Mega Church’s Preaching Emphases

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, "'But we did not yield in subjection to them "'for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel "'would remain with you.'".

In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.

Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry.

Michael E. Abendroth here at the helm. Engage. We are, and by the way, I'm gonna do this right at the very beginning for Christian Harris' pleasure. I have my Fair Life Nutrition Plan, 30 grams, high-quality protein, two sugars, 150 calories, no artificial growth, hormones, 11 .5 ounces, vanilla, vanilla, tastes pretty good.

Starting to get hooked on these things. That's maybe one of the best-tasting protein drinks I've ever had, live, fair, Fair Life. Anyway, we are going through all this stuff like you all are. Maybe you're listening to more podcasts than normal.

I'm trying to just have a schedule so I get things done, cleaning up a few things, including the S. Lewis Johnson Colossians Commentary. I'm working on that, trying to work on that an hour a day until I get it done.

I thought I had less work to do than what I really do. Now that I'm off the blood thinners and can actually think and function, the only thing I could really do on those things was to be feeling awful, running to the bathroom all the time, sorry for too much information, and just feeling gray and gross.

And I hope I wasn't too mean to people. I did preach regularly. That's about the only thing I did. But I feel kind of back to normal. I talked to the knee doctor. We're 90 days past the surgery and I can ride a bicycle if I want.

Probably won't ride outside quite yet. We'll build up to that. But riding the stationary bike. Thank you for your prayers and thank you for all your support. Well, I was gonna do something a little bit different today and I think I still will.

I read an article this week. Actually, Nine Marks posted it, but I don't think it was written by a Nine Marks guy, although I could be wrong. Colton Corter. Colton Corter. And he wrote an article called, Four Reflections After Listening to 18 Hours of Sermons in America's Biggest Churches.

And this was posted on 3 -31 -2020, so a couple days ago in real time. And I just thought it was kind of fascinating. I mean, what do people do with all their downtime? I don't really sit around. I'm not really a sitting around kind of guy.

I want to feel, I'm using that word on purpose, I want to feel good at the end of the day. And if I have a list of things to do and then get them done, I feel better. Therefore, for instance, this morning before I left here to come to the church building, there was a bunch of rose things.

My wife trimmed the rose bushes and I needed to pick all those things up. I had to get the right kind of gloves because there's so many thorns and all that stuff. And I've just been putting that off, but I got that done today, so I was happy.

I was happy to get that done, get a few things done here. And I don't know, even know what I'm talking about. Oh, I know. And so people are trying to do interesting things. I thought about, you know, I'm gonna learn how to tie some knots.

I'm gonna learn a little bit more about poetry. You know, that kind of stuff. Well, this particular man, Colton Corter, thought he'd listened to 18 hours of sermons from mega churches, mega churches. And he listened to four sermons each from the country's nine biggest evangelical churches.

And these are the churches. Church of the Highlands, North Point Ministries. I think that's probably Andy Stanley. Gateway Church, Crossroads Church, Christ Church of the Valley, Saddleback Church. You recognize that with Rick Warren.

Christ Fellowship Church, Elevation Church, that's Furtick. Southeastern Christian Church, that's in Louisville, where all the unsuspecting Baptists go to the Church of Christ, Baptismal Regeneration, and don't even know what they're doing.

Why Southern Seminary promoted Southeastern Christian Church for years, I have no idea. When I went to visit once and I saw the pastor, I think his name was Bob Russell. He was the first pastor, the famous one.

And after the baptism, he said, by the way, if you believe in Baptismal Regeneration, even if you try to hide it from Baptists, naive Baptists or unsuspecting Baptists or Baptists that have a political agenda, when you watch the baptismal that's all deluxe and pretty and clean and not knocking the baptismal, but you make a nice one if you're into regeneration when it comes to baptism.

After Bob Russell dunked the person, he said, welcome to the kingdom. I'm thinking, we're gonna come ask this guy to speak at Southern Seminary Chapel. But anyway, that was above my pay grade. Back to the point here.

Four sermons from the nine biggest churches. I guess those were the nine. With an average sermon length of about 30 minutes, that doesn't surprise me. These reflections are based on approximately 18 .1 hours of material.

As I listened, I found several common threads. Those threads will make up most of the article, A State of American Preaching, if you will. I will. And I don't know about you, but we could probably do this another way.

We could say in the last, you don't have to listen to 18 hours worth, but take the last four sermons your pastor preached. Or if you're a pastor, the last four sermons you preached. And then I wonder what themes would emerge.

Remember stereograms? Back in the day, you'd stare at this, look like a Picasso painting almost. It didn't have any rhyme or reason, and you stared at it long enough. And they kind of would coach you through it.

