Sometimes God calls us to preach to our people a timely and important word—a word that is challenging and perhaps difficult to receive. In seminary we called this “prophetic preaching.” We looked to the Old Testament prophets as our example—courageous and willing to speak the hard words of criticism as they preached against the sins of injustice, unfaithfulness, and idolatry that had infiltrated God’s people in their day.
More recently I have watched pastors, who were quite proud of their “prophetic ministry,” drive churches right into the ground. Or, if they did not drive the church into the ground, they succeeded in driving away everyone who disagreed with them, attracting only the like-minded to their church. What they did not manage to do, unfortunately, was to actually influence anyone to change.
Having sought to deliver those kinds of messages with some regularity at Church of the Resurrection, I would like to offer some insights gained through both my successes and failures. Maybe these will help as you seek, in the words of Reinhold Niebuhr, not only to “comfort the afflicted” but to “afflict the comfortable.”
When preaching unpopular or controversial issues, we have to ask: Is our aim to proudly shout out our position, or is it to actually influence people to consider making this position their own?
Obviously, by the way I’ve phrased the question, I believe that our aim is to influence others to change when their views are in conflict with what Scripture teaches.
If we agree about this, then the next question is, “What is the most effective way to influence people to reconsider their own views and to adopt a more biblical view?”
A popular prophet
On Christmas Eve of 1999 we announced to worshipers that beginning the second week of January we would launch a series of sermons on the most difficult and controversial issues of our time. A postcard in the bulletin outlined what those topics would be:
Separation of Church and State
Evolution in the Public Schools
The Death Penalty
Euthanasia
Prayer in Public Schools
Abortion
Homosexuality. 1
We invited worshipers to join us as we wrestled with hard issues. The second Sunday of January our worship attendance increased by one thousand over what it had been running in the last quarter of 1999!
These sermons were an opportunity not only for evangelism, but also pastoral care. Our longtime church members were presented the opportunity to do social ethics—to apply their faith to complex moral issues. We probably lost a handful of members during the series—but we kept most of those new people who began attending. I received hundreds of e-mails during the series. People were talking about these sermons at work, sharing them with their congresspersons—the response was amazing.
We saved the most controversial issues for the end. We set a new record for worship attendance on the day we preached on homosexuality—we had 2,500 more in worship than we had averaged just two months earlier.
The basic premise of this series of sermons was that all these issues are moral issues, and moral issues are meant to be shaped by values, and values are shaped by faith. As such, these are important issues to discuss in church. In addition to drawing in a large number of unchurched people who were amazed that a church was willing to deal with these topics, we offered pastoral care (especially in the sermons on euthanasia, abortion, and homosexuality) and, as noted above, taught Christian social ethics and how to apply the Scriptures to complex issues, thus accomplishing the aim of discipleship as well.
Show honor and respect
I have, at times, come right out in a sermon with what I believe is the biblical mandate, and preached it with both conviction and, unfortunately, a bit of self-righteousness or smugness. My approach never accomplished what I hoped it would—it did not move people with entrenched opinions to reconsider. I received plenty of kudos from those who already agreed with me, but only angered those who did not. This is not prophetic preaching, and it does not please God.
It does not please God because the preacher (in this case me!) squandered an opportunity to make a real difference, and instead drove people even farther away from the position God was seeking to lead them toward. God isn’t interested in whether you are right about a particular issue. God is interested in whether you do your job as a preacher, which is to help other people discover God’s ways.
The best way to influence and persuade others is not to alienate them and irritate them, but to honor them and respect their positions, and then to respectfully and humbly offer an alternative position.
My series on “Christianity and the Controversial Issues of Our Time” could have been disastrous if handled the wrong way. But it ended up being a tremendous success, not only in reaching and attracting a large number of new people, but also in influencing people to rethink their entrenched views on very difficult issues.
Argue well for both sides
My underlying assumption in preaching this series of sermons was that controversial issues are controversial precisely because thinking Christians can reach opposite conclusions about the issues. If the issues were simple and the conclusion easily drawn, they would not be controversial.
With this in mind, I prepared each sermon just as I had been required to prepare for debates in high school—I studied both sides of an issue with the goal of being able to win a debate regardless of whether I took the affirmative or the negative side of the argument. In other words, if I was going to preach successfully on a controversial topic, I needed to be able to understand and fairly articulate both sides of the issue.
Only after I could do this was I in a position to bring my own interpretation of the Scripture, as it related to the particular issue, to bear. I had to be honest about the weaknesses of my argument, and I needed to be willing to change my own views as I considered the arguments.
