Relevance in Preaching (Part 3)

While teaching a youth Sunday school class, one leader wanted to ask the youth to suggest which topics they wanted to cover during the school year. I suggested that we ought to simply read through the Gospel of Mark, letting these topics surface out of the text. This was attempted and all were surprised that all the subjects were covered, but in context of God’s greater story, rather than using the Scriptures as proof text for our topical list. This is what Dick Lucas and John Stott and the other founders of “Proclamation Trust” urge preachers to do. We ought to faithfully and relevantly teach God’s message in the Bible texts. Once, at a Dick Lucas preaching seminar, an Anglican priest exclaimed, “But that makes it so easy! I don’t have to come up with snazzy new topics to preach on all the time! I can just teach the text!”

            

Jason Van Bemmel asks, "So, who wants to be relevant? Well, I do. I want to speak the truth of God in a way that my generation will understand. But I don’t think we’ll do that by capturing the White House or the music charts. I think we’ll only do that by loving one another and the world around us radically and sacrificially – just like Jesus."

Finally, to be real and relevant in this generation is to be relational. Faith Worship Center in Greensville, SC uses this statement on their website: “real, relevant, relational…that’s faith!” Someone once said, “This generation doesn’t care if it’s true. They want to know if it’s real.” To be real means it works relationally, in everyday, lived-out relationships. The postmodern preacher must be a relational communicator, building community. And, speaking humbly, he must also proclaim the relational message of the Scriptures.