Choosing to Preach Discussion

re: #10 - The Joy of Discovery

Posted by Kallie Hutton on Aug. 25, 2010 at 00:53

Many times in the Scriptures, Jesus left the interpretation of His teachings up to the crowds. There were of course times when He explained His parables, but many times He left it up to the crowds to figure out. Without a doubt, sometimes the people were confused and didn’t understand His teachings and people can to the wrong conclusions at times, but still Jesus let the people think and interpret for themselves. I think this can be risky, but if you train people to think and study and ask questions and dig deeper, then I think these can be the most effective types of sermons. The real difficult part is teaching people how to come to the right conclusions on their own; it is always easier to tell people what to think than to teach them how to think.

re: #10 - The Joy of Discovery

Posted by Jeff Little on Feb. 01, 2010 at 17:54

I don’t think preachers, for the most part, have a problem with the congregation participating in the mesage. I think it is easier to bring the message at a distance than to bring it wgere the people are. It can be dirty, and emotional when the congregation gets involved.

re: #10 - The Joy of Discovery

Posted by Irene Yeung on Dec. 01, 2009 at 00:38

In answering this question, we need to define what is meant by “the participation of listeners” and “let listeners in on the joy of discovery”. I think the participation of listeners does not necessarily mean that they have to give inputs to the sermon design and development. It is directed more towards their partaking in the discovery process of the sermon focus/theme. If this is the case, then I think the listeners are invited to join in the journey of discovery in the sermon process, especially when the preacher adopts the inductive sermon form. It is because the inductive sermon preaching takes the problem-solving approach in sermon design. It starts with a particular problem/experience of the listeners and moves towards the solution which is the intended proposition of the sermon. Hence, the listeners are invited to join in the sermon process to investigate the ultimate solution which is often placed at the end of the discovery process. It guides the listeners to view their problem/need from the biblical perspective, and leads them to the solution offered in the Bible. There is a movement of thoughts occurring in the mind of listeners, and it allows them to discover the conclusion themselves. The listeners are active participants in the sermon process.

Today, the preachers often employ a mix of both inductive and deductive structures in their sermons. Disregard the types of preaching structure, all preachers intend to include the listeners in their sermon development, since the sermon messages have to be applicable to their listeners, in order that they will adhere the sermon teachings. Hence, preachers are often advised to collect feedbacks from the listeners regarding their sermons, so that they can improve their sermons such that the listeners will find them applicable and useful in their lives.

Consequently, I would say that the listeners are certainly included in the sermon process, both in the message delivery and in its development.

re: #10 - The Joy of Discovery

Posted by Tim Stewart on Nov. 09, 2009 at 18:10

Heh, I think a possible short answer to the first question is "that’s what preachers get paid to do!"
I could imagine church members saying that; they work hard all week, and they’d expect the pastor to be working hard on the sermon during the week, too.

I think that there’s a lot of truth in this. It’s undeniable that pastors will have more time to exegete and discover the message of their particular sermon. And they should do that work. That’s why we study at seminary.

Why do preachers conceal the discovery process? I’m not sure – I would hope that preachers would share the discovery process as much as they can.
This may involve some self-disclosure, personal stories, etc.

Pastors should be equippers (Eph 4:12), and in their preaching, they should prepare the congregation to discover God’s Word on their own. The more that the pastor can share about the process of discovery, the better.

I appreciate Chris’s image (below) of the pastor providing guardrails, rather than each paving stone. The preacher should keep people on track (having done enough searching, prayer, and study) and lay a foundation for further discovery.
A sermon should give people a boost, and leave them hungry and ready for more.

Realistically, there is not enough time to disclose the entire discovery process in a sermon, and the sermon should still provide something on its own.

That’s why I think small group discussion after the sermon is so important. I do it at youth group, and I deliver my talks in such a way that I’m preparing them for discussion. This is where application best occurs. I wish Sunday mornings could be like that.

re: #10 - The Joy of Discovery

Posted by Chris Maclure on Mar. 26, 2009 at 12:13

As a teacher-type it is easy to overlook the value of discovery. When teaching children we often answer their question with a question, eventually leading them to a deeper understanding of the answer they seek. However, in preaching this is often overlooked. It could be for a few reasons. Sometimes our passionate desire to speak of a truth recently discovered blinds us to the importance of the steps we took discovering it. Sometimes the time allotment in a service is limiting, leading us to fire-hose the congregation. Another factor could be pride. When given an audience and a platform from which to speak, it is easy to fall into wanting to be seen as one with answers.
There is always a possibility of listeners distorting either the point, or how it is to apply to their lives. We are all products of our life experiences which can skew meaning. However, instead of providing each paving stone on which to step, a preacher is to provide guardrails on either side of the path. The listener is then able to discover the path, with boundaries from scripture keeping them focused in the right direction. By participating in discovery, the lessons learned are personal and well established.

