As I was working out at a local gym, my attention was drawn to the TV that hung from the ceiling. News anchors I didn’t know from a channel I hardly watched made talking points I didn’t understand about issues of which I was only vaguely aware. I feel like I don’t even know the world I’m living in anymore, I thought.
This unnerving feeling also comes up in ministry. Sometimes I wonder, Do I even know the congregation I’m pastoring anymore?
With all the political polarization, lingering resentments over how a church handled mask requirements, people taking sides regarding COVID-19 vaccination, and issues tied to deep pain like mass shootings, abortion, or race, we are pastoring communities in an ongoing state of elevated tension. These current realities layer atop the normal complications pastors face as we preach to congregations made up of different generations, political views, theological backgrounds, and relationships with Jesus (from committed Christians to spiritual seekers to those contemplating deconstruction).
It’s a struggle to preach across so many divisions and differences. Recently, during sermon preparation, I was so distracted by all the opinions and arguments of the day that it felt like I was developing my message inside a hall of mirrors filled with fog while riding a Tilt-A-Whirl! Hyperbole aside, I came away with little confidence in the sermon I’d cobbled together, and I felt further challenged by the reality that I had to actually love those I preached to. I thought of pastor John Ames’s line in Marilynne Robinson’s novel Gilead: “Prophets love the people they chastise.” I felt chastened myself.
As pastors, we face a tremendous challenge today: How can we preach effectively in our contentious moment, often to divided and polarized congregations?
Sermons That Build Bridges
In the city where I pastor, a mile-wide river runs through the middle of downtown. Because several bridges span the river, we’ve incorporated one of the more iconic bridges into our church logo. When our congregation feels divided, leaving me confused about how to go forward in a sermon, I try to remember that image is more than a logo. It represents the preacher’s calling: to build on the bridge Christ has built to us, across a separation far more than a mile wide.
Here are a few ways I’ve been helped in preparing and preaching sermons that seek to bridge divisions in my congregation:
Develop a preaching team of rivals.
A famous book about Abraham Lincoln’s “team of rivals” refers to the people Lincoln assembled around him—including those antagonistic to him—to make his decisions and our divided country stronger. Developing a similar sort of team has been one of the most significant practices for improving the quality of preaching at our church.
For many years, we had a regular small meeting to debrief our sermons. But church growth and changes in staff created an opportunity to think afresh about the purpose of the meetings and who’d be best to participate on the debrief team. Over several years, we’ve built a team of nine: a mix of church staff and volunteers, men and women, young and old, experienced preachers and those who will never preach. We’re all very different, but we share a love for orthodoxy and a commitment to our church’s mission statement.
The team members grab a sermon manuscript when they arrive on Sunday mornings so they have an easy place to write notes. (And yes, sometimes they even use a literal if not metaphorical red pen.) Then we meet together every Monday at noon to discuss the previous day’s sermon and plan for the upcoming one.
I would not consider the team “rivals” in the sense that any of us desire to be antagonistic or contrarian. But it is a group intentionally comprised of diverse perspectives, and candid feedback is encouraged. Together we work for the good of each other and the good of God’s Word preached among his people. Typically, we discuss what went well in the sermon and what was confusing or even unhelpful. We touch on all the major questions about rightly dividing the Word, gospel clarity, quality of illustrations and applications, as well as tone, gestures, mannerisms, and so on. We also at times consider how diverse groups within our church might hear a particularly thorny or sensitive topic.
For example, recently a Scripture passage lent itself toward comments about race. One of our associate pastors was preaching that week, and he sensed his remarks could be contentious. So during his sermon preparation, he sought my feedback, pulling me aside to go over his application points. Perhaps because of my own blind spots and perhaps because I didn’t listen closely enough, I missed anticipating how his words could be misunderstood by a few in our church. Rest assured that when we debriefed the sermon, the preaching team did not let us miss our mistake.
We all have blind spots. A preaching “team of rivals” is like having a sophisticated system of cameras around your car when you park in reverse. The team gives me the blessing of seeing what I can’t, and over time, my preaching instincts become refined even while my perspective enlarges.
It can be hard emotionally to prepare for Monday’s feedback. Sometimes receiving it requires more humility from me in the moment than I have to offer. Some weeks my heart just wants to hear “You’re a great preacher” and not “You spoke too fast in the introduction.”
But alas, I must remember that, while painful, growing in awareness of my blind spots and hearing from different perspectives make me a better preacher and our church a better church. As the wise saying goes, “Wounds from a friend can be trusted” (Prov. 27:6).
Lean on expositional preaching (and keep a topical list of your church’s biggest divides nearby).
I am not against topical preaching—in fact, I often preach a few topical series each year. But I’ve found that the regular practice of preaching expositional series through books of the Bible is more helpful in our divided age than topical sermons. There are many reasons for this, but one in particular is that an expositional preaching series through a book of the Bible requires less of an explanation—an apologetic, if you will—for why a pastor did or did not cover a certain topic.