You put your nose to it, slowly bring the pages away from your face. Kind of look through it almost if you could. And a 3D image would emerge. I think that's called a stereogram. Somebody said, that's not called that.

But I looked it up because I think I put it in one of my books. You know, that big seller that's in the eighth printing. I have six books, none of them are on their eighth printing. And a lot of them are stacked up.

By the way, if you order Sexual Fidelity online, I'm gonna send you an extra book for free, things that go bump in the night. So if you buy one, get one free, you don't even have to say anything, just order one and I'll know that you heard about it magically through this radio station and I'll send you another one.

So all of April, buy Sexual Fidelity, get things that go bump in the church for free. What would emerge? And now I normally am in the book of Hebrews and hopefully we'll be there this coming weekend. But because of the COVID deal and live streaming and lots of other things going on, I picked some older sermons.

So I think the last four sermons I've preached, I've preached Hebrews 11, then I preached a sermon, Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread, I wanna talk about God's provision, our Father's provision. Then I preached Psalm 23 as what is called by one person, a sunny little Psalm.

Then last week I preached Luke 13, what's the response to tragedy, repentance, make sure you're ready to die. And then this week, which would be I guess number five is gonna be Hebrews 11 verses 32 through 40, the faith that God gives will last through adversity and prosperity because it's a God-given faith.

Christ-Centered Preaching and the Theme of the Last Four Sermons

Well, if I wonder if I gave people four of those sermons and what are the themes, I hope something like the centrality of the person of Christ would be one of those themes. Now, I read this article by Mr. Corder a couple of days ago, so I've forgotten exactly what's said in there.

But if I'm just looking now of my own ministry, here's my desire, we think of Colossians chapter one verse 28 about Him we proclaim, we're proclaiming Christ Jesus regularly to our people, the Messiah.

I think of 1 Corinthians chapter two verse two that we make a determination like Paul, and we wanna make sure we preach Christ Jesus and Him crucified, even Him crucified, if you wanna translate it that way.

And I wonder if we did, in fact, look at the sermons. I would bet my life on it that they would be Christ-centered. Why would I bet my life on them? Well, because I know what I said and I know what I want to emphasize.

And Psalm 23 is this great Psalm about this shepherd, the Lord Jesus. And I know, give us this day our daily bread, that's a prayer that Jesus wants us to pray. He's taught us to pray, looking to the Father for His goodness.

And if He's given us Christ Jesus, wouldn't He give us everything else like provision food, shelter, and clothing, i .e. bread. And then the Luke 13, talking about repentance and making sure we think rightly about sin so we can think rightly about the Lord when it comes to faith.

So, Lafitte, the person working of Christ, not only the preacher, but also the object of our faith as representative and sin bearer, the risen Savior. I want that at the top of the list. He talks about Jesus all the time.

I want our people at Bethlehem Bible Church to say, you turn that livestream on, it'll be about Jesus. You attend the church when you physically can't, it'll be about Jesus. Early on, probably the first five years of NOCO, maybe there was less of that.

I'm not responsible for what I said then. I'm sorry. I guess I am. But I think you'll see the tenor and tone and tincture of the ministry now a lot different than it used to be. Well, that needs to be at the top of the list.

That needs to be the top of the list. A God-centered, Christ-centered exposition. Now, of course, we're gonna think about authorial intent and all these other things, but the divine authorial intent, of course, not excluded from study.

That's the main thing. If somebody says, I preach verse by verse, even if it's a topic. I mean, I guess some of my messages are topical, but I'm trying to make them textually slash exegetically proven.

Open your Bible to this verse and we walk through it. That's the main thing. And anything else is kind of gravy. Is it put together well? Rhetorical flair? Homiletical devices? I think that's all wonderful and fine, but when people listen to me preach, I want them to say, he really believes what he's saying.

He has an authoritative tone. He's trying to make sure I explain it well. That's taken a lot of work. Those things are all fine. I hope they think those things, but not at the expense of he's talking about Jesus.

He has been commissioned by the Lord Jesus to go preach to the Lord Jesus' local church. So that's the big thing. If your pastor has preached the last 10 sermons and there are a bunch of gobbledygook how-to stuff, you ought to probably go talk to your pastor and do it in a kind way, but you probably should go do that.

The Gospel Must Not Be Assumed

So what did this guy find out? Super fascinating. Colton Quarter. The gospel at best is assumed. Most of the time it's entirely absent. The gospel is at best, they forgot the word is there, but the gospel is at best assumed.

Most of the time it's entirely absent. Isn't that amazing? Isn't that amazing? Now, I believe it was D .A. Carson that said something to the effect of, if you have this generation assume the gospel, the next generation will not believe the gospel.