re: #10 - The Joy of Discovery

Posted by Sydney Bergsma on Mar. 09, 2009 at 21:57

If preaching is helping people hear from God, then every sermon is a chance for people to discover more of who God is and how we can respond to him. Is this not one of the primary goals of preaching. No matter what the age of the preacher would is not be contagious if the preacher had grown in his journey with God that week and the people can’t help but discover more of God. Let the joy of discovery be renewed each time the Word is spoken, whether in rebuke, restoration, renewal, ah now I’m sounding like a preacher.

re: #10 - The Joy of Discovery

Posted by Ryan McDonald on Mar. 01, 2009 at 18:21

The honest answer here is that I think for a long time preachers were taught to sterilize sermons you wanted the sermon to be about the audience and not about you. So you preached to them and kept anything you were discovering to yourself or cleaned it up and made it about them. I think their is also somewhat the idea of distortion but more than that I believe some preachers just don’t think the people are interested and in fairness many of them aren’t they want milk not meat. But I think we need to show them the joy of discovery of chewing on scripture and sermons for themselves and I think we do that best by modeling it for them.

re: #10 - The Joy of Discovery

Posted by John Moerman on Feb. 22, 2009 at 17:45

Letting in listeners to our personal joy of discovery is possible and desirable. It is possible because the preacher is always learning and discovering in the preparation, assimiliation and delivery. It is shared naturally and intentionally. The preacher’s discovery becomes the congregation’s discovery. Shying away from the opportunity is a lost opportunity to be vulnerable with the listener. Good preaching is identifying with the listener’s questions, problems and discovery. Anticipation of the listener’s thoughts should happen and therefore to let listeners in on the joy of discovery is desirable. Interaction of this type must happen in preaching. Fear of the result is not part of the equation.

re: #10 - The Joy of Discovery

Posted by Karl Popke on Feb. 16, 2009 at 21:44

I believe preachers are often hesitant to let their listeners in on their discovery process for fear that such a revealed path may take their listeners down an errant road. Tradition is safe. Some may see themselves as an authority figure on biblical subjects and their listeners are to simply accept what they say as the gospel truth. They want to recognized as experts. Others may see taking their listeners into their study, as has been mentioned, as a sign of weakness. There is the possibility that they may loose the confidence of some of their listeners. However, I believe that if we show the process of our discoveries to our listeners then they are able to understand us and God’s message better. Revealing our struggle with God’s Word, showing our listeners that we are only a step or two ahead of them, allows them to feel, that as Christian brothers and sisters, we are growing together. More often than not, we earn greater respect form our listeners through this process, and they feel they can share much more of their lives and struggles with us. Through this process, we then have a greater opportunity to help them in their faith walk with God.

re: #10 - The Joy of Discovery

Posted by Jeff Edwards on Feb. 16, 2009 at 12:41

We are hesitant because the listeners may go to different places than we did and we are by nature sinful and controlling (yes, even preachers)! They may ask us questions that we haven’t thought of, or that we have no answers to. This requires humility of us and that’s always hard. Sometimes they will come up with different opinions than us and that feels like failure. However, this is happening internally in our listeners anyway, whether or not we acknowledge it. The preacher only has the choice of being included (i.e. relevant) or excluded (i.e. irrelevant) in this internal sermon. We must let listeners in on the joy of their own discovery.

re: #10 - The Joy of Discovery

Posted by Kevin O'Coin on Jan. 15, 2009 at 19:59

From my own experience, I am hesitant to let the congregation in on the joy of discovery for at least three reasons: 1) traditional preaching simply isn’t done that way, and it’s not what they expect (though they may hope for and/or want it); 2) as we have occassion to admit our struggles with the passage (struggle and the joy of discovery often go hand-in-hand), people will think less of me because I showed weakness; and 3) this can lessen the impact of the sermon as "a word from the Lord." Should not the Bible be God’s self-evident and powerful truth from on high? Of course, all these things are flimsy excuses, or, quite simply, don’t make much sense at all, but this is how I sometimes feel.

re: #10 - The Joy of Discovery

Posted by Chris Payne on Oct. 30, 2008 at 16:47

I think the hardest thing to do is to take the listener down the path of discovery. Your path of discovery is colored by your life experiences and beliefs and therefore it is next thing to impossible to get your listeners to the same place that you were when you had your “ah ha” moment. For example, if you had a moment of discovery around God as a safe father, and you are trying to talk to a group and in that group there is a girl that was abused by her earthly father, it is going to be a long road to get her to a place of discovery on that. That does not mean that we should not even try, but rather it means that we have to try harder and know that sometimes that road to discovery might be a long road.

