Preaching can be considered a relatively simple equation. You try to get the biblical message to the people sitting in the pews. Yet we so easily give all our effort to one half of that equation. We may study the passage for hours, but give little or no thought to the listeners. So next Sunday, who will you be preaching to? Lewis Smedes looked out at his church one Sunday morning and saw this:
“A man and woman, sitting board-straight, smiling on cue at every piece of funny piety, are hating each other for letting romance in their marriage collapse on a tiring treadmill of tasteless, but always tidy, tedium.
A widow, whispering her Amens to every promise of divine providence, is frightened to death because the unkillable beast of inflation is devouring her savings.
A father, the congregational model of parental firmness, is fuming in the suspicion of his own fatherly failure because he cannot stomach, much less understand, the furious antics of his slightly crazy son.
An attractive young woman in the front pew is absolutely paralyzed, sure she has breast cancer.
A middle-aged fellow who, with his new Mercedes, is an obvious Christian success story, is wondering when he will ever have the guts to tell his boss to take his lousy job and shove it.
A submissive wife of one of the elders is terrified because she is being pushed to face up to her closet alcoholism.
Ordinary people, all of them, and there are a lot more where they came from.”
Lewis Smedes, “Preaching to Ordinary People,” Leadership 4, no.4 (1983): 116.
Biblical Preaching 