Preaching Strategies

I think we need a new Tuesday guy intro. Some type of...

Can we have trumpets and stuff? Welcome to No Compromise Radio.

Mike Abendroth with Pastor, Reverend, Sergeant Senior Steve Cooley.

And the Tijuana Brass. Did you ever watch Herb Alpert and all that when you were growing up?

No. Did you listen to Lawrence Welk? Watch Lawrence Welk? No. Did you watch

Starsky and Hutch? You know, my dad had a thing with fake cop shows.

I mean, really, really, he did not like them. One Adam 12, no? Well, he liked that one more because at least the guys were in a radio car and it seemed relatively, reasonably, possibly real.

How about the detective shows, kind of Kojak and Columbo? Yeah, I think we watched a lot of that stuff.

You're old enough to know Mannix. Yeah, sure.

Joe Mannix. Beretta? Yeah. No, no. What was it called? Beretta? Yeah. And he got accused of murdering somebody in real life?

Well, only because he did it. Didn't he have a parrot or a parakeet or something like that?

Yeah. What was his name? I don't know. I can't remember. I can't either. What we do know is preaching, hopefully.

That's what we're going to talk about today. What we do know is preaching. That's why we went to seminary.

Well, I want to talk a little bit about preaching because it was in my mind, Steve. All right.

It's coming up on Easter Sunday. Now, this show will probably play after Easter, but that's okay. We're getting ready for next

Easter. I'm trying to plan ahead more in ministry, so this will go a long way. What do we do when we're preaching through books of the

Bible and all of a sudden a special holiday comes up? What's our strategy? Mother's Day. I mean,

I've been here, what, 26 years now, and now I have to have 26 different Mother's Day messages?

I have a special Mother's Day message. It's from Isaiah 53. I mean, you do

Proverbs 31, and then you go, hmm, maybe that's a Proverbs 31 man. Maybe it's something else.

And then you do Hannah, right? First Samuel chapter two. Hannah, she's a wonderful woman.

And then you do... Magnificat. Yes. And then you do the couple of the ladies that are quarreling in Philippians 4.

That's always a good Mother's Day message. Then you do one about Deacon's wives.

Are these wives of Deacons? Are they Deaconesses? That's always a good one for Mother's Day. Man, that packs them in.

Let me give you the five reasons why it's not Deaconesses, but it's Deacon's wives. That's...

My favorite, though, that you ever did was be not like Eve. I think it was

Eve comma be not like. Okay, good. But seriously, what's the strategy?

So, this is for people that are listening and their pastors are preaching the Bible verse by verse sequentially, and then they do some special message on Easter or Resurrection Sunday, or maybe they don't.

Are both fine? I think both are fine. But I mean, if you're going to do a special message, seems to me like Easter Sunday is the

Sunday to do it, right? I mean, forget about Father's Day, Mother's Day, Brother's Day, Sister's Day, whatever.

I mean, can you imagine if you go by the Hallmark holiday calendar, you're never going to do anything other than celebrate holidays.

National Cat Day, BLM Day. I mean, they've got all kinds of days, don't they? Boy, those would be some great messages there.

Today's message is about cats, why you should be thankful for them. Okay, let's think big picture.

We would humbly propose that there are 52 special days for Christians every year.

I think that's pretty good, yeah. Okay, good. So, Lord's Day, and that's the special day, first day of the week when

Jesus rose, when he ascended. John is writing about the

Lord's Day, or he's writing on the Lord's Day. I think some crazy cats named the apostles,

I think they worshiped the Lord on the first day, didn't they? Crazy cats. I'm feeling pretty hip today.

But it is certainly appropriate, knowing that there'll be a bunch of unbelievers on Sunday, Resurrection Sunday, to maybe make the message a little more evangelistic.

Would that be fine? Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, you're going to have people who only come to church on Christmas and Easter, and I don't mean, you know, our church in isolation.

But people just kind of look around on, as Christmas and Easter approaches, they consider themselves

Christians, and they think, I should probably go to church. Where's the closest church? And I'm sure we'll have like one or two or three, you know, just kind of wandering in, which is fine.

