’s the thing: a lot of our students already believe that the Bible is boring. They don’t need our help with that. So when you or I stand on a stage and read a passage with noninflected hurry (or worse yet, say something like, “This is a long passage, so I’m going to read it fast”), it only confirms that idea for them. Subconsciously though it may be, your students will think, “Even my pastor thinks the Bible is boring. Or he at least thinks that I can’t understand it unless he explains it.”

So here’s one incredibly easy way for you to be a better preacher–a way that requires almost no training or practice: when you read the Bible out loud, read it like it matters.

Read it like it really is God’s Word. Read it like it has the power to change their lives. Read it slowly. Read it emphatically. Read it passionately.

Read your passage enough times beforehand that you know how its literary construction conveys meaning. That way, when you read it out loud in your sermon, you can use your vocal inflection to convey the same. This post has mostly been about the rhetorical power of good out-loud reading, but don’t underestimate the explanatory power: as you read the passage with intentionality about its structure, your students will understand it better and your expository task gets that much easier.

When I got back from winter camp that year, the first thing I did in my first sermon back was repent. I stood on stage and told my students, “I’ve been reading the Bible to you as if my words mattered more than God’s. Please forgive me. There’s nothing in the world I want to teach you less than that. It won’t happen again.” And it hasn’t.

Just about every youth pastor I know wants his students to read their Bibles more. That’s because we believe that the Bible is the very Word of God, full of life and power and beauty and, ultimately, God Himself. We believe that if our students read their Bibles, God will change their lives.

If you believe that same thing, let me give you a very simple, very obvious piece of advice: next time you get up to preach, read the Bible like it matters.

Reason #483 to Preach the Cross: To Show Your Students What God Is Like

The gospel-centered movement is pretty constantly beating the “preach the cross” drum. I’m not going to try to defend that sentence, because I don’t think I need to. “Cross-centered” and “gospel-centered” are everywhere, and at GCYM, we think that’s a good thing.

We should constantly preach the cross because the Bible says stuff like, “I determined to know nothing among you except for Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” Also because our students need to know the fullness of their forgiveness. Also because we want to make disciples who pursue Jesus, not just moral performance.

Those are great reasons to preach the cross. They are probably also the reasons we think about most often. This post is about yet another reason we should preach the cross, one which perhaps we think about less often: we should preach the cross because the cross shows us what God is like.

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Obviously, we want our students to know what God is like. So our usual approach to teaching them this is to line up a preaching series or a Bible study where we teach the attributes of God by teaching propositional definitions: God’s “omnipotence,” for example, is His “ability to do all that he pleases.” Term. Definition. Verses. Illustration. Application point. Next attribute.

Theological propositions fell out of style there for a bit, but I’m not anti-propositional in the slightest. I learned the attributes of God in this way, I teach them this way, and I would encourage any other youth pastor to teach them this way. While you’re at it, buy your students Erik Thoennes’s Life’s Biggest Questions (or ESV Study Bibles) and A. W. Tozer’s The Knowledge of the Holy.

But while you do all that, notice this also: the Bible’s primary way of showing us what God is like is by interpreting events rather than laying out context-less propositions. And the climactic event of God’s revelation of Himself in Scripture is the cross. Put another way, one of God’s great purposes in the cross is to show us what kind of God He is.

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There are a lot of Biblical texts that make this point, but John’s Gospel is what got me thinking about it. It is in John’s Gospel that Jesus repeatedly refers to the cross as the place where he is glorified (12:23; 13:31; et. al.).

So what does it mean for Jesus to be “glorified” then? I like Piper’s (completely propositional) definition of God’s glory: God’s glory is “the beauty of God’s manifold perfections.” That is, everything good about God (His “perfections”), taken all together (“manifold”), on display for us to delight in (because they are “beautiful”).

While neither Jesus nor John likely had that exact definition of “glory/glorify” in their minds when they said and wrote those things, it seems fair to say that Jesus is “glorified” on the cross in John in part because it is there that we see the fullest picture of what kind of Messiah He is. As we look upon the cross, therefore, we don’t just see an event; we see a person.