My approach in presenting these sermons was to begin by making the strongest possible case for the view I would not ultimately ascribe to. I would in every case try to give proponents of this view the benefit of the doubt. I would attribute to them the highest possible motives. By the time I was done presenting the first position on any of the controversial issues, I wanted anyone who held that position to say, “Adam has been more than fair in representing my viewpoint, and he treated me and my viewpoint with respect.” People often told me after these sermons that I did a far better job articulating their position than they could have done themselves.
After this I presented the opposite view, not as my own, but as an objective presenter— making the strongest case possible for this view and treating with respect those who held such views. My hope at this juncture was simply to help people on both sides to understand and view each other with respect. I sought to model this approach for them.
Finally, I would try to bring my own thought processes to bear on the topic. I sought to demonstrate compassion for those on the opposite side of the issue, my own tentativeness if I was not completely certain myself, and then my final conclusion of what I felt was the position most in keeping with what I could understand of God’s will as revealed in Scripture and in the person of Jesus Christ.
Here’s what I found: Some people told me, “Your conclusion was different from mine, but you have given me a lot to think about. I’ll keep thinking about this.” On many occasions, especially related to the death penalty, euthanasia, and abortion, people said, “I came here today with strong opinions in one direction, and I am leaving seriously reconsidering my views. You changed my mind today.”
At the end of the day, I believe that is what effective prophetic preaching is supposed to do: to actually affect the people who most need to hear it. It is meant to move them to change—to reconsider their life or their views. If you can—with humility, respect, and great love—offer a challenging word, you have the incredible potential of actually changing the hearts and minds of your hearers.
If you have offered the difficult words with humility, respect, and love, and people are upset with you and choose to walk out on your sermons (as I have had happen on numerous occasions), so be it. You cannot avoid preaching on difficult subjects just because you don’t want to lose members.
I have received well over one hundred e-mails and letters during the last twelve years from people who disagreed with something I said in a sermon. Their words have sometimes hurt.
But if I have been wise and caring in how I approach a difficult issue about which I feel God has called the church to speak, then I will accept the fact that some will occasionally turn away as a result of my sermons. But if by my approach I have alienated people and turned them away from the church and from the position God has called me to preach, then I have failed.
OK, sometimes I get it wrong
I recently forgot my own advice here. On the one-year anniversary of September 11, I preached a sermon to my congregation that was stirred by my own growing conviction that as a nation we were too quickly headed for war with Iraq. I was not persuaded that we had met the criteria of just war. While 68 percent of the American people were in favor of moving forward, I was feeling increasingly convicted that I needed to challenge our assumptions about this.
The first half of my sermon that day dealt with the kind of pastoral concerns that needed to be dealt with on the one-year anniversary of this terrible tragedy. But I devoted the second half of the sermon to the issue of our continuing war on terrorism and specifically the prospects of war with Iraq.
As I look at that sermon I continue to feel the basic position I took in the sermon was biblical and prompted by the Holy Spirit. Unfortunately, what I did not do was respect and recognize the feelings and rationale of those who felt we were justified in going to war. Instead I simply let loose with my own understanding of God’s will.
The result was that I irritated a lot of folks I really had hoped to influence. In other words, I had failed to accomplish the one thing I most wanted to do that day—because I forgot the lessons I’ve just shared.
In the end this is the question: When it comes to preaching on difficult issues, do you want to irritate or influence your congregation?
Adam Hamilton is senior minister of (United Methodist) Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, Kansas. www.cor.org
1. This sermon series was published as Confronting the Controversies (Abingdon, 2001) and includes study questions for group use. Videotapes and audiotapes are available from the Church of the Resurrection at www.cor.org. This article is reprinted from Unleashing the Word by Adam Hamilton (Abingdon, 2003), used by permission.
Summary: Use Forensics Technology
Debate methods will break, then make the case.Adam Hamilton approaches sermons on difficult subjects using skills he learned in debate class.
- Show respect for all participants in the debate, as well as their positions.
- Study all sides and be prepared to argue for or against any position.
- In the sermon, first make the case for the position you will not ultimately choose. Make it as strongly as possible. Those who hold that position will be more likely to hear your side if they feel you understand theirs.
- Make the case for the side you hold. Make it biblical, but also admit the weaknesses of your argument.
- Be willing to change and grow during the study process, just as you expect your listeners to change after hearing your message.
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