And so, you know, don't you want to make sure that you're really emphasizing and highlighting the

Lord Jesus Christ's life, death, and especially, you know, the resurrection? Yes.

Well, Steve, we don't want to read Christ into passages. So, we want to just do exit

Jesus preaching for certain topics, certain passages. For Resurrection Sunday, I like to do a lot of word studies, lexical, syntactical analysis.

Well, you know, it's really helpful, especially if you're going to give the congregation a handout, you know, with footnotes.

Oh, no, no. It's Easter, Steve. So, we go above and beyond at Bethlehem Bible Church.

I give them a diagrammatical analysis of every sentence that I'm preaching. Nice. Yeah.

And they get a handout, fill in the blank for the diagrammatical sentences. So, would that include the nominative case?

Yeah. There are different tenses in the Greek language.

Well, in every language, there are different tenses. And in the Greek language, one of the tenses is aorist,

A -O -R, aorist. And I always, and there's different kinds of aorists. And so, the one that I always like to say is gnomic, the gnomic aorist.

It's like a gnome, the gnome aorist. And we could argue about, well, does aorist mean a point in time?

Is it punctiliar or is it something else? Uh, sometimes that's a little much, especially for Easter.

But our congregation loves it. Please, more grammatical analysis.

Can you give us more data? Now, obviously, grammatical analysis is important, right?

In our study, we wouldn't do exegesis and all that, but some of the stuff needs to be on the cutting room floor when we're going to, when we are going to preach.

You said gonna the other day and corrected yourself. And I think I said it when I preached last Sunday and correct myself and I just did it here.

I'm gonna do that more often. I just find myself getting sloppy with the language.

Steve, I hate to say, and I do it all the time, instead of to, T -O, to, right?

I'm gonna go to the store, to the store. It's just lazy. Instead of saying, I'm going to the store,

I'm going to the store. I've never been to Spain. I know. But I kind of like the music.

Yes. Okay. All right. So, we're talking about one -offs and certainly some person might bring their spouse that's not saved and that spouse might feel, oh, you know what?

I should probably go to church that day. What do we call the Christians, the people that only come

Christmas and Easter only? Sidekicks? No. CEOs. Christmas and Easter only.

Yeah. But what if we just always do these one -offs and then we say, well, it's

Independence Day. It's Memorial Day. You know what? We should have a good sermon on Memorial Day about America, because this actually is becoming a

Christian nation. We have to Christianize it. The Lord needs to come back and we need to help.

That'd be a good Memorial Day message, don't you think? Mm hmm. Yeah. So, yeah, my message would be called

Only in America. I mean, you know, the real trouble I have with that kind of message is finding a text because it's hard to find the

United States of America in the Bible. Well, I think it's in Ezekiel. I think you're misreading it.

I think it's, I think it's... When he saw the wheel. I mean, listen, there's,

I mean, we're just being silly here, but I think ultimately, you know, how many special messages do we want to have?

And my answer would be not that many. I mean, I actually think it's kind of, I find it odd, you know, when people rearrange the whole calendar to kind of do these special messages.

Do we really need a Mother's Day message? And sure, we love moms, right? I mean,

I think that's, that should be evident all the time and we shouldn't have to have a special Hallmark calendar moment, you know, to do that.

You know, but every year we're going to have one or every Father's Day, we're going to have one.

And so, I just, I don't think so. Steve, one time a lady came to me and it was

Mother's Day. And she said, thanks a lot for talking about the Lord today and not talking about Mother's Day.

And this person isn't able to have children. So, what do you do if you can't have children?

And everything's Mother's Day, Mother's Day, Mother's Day. But if it's the Lord's Day, well, then the Lord can even help you in, like in the

Psalms where you're a barren woman, etc. So, I just think stopping and starting for all these special holidays,

I kind of go back to Calvin. Remember, he's exiled from Geneva. He goes to Strasbourg and is there for three and a half years.

He comes back to Geneva and he picks up right where he left off in the last verse. That's kind of what we want to do.

All right, let's talk a little bit more about preaching, Steve. Give me the strategy that you have for when to bring in systematic theology, when not to.

We're in Isaiah 6, let's say, holy, holy, holy, and you do a whole sermon on the holiness of God because people don't understand holiness today before we go any farther in or further in the book of Isaiah.