That is why when we see the bloodied body of Jesus of Nazareth lifted up on the cross, our response isn’t horror, but worship. Why is it worship? Because we know that Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of God, and that therefore the bloodied body is the ultimate display of the fullness of God’s extraordinary, incomprehensible, beautiful-beyond-all-words love for sinners. So much so, in fact, that any time Christians say that “God is love” or that “God loves us,” well, we just can’t help but to talk (and sing!) about the cross.

And that is the key idea I am trying to express: the attribute (God’s “love”) is expressed in the interpreted event (the New Testament accounts and explanations of the cross). Of course, it doesn’t only tell us about His love, either. It also tells us about His wrath, justice, wisdom, independence, omniscience, mercy, grace, Trinitarian nature, and so on.

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So what’s my point for youth ministry? It’s this: when we stop giving our students a regular diet of cross-centered preaching and teaching, we don’t just leave them starving for grace. We leave them starving for God.

If we mostly preach topical, felt-need based Biblical counsel (“How To Stay Pure In A Pornified Culture”) or Old Testament “moral-of-the-story” lessons (“How to Slay the Goliaths in Your Life”) or Gospel stories where Jesus is mostly our example to follow (“Learning to Love Like Jesus”), well, then, we end up telling our students about everything but God Himself. I bet most of our advice is decent. But it won’t give our students God. And nothing can satisfy the heart of a junior high or high school student besides God Himself.

So there it is: one more reason to constantly preach the cross. Let’s help our students grow in their discipleship to Jesus by showing them a God whose nature and character are such that He really is worthy of their worship.And let’s do that by preaching the cross.

Shocking Preaching Advice: Actually Preach the Word

Quick note before we start: we’ve been slow to post these last couple weeks because we’re all busy. Sorry about that. But fear not: we haven’t quit, and we’re not planning on it. Thanks for your patience!

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I’ve been reading through John Piper’s The Supremacy of God in Preaching. You should all read it, because it’s absolutely fantastic. Above all, Piper has helped me clarify two key aspects of preaching: 1) the purpose of preaching, and 2) the means of preaching faithfully.

The Purpose of Preaching

Piper calls preaching “expository exultation”. Preaching is expository because it explains the magnificent truths of Scripture. Scripture, not our opinions, is the subject of preaching.

But it isn’t just explaining. It is exultation, because above all else, we preach for the glory of God. Yes, we want lives to be transformed, truth to be imparted, and love to be stirred, but these goals will all be realized under the larger umbrella of God being exalted and glorified. Preaching, like all of life for the Christian, is worship.

To sum this up in the words of Piper, “the goal of preaching is the glory of God reflected in the glad submission of the human heart.” We preach so that God is glorified, and the church is edified as people submit with joy to their Creator.

The Means of Preaching Faithfully

Most of us know that we are to preach for God’s glory and the edification of the saints. But a more prevalent–and confusing–question is, “How do we preach faithfully?” With this question, a whole host of discussions arise. Should sermon series’ be expository or topical? How long should a sermon be? How much time should be spent on application?

These are all worthwhile questions as we seek to understand how to preach faithfully, but there was one simple piece of advice that stuck out as I read:

Preach God’s Word.

This seems obvious and simple, and yet I am astounded at how easy it is to stray from this foundational and fundamental truth. How easy it is to focus on sharing clever witticisms and wisdom that I have cultivated! Maybe I tweak Scripture ever so slightly so that it supports my thought. Maybe I breeze through a verse so that I can share my opinion. I was deeply convicted of these thoughts after reading this excerpt:

One of the biggest problems I have with younger preachers whom I am called on to critique is to get them to quote the parts of the text that support the points they are making. It makes me wonder if they have been taught that you should get the drift of a text and then talk in your own words for thirty minutes. The effect of that kind of preaching is to leave people groping for the Word of God and wondering whether what you said is really in the Bible.

We preach faithfully when we root sermons in God’s Word instead of our own insights. This is such a simple truth, but so easily neglected. I never intentionally stray from rooting my preaching firmly in Scripture, of course, but even still, it is easy to drift towards sharing my opinions or summarizing the general gist of a passage.