I assume every Sunday, most people know that Jesus died on the cross and was raised from the dead. But guess what? I talk about it all the time because I want to talk about Jesus. Now I can talk about his life and his meriting righteousness for others by keeping the law.

I can talk about how kind he was as he forgave sinners on earth and how he raises people from the dead and compassionately touches lepers and was a wonderful preacher, how he would go after the scribes and the Pharisees and the Herodians and the Sadducees and the lawyers.

There's lots of things I can talk about. And I do assume the people know, but that doesn't translate into how I preach because I'm there to remind them of what they often forget and what I often forget.

That's why we celebrate the Lord's Supper only when we're together, of course, but we celebrate the Lord's Supper to be reminded of that because we are a forgetful people. We get caught up in all kinds of other issues and we forget about things and we need to be reminded.

We don't assume the gospel. If you're a dad or a mom or you teach homeschool or Sunday school or Bible study, we don't assume the gospel. And lots of times, I think that King James only kind of fighting fundy people who give altar calls at the end of their sermons.

I think they talk about Jesus more than some people who fancy themselves as verse-by-verse expositors because those verse-by-verse expositors, and I know because I used to do this, would be so focused, myopically focused on the text at hand that they never would just push back from the table and make sure they understand the concept of what's the local context, what's the immediate context, what's the overall context, what's the context of the Old and New Testament, what about the divine author and the organic unity of scripture, and what are the themes and types and shadows and all these other things.

Don't assume the gospel. Preach the gospel regularly. You should be able to preach the gospel in 60 seconds. And even if you said our passage today is about not worrying but I want you to be reminded, this is the God who doesn't worry.

His name is Jesus. He never worried on earth. He never sinned. You get credit for that, and he paid for all your worry, and off you go. I mean, it's really, it's not that hard because any time sin comes up, you can talk about the sin bearer and how Jesus came to seek and save those who were what? Lost.

Repentance, Faith, and the Christian Life

Number two, in four reflections after listening to 18 hours of sermons in America's biggest churches, I don't know how he found out those churches were so big. There's probably different ways you could look up those things.

I used to have a mega church kind of data database. Is it database or database? Repentance rarely comes across as something urgent and necessary. Instead, it is either optional or not worth mentioning at all.

Isn't that interesting? What about repentance? What about repentance? Now, I have talked a long time about what repentance is and what it isn't. I believe in what we call sola fide, and that is you trust in what the Lord has done, and it is outside of you, and it is something that involves knowledge, assent, and trust, and that if I say repent, I'm talking about how you think about sin, which of course will eventually yield in fruits of repentance, a changed life.

But when I tell people, an unbeliever, to repent, I'm not telling them to change their life so that they can believe, because how could they ever do that? I believe with many Reformers, with Calvin, Sinclair, Ferguson, that repentance is the fruit of faith, and I also believe that if you say repent, you're meaning the whole.

That is, it's a part. Say repent, you're also meaning believe. Or if you say believe, you're also implying repent. It's a synecdoche, it's a figure of speech. Say a part, but you mean the whole, because how could I ever call people to the Lord Jesus Christ without them thinking rightly about sin?

How could I ever talk about sin and thinking rightly about sin if I never then pointed them to the Lord Jesus as the sin bearer? But for the Christian, we also have to talk about repentance, and you even think about the first thesis in the 95 Theses with Luther about a life of repentance for the Christians, and it's not just a one-time thing when you first repent.

It is a lifetime of repentance, repenting even of our repentance, right? Our repentance isn't even perfect, and therefore we have to change our minds about things. We need to keep repenting as Christians, and we can call Christians to repent when we think wrongly about things.

People should tell us this is the right way to think. Number three, four reflections after listening to 18 hours of sermons in America's biggest churches. This is the third one. While the prosperity gospel is absent, its shadow lurks in the background.

Now, it might be absent in those four sermons of each of those nine churches, 18 .1 hours, but I think I could show its prominence at least popping up at certain times with some of these churches, but that's not my point.

Here, he said of these four sermons, it's lurking in the background. And here's what he said, quote, at least two of the churches, North Point and Crossroads, had a sermon or sermons on the subject of winning.

Brian Tome or Tome Crossroads defines winning in this way, to find God's will for your life and accomplish it. That's in the sermon Tenacity, week two. Who would ever call a sermon that? What's Tome's win for this year?

100 ,000 social media followers so that his spiritual influence can spread. Tome goes on to say in his sermon, target that winning biblical commandment. I have no idea, not what this author of this and critiquing this, Colton Carter means, but I have no idea what that pastor or so-called pastor means.

What does that mean? I mean, in my opinion, that's just a bunch of mumbo jumbo. What do we do with the word even sin? Colton says the word sin, whether in believers or unbelievers is rarely mentioned.

