The Target Is The Heart In Preaching
The Target Is the Heart In Preaching
What is the purpose of preaching? I thought of that after listening to a sermon last week. The preacher was preaching from an Old Testament passage and spent a long time explaining the culture of the time. At the end of the message I thought that I didn’t know what to do with the message. There was little to no application of what this means for my life today. How do I need to change my actions or my thoughts or beliefs. It seemed, in retrospect, that the target for this person’s preaching was the mind, expecting that he would clarify what the Bible says. He did that. What was missing was the question, “What does it mean for me today?” I’m beginning a new set of posts today that will focus on the fact that the target is the heart in preaching. In other words, we should be aiming to explain each time we preach what it means for our lives today. I’ll be referring to a book by Murray Capill with the title: The Target Is The Heart.
Paul’s Explanation of the Heart of Preaching
There are a couple of passages in Paul’s letters that call us to consider the purpose of preaching. In I Thessalonians 2 we read this description of the Word of God. He commends the Thessalonians for having received the preaching of God’s message “not as the word of men, but as it actually is, the word of God, which is at work in you. (I Thess. 2:13). This was more than a simple appreciation for a given message. Rather, the message came, “not simply with words, but also with power, with the Holy Spirit and with deep conviction.” Their lives, their attitudes, their priorities had changed as a result of the preaching of God’s Word. Think for a moment about your preaching. Is it changing the lives of people who hear you on a regular basis?
How God Accomplishes This
How does this happen? It is not, I think, in the structure of your message. Rather, the Holy Spirit needs to be involved applying the Word that is spoken to them. But, I think we can identify some ways or channels that the Spirit uses to accomplish this amazing work. The term we will be exploring in these posts is this: Application. Think about your last sermon. What were the directions you gave to applying the Word in your life?
This, as I said early in the posts in this blog, was taught me by my first mentor in preaching. After I preached my first message in a little mission church in Arizona, he had this evaluation: “Everything you said was right and true. It was a good seminary message. But after 5 minutes people quit listening.” That was crushing to me at the time, but we then reconstructed the message with the hearer in mind. What will make this truth of Scripture hit home with people. What will be the peg that will capture or recapture their attention. Each week of the 12 weeks I was with that man we evaluated the sermon I preached from that perspective. As a result of that time, I began to study effective preaching, and one of the results is this blog sponsored by Christian Leaders Institute.
How Will Your Message Hit the Heart?
The secret, I have found, is application. For each point in your message is there a corresponding application for the people that will connect them to your message?
Here is how Murray Capill puts it in the introduction to his book, The Target Is The Heart”
“Clearly, preaching that aims simply to teach the Bible aims at too little. Preachers should never aim at less, but the real goal is far greater. In expository preaching, the message of the biblical text is spoken afresh to God’s people today by the preacher in such a way that those who hear the message sense the God himself is speaking to them and is dealing with their lives. From beginning to end, the congregation hears a message that is both from him and for them.”
Conclusion
So, in the next posts we are going to explore how to do this well. Remember, the target is the heart in preaching.