Here’s the point: whether your sermon series is expository or topical, whether you preach for 15 minutes or 45 minutes, whether you preach to 5 students or 500 students: preach God’s Word.

I once heard Piper state that good preaching combines, “truth and relevance.” So as we preach God’s Word, we certainly must seek to explain and exposit in meaningful and understandable ways. Share stories, particularize your students and know your audience. But do so in order to help them understand God’s truth, not to share your opinions.

At the end of the day, what you want them to hear is the truth of Scripture, not the opinion of their youth pastor. You are not as smart as God, you are not as powerful as God, and you are not as wise as God. So trust that the truth of Scripture is meaningful and effective, trust that the Spirit will be faithful to sanctify, and then do your best to explain and articulate God’s Word in honest and relevant ways to your students.

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We’ve discussed preaching a fair bit on this blog. If you want more of our thoughts, you might check out episode 7 of the GCYM podcasts (discussing the topics we tend not to preach to our students) or Faris’s conversation with Jeff Bruce about preaching with purpose.

My Students Forget My Sermons (But I Still Believe in Preaching)

Before you begin to preach, you ask your students, “What did we talk about last week?”

Awkward silence.

“Remember…it was a sermon out of Mark…Mark 9…it was about Jesus…”

More awkward silence.

Eventually, if you’re lucky, one of the students who takes notes opens up her journal and reads the main points from your sermon last week. A valiant effort, but the damage has already been done. You pray and begin your sermon, all the while wondering what the point of preaching is if students can’t even remember last week’s sermon.

Hopefully that isn’t what happens every week, but most of us (this isn’t just me, right?) have had experiences where our students apparently forgot everything we told them last week. Statistics say that people only remember about 10 percent of a lecture (or sermon), and that number decreases as time passes. If you are like me, this makes you ask, “Then what’s the point of preaching?” If they don’t remember the sermon, why do we spend so much time working on our lesson?

In this post, I want to encourage you to take heart and keep preaching: even when your students forget your previous sermon, God can and will use preaching in powerful ways to sanctify and transform your students.

Obviously, the primary reason we teach our students is so that they can know and love God and live faithful lives of worship. If they do not know God, they cannot love Him. We preach so that they grow increasingly faithful as the Holy Spirit sanctifies them through the proclamation of His Word. Therefore, we must preach God-exalting, gospel-centered, biblically-rich sermons that proclaim the character of God, the Kingdom of God, and the glory of God.

But we all know that. We realize that we preach so that our students can know God. But if students can’t recall even last week’s sermon, how does God use preaching to transform lives? Here are three undervalued, incredibly important reasons to keep on preaching faithfully:

1. Preaching Creates a Culture – Even though students might not be able to tell you what you preached about last month, the sermons you preach week after week ultimately pile up to shape and form the culture of your youth group. Your students will grasp the topics that you consistently explain and value the topics you consistently value. If you routinely speak about the importance of making disciples, over time that will sink into the hearts of your students. Even if they can’t tell you exactly how you went about exegeting Matthew 28, they will value disciple making because they’ve seen and heard you regularly value it in your preaching.

Faris always reminds me that “the pulpit is the rudder of the church” (but I’m pretty sure he stole that from Matt Chandler somewhere). This is true. Your sermons will steer the direction of your youth group and shape the culture of the community. It will shape what students and leaders value, how they interact, and ultimately what they love. Do not undervalue this aspect of preaching, because the ethos and culture of a community has a deeply formative effect on the people who live in it.

2. Preaching Realigns Love – Christians are not immune to the human tendency to forgetfulness. We are quick to wander away from God, stumble into sin, and neglect God for the sake of comfort and pleasure. The hymn “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing” aptly laments, “Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love.” We are indeed prone to wander away from God as we begin to seek and love things unworthy of our affection. Preaching has an incredible ability to realign our love and affection. Every week we get a little distracted; every week we lose our focus on God. But then every week we listen to a sermon that, when well-constructed and well-delivered, realigns our heart, our focus, and our love back to God. So your students may not always remember last week’s sermon, but maybe that’s because last week’s sermon was for last week.