With a topical series that a pastor or pastoral team has chosen, we implicitly give our people the impression we think they need to hear these topics and they need to hear them right now. Our assessment may be true, of course, but this approach can potentially feel more confrontational to listeners than needed.
People “have ears to hear” more often when they don’t sense the subtext of the sermon series is “I don’t think you’re very good at this, so I’m telling you now.” Instead, applications are often received with warmer hearts (especially on controversial issues) when there is the sense that “God just so happened to have us focus on this passage this morning when such and such is happening in our country, so let’s talk about it.” Approaching controversial matters via expositional preaching (rather than topical preaching) tends to neutralize polarizations by gathering potentially divided listeners on the common ground of esteem for the Word.
There are times, however, when as pastors we do want our churches to feel the sting. For example, this fall we’re preaching through one of the longer topical sermon series we’ve ever done—focused on the purpose and beauty of the local church. And yes, in a sense, we are emphasizing that our leaders chose this topical series, among the infinite number of possibilities, because we think our people have underdeveloped ecclesiology. (Ask me at Christmas how it went.)
Some criticisms of expository preaching are a perceived lack of relevance and immediacy and the tendency to gravitate toward merely pietistic applications (like “read your Bible more,” “pray more,” “love God more,” and so on). I once received feedback from our elders that my preaching tended to stop short of preparing our people for why God breathed Scripture: “teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16–17). Thoroughly equipping people for every good work requires sermons that prepare them for more than just what they can do on Sunday mornings or during their personal devotional times.
An approach that has helped me change was to make a topical list of the sins, struggles, and divisions I perceived among our sheep. I typed out the list and asked other thoughtful believers and staff members to add to it. I consult the list often in sermon preparation.
Having a list like this front of mind during sermon preparation will not change the exegesis of the biblical text. But having the proper exegesis of one’s audience at the ready helps preachers connect congregants’ particular struggles with God’s particular grace. I can’t tell you how many times this kind of congregationally aware expositional preaching has helped me address the controversial topics of our moment in a way that listeners could receive them.
Take controversial stands when it’s costly, not when you’ll get applause.
When I feel compelled to flip a proverbial table, I try to remember that Christ did so rarely—and he often did it when it cost him.
I confess that it confuses me when I see preachers take a “bold” and “courageous” stance on a controversial issue and the predominant response from their listeners is applause. In contrast, the boldness of John the Baptist earned him the only pulpit that would have him: the wilderness. The courage of Christ led to the cross.
What does it really mean to be bold? How should we consider when and how and why to take a stand on a tough issue in a sermon?
I find it helpful to examine the pastoring Jesus modeled in the letters to the churches in Revelation. The pastoring is so specific to each church and their moment, both in what Jesus praises and in what he challenges. The same church that hears “I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked people” also hears “Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first” (Rev. 2:2, 4).
More to the point, the bold and courageous challenge that the church in Ephesus received was to them and for them. Jesus did not say, “Church in Ephesus, there is a church just down the road in Pergamum committing sexual immorality and holding to false teaching.” Instead, Jesus raised those issues with that church (Rev. 2:14–15).
To be clear, I’m not saying the way we choose the right hills to die on is by choosing only those hills on which we might actually die. As preachers, we follow the Spirit and the Word where they lead. But when there is an opportunity to make a pointed sermon application, we ought to address the one that will challenge our congregations rather than pander to them—while always remembering that loving to chastise people is not the same as loving the people you chastise.
A place certainly exists for helping church members think biblically about the ills of society; it is one part of discipleship. But I’m learning it is relatively easy to preach about the sins of culture and of those not in my congregation. It can even be intoxicating. In contrast, when church members hear the Word preached to them, repent of their sins (and not their neighbors’ sins), believe the gospel afresh together, receive assurance of God’s forgiveness, and ask for the Spirit’s empowerment to walk in newness of life, these regular practices make a church a unified church. In our divided moment, I’ve experienced that the members who repent and believe together stay together.
Rest in the power of the Word and the Spirit.
A friend in our church was a New York City police officer in the 1980s when the crime rate was extremely high. The murder rate, for example, was four times higher than today. He tells me the experience continually reminded him of two things: not only that he had a role to play in bettering the city, but also that he could not be the ultimate solution. The problems were too big for any one officer.
I assume that, like crime rates in NYC, the macro-division pastors feel in our congregations will ebb and flow for reasons well outside the control of any one pastor in any one church. So I try to remember these same truths. Our sermons have a vital role to play in building on the gospel bridge Christ has built. But if, in the process of preaching, we feel as the apostle Paul once felt—“Who is equal to such a task?” (2 Cor. 2:16)—we must take comfort where Paul took comfort: Our competence comes from God who makes us ministers of a new covenant. For the Spirit still gives life, even in—and maybe especially in—our divided age.
Benjamin Vrbicek is the lead pastor at Community Evangelical Free Church in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the managing editor for Gospel-Centered Discipleship, and the author of several books.
This article is a part of our fall CT Pastors issue. You can find the full issue here.