All of this, of course, is divorced from any discussion of God's judgment. In these sermons, God is affable. He is not level with us, but he's willing to level with us. He's serious, but not too serious.

And you know, that's what happens in evangelicalism. We regularly, if we're not careful, we think our sin isn't that great. We think God's holiness is not that great, and therefore the chasm can be a bridge between sinful humanity and thrice holy God by minimizing holiness and minimizing sin of a human.

And then things like self-help can bridge the gap. Psychology can bridge the gap. Pragmatism can bridge the gap. Civil religious duties can bridge the gap. But if we're really as bad as God says we are, and God is really as holy as he reveals himself to be, then the only way that bridge can be gapped, that chasm can be broached is the Lord Jesus, the God man.

Therefore, when you've got all this stuff going around behind the scenes, even if you're not talking about seed ministry and tenfold ministry and send me money, send Jesus money, here's my address, it's still in the background is what this article is trying to say.

And I agree, that's so common. I don't want that in my preaching. I mean, can you imagine if I preach a sermon called tenacity, ten-a-city. And number four, the fourth reflection after listening to 18 hours of sermons in America's biggest churches.

The Bible Used as Misuse or Abuse

The use of the Bible generally falls, fell into two categories, misuse or abuse. Oh, he uses the Bible. Yeah, he abuses it or misuses it. Here's what our author said. Every preacher utilize the Bible in one way or the other.

I guess you could say, what's his name? Joe Osteen, he shows it. Maybe he doesn't even consider hosting a church because this is not listed on here. More, let's see, some more than others use it. Others more than some.

Morris stood out as one who consistently read the entire passage he wanted to preach. Hodge read most of Genesis 32 in his sermon entitled WrestleMania. Rick Warren said Saddleback self-consciously tries to base everything they do on the word of God.

Most of his sermons had a main text of sorts, but the degree to which the text was used varied. Narratives and parables were by far the preferred genre and the move from text to application was usually hasty and direct.

Take for example, Eidelman's sermon, One Day at a Time. Luke two is his main text. He uses the passage to make the following point. Since it took Jesus one day at a time to become who he was, we should expect the same.

Tomei said Rahab's story is a lesson that no matter what happened in 2019, you can be a winner in 2020. I'm sorry, this is so asinine. Hodges compares the Old Testament law to things we in the present can't break through.

In Mirror Mirror in WrestleMania, he uses Jacob wrestling with God as an opportunity to ask his listeners about the areas they were currently wrestling through. I hate that. I hate that. Conclusion. Colton Corder said, the point of this project isn't to poke fun at these churches or indict their motives.

Well, their actions indict their motives, but I don't need to know their motives. It's not like, why'd you do that? What did you do? I think of that in the Garden of Eden. God didn't say to Adam, why did you do that?

It didn't even matter why, it's what. Because what you do is connected to your heart and why you wanna do it. This is not, well, somebody's not equipped or they're not trained or they're just a neophyte and they're a brand new believer and therefore they don't really know how to understand the Bible.

These people call themselves pastors, right? Other people call them pastors, they should know better. Galatians, excuse me, James chapter three, verse one is in the Bible. And this project isn't poke fun.

God alone knows the heart, but I know what they say and we are left simply to evaluate based on what's observable, that's true. The point of this project is to provide a snapshot of what a large percentage of Christian American churchgoers might hear when they darken the doors of a church building on Sunday morning.

We assume that this, because such preaching is popular in larger churches, it's often aspirational in smaller churches. My main takeaway, all right, let's see what he says. I might have to critique him.

I believe is to soberly reflect on the sermons we give. Hey, that's pretty good. We started off that way at the beginning and the sermons we listened to week in and week out. God grant us and our churches mercy to clearly proclaim the gospel or, can't read this here, it didn't come out on the Xerox and invite unbelievers into the greatest joy imaginable life with God in Christ.

And then it's got a list of all the sermons. Andy Stanley, Rick Warren, Keith Eidelman, Brian Tomei, Robert Morris, Ashley Woodridge, is Ashley a woman? Stephen Furtick, Todd Mullins, Chris Hodges. Anyway, my name is Mike Abenroth.

There's no compromise radio. The point is dads, moms, Sunday school teachers, door-to-door evangelist, open door evangelist, open air evangelist, open your Bible evangelist, pastors talk about the Lord Jesus and be direct.

Talk about sin, repentance, faith, Christ life, death, burial, resurrection, ascension, session and soon return. That's who we talk about. Well, my name is Mike Abenroth, No Compromise Radio. You can write me Mike at nocompromiseradio .com or you can talk to Spencer info at nocompromiseradio .com.

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abenroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life transforming power of God's word through verse by verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at six. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.