And we see the tongues and the coal and all that stuff. Where does systematic theology have a place in preaching?

Well, I would say it helps us just bringing clarity to a topic like this. I mean, when we think about holiness, our first thought is sinlessness, which would be enough if we just could imagine

Isaiah thinking, oh, the unbelievable sinlessness of God in light of his sin.

But that's not all that it means. And so, I think systematic theology helps us flesh that out.

It can help us bring some quotes where, I mean, I always go back to this passage.

If we just think about Ephesians 4, the fact that Christ has given gifts to the church, meaning men, these teachers, these evangelists, etc.,

etc., etc. Given gifts to the church for thousands of years, why would we then not turn to them and say, what have these men said about Isaiah 6 and about the holiness of God?

Steve, the answer is because we only want to hear from the gifts when they're alive.

We don't want to hear any dead gifts. We only want to have living gifts. And I know you're being funny there, but I mean, the reality is, and I say this all the time, we want to act as if we're standing in that long line of faithful men and we're receiving, as it were, the torch from them and passing it on to the next generation.

And the way we do that is by actually taking the torch from them, right? By actually receiving that truth, stating that truth, and giving it to the next generation.

Peter Perfect. When I think of systematic theology preaching, I think in my past,

I think I went too slow. And the reason why I went too slow is because I was injecting probably too much systematic theology, right?

You see the word sin, and then you say, well, there's six Hebrew words and six Greek words for sin, and you go through all those, and what's going on, and Carl Menninger, whatever happened to sin book, and before you know it, it's just a topical sermon on sin.

I don't think that's always wrong, but I think maybe it makes us go too slowly. Lloyd -Jones,

I think, did that a lot, and I think that's why he would preach through books of the Bible, and it'd take him six years or 10 years or something like that.

I want to go faster than I normally would in Luke, because I'm just picking bigger sections.

But Steve, what about systematic theology, maybe not injected into our sermons in such a way that it dominates the passage, but getting to your point, it will help protect us from errors, and it will help guide us in terms of not just systematic theology, but confessions and creeds.

I think they all serve us in a similar fashion. So, we're using them as guardrails, and they're informing us, they're behind the text, but it's not, well, every sermon's a topic now based on a word that's in my passage.

Does that make sense? 15 Yes. And I think, you know, to just say guardrails is helpful, right, because it helps us not to exceed those kind of boundaries.

But it also can, if we just think about it this way, if the creeds and confessions sort of give us a better understanding of what that concept is, and a lot of times they do it in such a concise manner where we don't necessarily need a 45 -minute message just on sin.

Again, not that there's anything wrong with that, per se, but it would be tough if you just did a, you know,

I, Paul, and that's a three -week sermon, and then, you know, an apostle, what's an apostle?

And that's in the two weeks, and, you know, you just kind of grind along like that. And it can take the listeners completely out of the flow of the book to where they're like, okay,

I feel like I'm learning systematic theology, but I'm not learning anything about whatever this book is.

Great point, because we learned about Paul, we learned about apostle, we learned what grace is, we learned what peace is, we learned what

Lord Jesus Christ is and God the Father, but the flow of it and what

Paul's doing, I mean, everybody knows this, but when you get Ephesians out, it's meant to be read all six chapters at one time.

Right. Or Hebrews, you know, the whole thing, the whole 13 chapters at one time.

And so, you know, why would you think, well, I need to, again,

I think it's fine sometimes where you just, and this is something we don't often talk about, but sometimes we're just convicted in our own study of something so deeply, right, to where I don't want to stop talking about this because it's had such a profound effect on me, why would

I think that it wouldn't have any effect on you? Right? So, I think it's good and right and proper for the preacher having been convicted in his own mind and in his own soul by the

Holy Spirit of something to then, you know, preach that to the congregation. Talking about preaching today and listening to sermons, don't you think listening to sermons is worship?

Absolutely. That's the biggest part of worship, probably with most churches that run in the circles that we run in where it's 45 or 50 minutes where you're listening actively.

Any suggestions on how to listen to sermons better? Well, I mean, there are a number of ways. I mean, you start by taking notes, you know, you can start also, you know, by listening and kind of trying to understand how this passage fits into the flow and listening to the points that are being made, etc.