3. Preaching Teaches Students to Value the Bible – Weekly sermons regularly communicate the vital importance of the Bible. Students often believe the lie that the Bible really doesn’t matter. They may be thinking, “The Bible is an old book written by dead guys, so how could it matter to my life today?” However, your regular teaching communicates that the Bible is actually the Word of God, communicating the character and will of the Creator of the universe. Your faithful exegesis helps students understand that Scripture is entirely relevant to the life of a high schooler in the 21st century. The holiness of God, the will of God, and the character of God are always relevant, and God’s Word is powerful and transformative. Students live in a world that tells them to disregard the Bible, but your preaching will tell them the opposite by revealing that the Bible has power to give life, direct our lives, and reveal the character of God.

4. Preaching Teaches Students How to Study the Bible – One of the most important aspects of preaching is that it models to our students how to handle Scripture. Many students neglect to read their Bibles simply because it seems confusing and difficult to understand. Faithful preaching communicates to your students that Scripture is coherent, and that they are capable of understanding it. This means that when you preach, you must not only take care of what you communicate, but how you communicate as well. Theologically sound content is obviously imperative, but sound exegesis that communicates Biblical context and thoughtful hermeneutics is equally important because it models for students how to study Scripture. They’ll learn to read passages in context, they’ll learn about different biblical genres, and they’ll learn that different books emphasize different theological concepts. The Bible can be a difficult book to navigate, and when you show your exegetical work in your sermon, you are teaching them how to read it. Exegetically solid exposition isn’t the only thing students need to learn to read their Bibles well, of course, but it’s an important part of the process.

This is obviously not an exhaustive list of how God uses sermons. Just a few thoughts that have been meaningful and formative to my own preaching as of late. I’d love to hear any of your thoughts or ideas on how else God uses preaching to sanctify students.

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If you’re looking for more resources on growing as a preacher in youth ministry, check out the podcast Faris did with Jeff Bruce yesterday on how to become a clearer, more focused preacher.

 

GCYM Conversations: Jeff Bruce’s Sermons Have a Point

Among the many, many things wrong with my preaching, brevity (or the lack thereof) is the problem I currently find most vexing. I simply cannot seem to shave off the roughly 10 minutes that I intend to in order to become the clear, focused preacher that I want to be.

Suspecting that I’m not the only long-winded young preacher out there, I discussed this issue with Jeff Bruce, long time friend, current associate pastor at Creekside Community Church, and frequent GCYM Conversations guest. Jeff and I discussed a number of aspects of preaching related to this, including the massive importance of having a point.

I mentioned that I would link to Jeff’s sermon from April 27th on the healing of the paralytic in John 5, which you can find in Creekside’s sermon library here (if you want audio or video and if you want the notes), or you can just click here to get to the video.

You can subscribe to everything we do with GCYM Audio on iTunes (where we’d love it if you’d rate and review us!), and we’d love if you’d email us any thoughts and questions at godcenteredyouthministry (AT) gmail (DOT) com.

Download: Jeff Bruce’s Sermons Have a Point

 

The GCYM Podcast, Episode 7: The Topics We Don’t Preach to our Students

While Lindquist was off doing some youth pastory things, Faris and Kyle sat down for Episode 7 just before Faris went off to Winter Camp to discuss what topics and books of the Bible we shy away from in our preaching and teaching to students. The result was a podcast that got recorded last Friday (with questionable audio quality on Faris’s side because of a recording mistake he made, for which he feels deep and abiding shame) and gets released today. Sorry about the delay.

As always, we’d love your feedback and questions, so send us an email at godcenteredyouthministry [AT] gmail [DOT] com. And don’t forget to subscribe to our show on iTunes (where we’d also love if you’d rate and review us).

And if you like our bumper music, it’s called “Out of My Head” by Max and the Moon. Go give the rest of their stuff a listen.

Download: GCYM Podcast, Episode 7