re: #10 - The Joy of Discovery

Posted by George Bedlion on Dec. 03, 2007 at 00:38

We do become attached to our ideas, creations, and work- sometimes too attached. I think this is part of why it is so hard to let go of our discoveries and let the listeners discover on their own. We want our discoveries to be clear, unambiguous, and fully understood. Of course this is impossible but sometimes our vanity, and perhaps our attachment to our creations, prevent us from allowing listeners to have a more active and uninhibited experience with our sermons. I think listeners will distort what we say no matter what so we should become less attached to our experience and more willing to give the listeners a chance to embrace discovery in a more meaningful way- personally.

re: #10 - The Joy of Discovery

Posted by Keith Whitaker on Oct. 19, 2007 at 11:06

Allowing the congregation in on the discovery process as it relates to a particular passage has both risk and benefit. The risk is that people may come to misinformed conclusions either as a result of poor guidance by the preacher or poor analysis by the listener. This being said, however, we must not think that this risk outweighs the benefit. Leading a congregation through the discovery process and helping them arrive at an informed conclusion has, as I see it, two important benefits. First, the preacher is in a sense equipping the congregation to study God’s word rather than spoon feeding them the end result. Second, the preacher opens up room for the Spirit of God to speak to his people through the journey of discover (perhaps like Laurie’s reference to the “eureka” moment-below). At times in my life I have learned much more about God by engaging a process rather than having truth spoken to me.

re: #10 - The Joy of Discovery

Posted by Laurie Tyndall on Oct. 01, 2007 at 16:24

I think there is nothing better than an inductive sermon that allows the listener to discover the "eureka" of God’s word. 2 Tim 3:16 reminds us that all scripture is there for our investigation. A preacher should not be hesitant to equip his or her listeners in internalizing God’s word and His truths in ways that encourage them to take ownership of what has been preached and place it upon their own hearts. Preachers who are hesitant to do this, may be under the false assumption that they have a corner on understanding God’s word over others. God can speak and be heard by anyone who has an ear to hear.

re: #10 - The Joy of Discovery

Posted by Sally Peng on Sep. 30, 2007 at 00:06

I think I can understand if a preacher chooses to deliver a sermon that contains only the results of his process of discovery. After all, preachers are supposed to speak what they think God has inspired them to say and that may not include how they came to that. However, I think it would be wise to share with our listeners how God inspires us and how we got to the conclusion. Our listeners are indwelled with the same Spirit, and are therefore accountable to the message we deliver. If the sermon is truly inspired by the Spirit, we should trust that the listeners will get the message that God wants to tell them. If we spoon-feed them they will still have to analyse and digest the message if they take it seriously. So why don’t we invite them on our journey of discovery so they can feel the joy we have felt.

re: #10 - The Joy of Discovery

Posted by Andre VanWoerden on Feb. 22, 2007 at 13:27

I think preachers do share their discoveries but forget to share the journey of discovering — they present the polished results of their discovery by way of a coherent exposition of the text because that is, after all, the end result we’re after, isn’t it? But I think that by inviting listeners on a journey of discovering the text for themselves, the Bible will have a much greater impact on their lives because they have discovered it for themselves and experienced excitement of it. So the challenge for the preacher is to discover the truth and then, rather than sharing that discovered truth, to help listeners discover that same truth through more of a subversive process.

re: #10 - The Joy of Discovery

Posted by Philip Yung on Feb. 01, 2007 at 18:13

Sometimes I think we are hesitant to let listeners in on the process we take is discovering the text because we want to come across as being sure of the truth we present. We want to make statements and sound confident in our preaching. However, I’ve found that when I let my listeners in on the questions I’m asking the text as I’m in the process of discovering, where I am struggling to understand what God is saying and finally discover his message for me, I become even more confident in my presentation of truth, because it was something actually discovered and not mindlessly applied. And I know that they see that when I take them on that process.

re: #10 - The Joy of Discovery

Posted by Tim Durksen on Jan. 31, 2007 at 16:53

I like what HeeJin had to say. When i discover something amazing before i preach you will find we wandering around the office expressing my excitement and joy for discovering this amazing truth about God. When i preach i love to let my excitement for what ive found bubble over. I think when people see genuine excitement for what they have found and want to share with people they want to hear everything that a preacher has to say.

re: #10 - The Joy of Discovery

Posted by HeeJin Kim on Jan. 24, 2007 at 19:17

Preachers may often feel that it is their right to deliver God’s sermon to their listeners. However, if a preacher laid out his or her thought process, the listeners may come to the same conclusion themselves. This way, it will be their own conclusion and will impact them and change their lives more than it might have been otherwise.