I just think there is a way of helping yourself listen. Like, I mean,

I have a number of things that I do to just kind of stay tuned in. And if I find my, because it's easy to find yourself sort of getting distracted.

One of the things I do, and this is just like a no -brainer, I'd leave my phone in the office. Right? I don't want my phone there.

I mean, if we're traveling somewhere where I have to use the Bible on the computer, because I don't want to take my five -pound

Bible with me. The nine -pound preacher Bible. Then that's fine. And I'll just tell myself, okay,

Steve, while this preaching is going on or whatever, do not, you know, use your phone for anything else.

And it's a matter of self -control, basically. Don't do it. Don't do it. Steve, I think this is really important.

We started talking about preaching, but now listening to preaching. I sit with my phone when

I'm visiting, traveling, and it is all I can do not to check that little notification that just came up that I've got mail or, you know,

I'm thinking to myself, maybe even properly. I have children and they're grown. Yes.

But I have some daughters that aren't married and they're overseas or they're trying to get ahold of dad or that is a hard thing to do.

It's better to just have your phone off, real Bible in front of you. That's a good way to listen. Well, I mean, one of the things

I do is I've shut off all notifications except for email from certain people.

You know, I will confess you are on that list. But other than that,

I don't, and especially when I'm at church, I just go into airplane mode. I just I don't want any, you know, and I shut it off to silence.

I just do everything I can to just be detached from the e -world, as it were.

And, you know, when we're here, like I said, I just leave my phone in my office because I just don't, I don't want that thing even there as a temptation.

Amen. We're talking about preaching a little bit today on No Compromise Radio with Pastor Steve, the Tuesday guy. Steve, we both preach here.

Give me your strategy for picking books of the Bible. You usually don't pick a book that I'm preaching through.

You pick something else. So at least I know that much. Yeah, that's a good strategy. I'm still mad at you that you picked

John because I wanted to pick John, but I'm sure I'll fall in love with Luke as much as I love John. See, you can say you're mad at me.

Maybe I should have gotten into writing because I do ask you, hey, you know, can I do this?

And you say, sure, go ahead. No, no, Steve, long COVID. I'm just full of excuses now. I can't remember.

I read the Jocko book, no excuses, but I forgot it because I had long COVID. So here's my excuse.

Yeah, here's your excuse. Okay. So there's, you know, there's one pulpit and if I'm gone or whatever, you've got books of the

Bible to preach through. I think one thing that you do well is you don't do a bunch of one -offs. If I'm gone, right,

I'm going to go see Gracie's graduation soon. I'm gone for a week. You could do one -offs here and there, which is fine, but you normally pick a book of the

Bible and start preaching through it. How many books of the Bible have you preached through even as an associate on Sunday mornings?

I don't know. I mean, it's quite a few.

First Peter. Yeah. Second Peter. Yeah. John. First Timothy and John.

And I don't know, you know, I'd have to go through my notes. I just don't really remember. But, you know, talking about one -offs,

I mean, I mostly try to, but here, let me just, you know, dog myself here. Like, let's say, because I'm usually preaching during the summer, right?

So, then let's say, you know, you're going to miss a week in December or something like that. Well, I'm not going to go back to the book that I'm in for that one week, you know, months after when

I'm thinking, well, I mean, I'll preach for another several months. So, sometimes like in that, or like when you were in the hospital, and then even when you got out, not knowing how long

I was going to be going, I just thought, well, I could start Acts now, but do I really want to?

And so, there were several weeks where I would just pick, pick one, you know, spot and just go, oh, this is good.

And this preaches easily. You know, it's amazing after you've been preaching through a narrative to go back to the epistles and just go,

I can knock this right out. I mean. Peter Steve, as you know, I started the

Gospel of Luke and I'm thinking, oh, this is going to kill me in terms of study with the narratives and huge sections, huge chapters.

Because it's one thing, like, anybody can, you know, grasp what a narrative is saying, right?

That's not the point. The question is always, and this is what, until you've had to preach, this is what you don't get.

