Preach

Be Compelling!

My daughter Lilian and I have watched a lot of TV over the last couple of weeks since her birth.

To be more specific she has slept a lot on my chest (apparently far more comfortable than her bassinet) while I’ve watched a lot of TV. I’ve done this mainly to entertain myself while trying to bother her as little as possible.

It’s been fun. We’ve got cable TV and DVR and I’ve had DVD viewing to catch up on so I’ve normally had something that is at least half interesting to watch.

I know, I know – I should be reading Calvin or Luther or Lewis but the lack of sleep that goes with being a new dad has made what is normally enjoyably challenging reading a great segway into a nap.

Recently I’ve noticed that it has become more and more of a habit for me to open up my laptop when I sit down to watch something. Sometimes it’s as though the TV alone isn’t enough to keep my mind occupied.

Apparently I’m not alone. Consider what the Neilsen Wire (the reports and analysis arm of the media company Neilsen) has to say.

In the last quarter of 2009, simultaneous use of the Internet while watching TV reached three and a half hours a month, up 35% from the previous year. Nearly 60% of TV viewers now use the Internet once a month while also watching TV. (Americans Using TV and Internet Together 35% More Than A Year Ago March 22, 2010)

To be honest I’m surprised that those figures aren’t higher.

We are surrounded by more media than we can hope to process. Our response to this has been to try and fit more and more of it into our lives.

Video consumption across multiple platforms is now a global phenomenon. Consumers in all regions are proving their insatiable appetite for video information and entertainment – thus far adding screens to their media mix, not replacing them. (Report: How People Watch – The Global State of Video Consumption August 4, 2010)

“The rise in simultaneous use of the web and TV gives the viewer a unique on-screen and off-screen relationship with TV programming,” said Nielsen Company media product leader Matt O’Grady. “The initial fear was that Internet and mobile video and entertainment would slowly cannibalize traditional TV viewing, but the steady trend of increased TV viewership alongside expanded simultaneous usage argues something quite different.” (Americans Using TV and Internet Together 35% More Than A Year Ago March 22, 2010)

In general terms what this analysis is saying is that the more media we are surrounded by, the more ways we will find to consume it.

This underlines an increasing challenge that preachers and those charged with teaching the gospel must face.

In society today there are only four significant situations where we still sit and listen to verbal monologues of any extended length. They are the university lecture, government or corporate speeches, stand up comedy and religious preaching.

I think it’s fair to say that only one of those would, for the most part, command the average person’s exclusive attention and it’s not the religious preaching. It is more and more common place for people to pull out their laptops or phones and engage other media while listening to these traditional monologues or other forms of modern media.

One of the qualifications for an overseer in the church that is given in 1 Timothy 3:1-7 is that they are able to teach and in Titus 1: 5-9 it says that an elder must be able to exhort and convict those who contradict the truth of sound doctrine. That means that an overseer must be able to communicate the truths of scripture in a way that the hearer can learn all that the Holy Spirit would reveal to them.

The message of the gospel must always remain true to scripture. So too, the gospel must be ‘preached’. That is, it must be declared, proclaimed, delivered and advocated for. As I once heard a preacher declare; you share ice cream but you preach the gospel.

I don’t believe that this equates to being deliberately loud, offensive, insensitive or arrogant, as the stereotype would suggest, but it does mean that we are to be compelling.

So many preachers today have either watered down the message in order to be entertaining or they have sought only to teach correctly with no emphasis on engaging their audience.

As shown by the quotes above. We as a society have an insatiable desire for media and while we can certainly argue that this isn’t healthy, it is the reality of the world in which we live and the culture that we have to engage with the gospel.

I’m not suggesting that we have to start using multiple video screens during sermons or add fireworks and lasers to spice up our church meetings.

What I’m saying is that I hate boring preaching and if you’ve made no effort to try to draw me in, engage me, relate to me or understand me and my questions, then the truth is I’m probably going to start thinking about reaching for my phone.

As Christians we do have a responsibility to work hard to listen to a speaker who is rightly handling the word of truth, but do we expect the lost to accept that same responsibility? Why introduce the barrier of boredom on top of the spiritual opposition that we face in learning the truth of scripture?

In a world with a million distractions, let’s make sure that if we are charged with teaching and preaching the word of God that we do so in a way that compels the attention of our audience in whatever way God has gifted us to do.

James Hudson Taylor (21 May 1832 – 3 June 1905), was a British Protestant Christian missionary to China, and founder of the China Inland Mission (CIM) (now OMF International).

Taylor spent 51 years in China. The society that he began was responsible for bringing over 800 missionaries to the country who began 125 schools and directly resulted in 18,000 Christian conversions, as well as the establishment of more than 300 stations of work with more than 500 local helpers in all eighteen provinces.

“Do not have your concert first, and then tune your instrument afterwards. Begin the day with the Word of God and prayer, and get first of all into harmony with Him.”

“Perhaps if there were more of that intense distress for souls that leads to tears, we should more frequently Read the rest of this entry »

Helpless

Posted: 24/08/2010 by James in Life Application, Musings
Tags: , ,

Normally I like to take an idea for a blog post and then do some research, slowly work my way through the ideas and the main themes until I hit on the essential hook for the blog and then build up the post from there.

Last week however my wife gave birth to our first child, a beautiful little girl named Lilian (Lily) who has very quickly become the majority stakeholder in our waking hours (which have experienced a 25% increase) so I’m going to shoot from the hip here and trust my fellow bloggers Don and Stu to call me out if I stumble into heresy :)

Not surprisingly I wanted to write briefly about this adorable little nightmare Read the rest of this entry »

Eric E. Schmidt, Chairman and CEO of Google In...

Image via Wikipedia

“Who steals my purse steals trash,
but he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him
And makes me poor indeed.” Shakespeare

According to Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt, young people should be allowed to change their names to escape their misspent youth. He also predicted that in the future, Google will know so much about its users that the search engine will be able to help them plan their lives.

Wow!

Read the rest of this entry »

I once owned a small sailboat – in addition to the pleasures of sailing, one of the delights of owning a sailboat is that you can spend hours in a chandlery looking at and spending money on some of the gizmos that make sailors drool. You wouldn’t be

lieve the stuff one just has to own!

But you justify the cost – an anchor is an anchor you argue – it will last a lifetime!

My circumstances changed and I went from water to wood – I took up woodworking. Great hobby – and the tools – wow! More gadgets than you can imagine. There’s a saying amongst woodworkers; “You just can’t own too many clamps!”

Again, you justify the cost because you know a clamp is forever. I eventually ran out of room for all the stuff I collected (bought).

I still do some woodworking and enjoy an occasional day-sail now and then, but something new occupies much of my time – TECHNOLOGY. Read the rest of this entry »