How does it preach, right? And part of that, and the great thing about going through a narrative is you and I could preach, not that we should, but we could preach exactly the same passage on the exact same

Sunday and people would go, that was amazing. Not that, you know, both sermons were amazing because yours would be amazing, mine would be sub -amazing, but the point would be that we would each have a slightly different take on it, emphasizing slightly different things, and it would almost sound to the people like they heard two completely different sermons because they did, even though they were both true and they're both out of the same passage.

Peter Unlike, let's say Romans 5, the benefits of justification, while we might phrase things differently, our sermons should be pretty much the same.

They would have to be pretty close. These are the benefits of justification, peace with God, access, hope, joy, etc.

Pete And we might, you know, like you said, we might emphasize different parts of it, you know, I might jump on one part of it and you might jump on another part of it or you might, you know, develop all of it brilliantly and I might just camp out on one point endlessly and people might go,

Steve, can you move on, please? You know, but the point is, yeah, they would be more similar than what we might see in a narrative.

Peter When you go to a website of a church and you're checking out the church, maybe you look at the pastor's education and then you look at their statement of faith and then you go to the sermons and you're looking for, you know,

Luke 1, Luke 2, Luke 3, Luke 4, oh, here's a one -off, then Luke 5,

Luke 6, etc. What do you think, Steve, when you go to a church and you go to the sermon section and it's got cool graphics, six to eight week sermon series, and that's all they do.

It's just 50 of those on their website, eight -week series on following Jesus or an eight -week series on the one another's.

Why is that popular and what's wrong with it or potentially wrong with it?

Steve Well, I can see why it's popular from a preaching standpoint. You know, this is like the proverbial shooting fish in a barrel because I could easily prep one of those, you know, in three, four hours on a

Saturday afternoon and be ready to, you know, ready to go on Sunday morning. It's simple, right?

All I need is my overall strategy and then boom, I'm off to the races. So, those kind of basically topical kind of sermons are super easy.

So, I think it's good from that point from why are they popular because I think they're easy to listen to.

You know, if the guy's shifting verses all the time and not demanding much of the congregation,

I think they're super easy to listen to. They can be fun, you know, and I think it's really an opportunity for the pastor to just kind of show off, as it were, his personality.

So, I think there's that too. So, I can see why they're popular. Pete Steve, I don't want to do those for lots of reasons, and you mentioned some of the reasons, but here's another reason why

I don't want to do those is I think there is obviously something to be said for preaching through books of the

Bible and preaching them well, Christ -centered, not so slow, you know, etc.

But what if I had to pick every eight weeks what I was going to be preaching again?

I at least know, okay, today is Luke 1 verse 4, next week is chapter 1 verses 5 and following.

While it might be hard, I have no choice, put your head down, do the work. At least I know what

I'm going to be preaching. Well, let me give you the counter to that. The counter is, you know, if you do this kind of topical stuff, you could basically set up eight or ten topics and then just sort of plan the whole year like that.

Well, I guess you could, but I don't want to do that because then things are going to revolve around topics, around my personality, around my pet peeves, my theological pet peeves.

By the way, we all have them. Petey But see, you don't get it. This way, you can get your thousands, you know, of followers because they like your personality, they like to hear you ramble, you know.

Jared But that's what NOCO is for. Steve, did you know, technically and formally, we're influencers?

Petey Are you kidding? See what I said there? Kidding. Jared I'm gonna say kidding when you go to the store.

Petey Are you kidding? Jared Steve, you grew up in California and I grew up in Nebraska, but both of us,

I think, talk the same way. Neither of us have accents, both of us say gonna. Petey That's sad.

Jared Well, I think it's sadder for you because Californians should be more...

Petey Erudite. Jared What's another word for speaking well? Their diction should be better.

Petey Yes, we should be well enunciated, I suppose. Jared Well enunciated. Tell me why you picked the book of Acts to preach through.

You're in Acts chapter 4 now, is that true? Petey Acts chapter 5, actually. Thanks for keeping up. Jared Oh, Ananias and Sapphira.

Petey Yeah, they're already dead. We already buried them. Jared Did you think they were believers or unbelievers?

Petey You know, it's hard for me to say. I want to say that they are believers, but, you know,

I can't find any conclusive evidence one way or the other. I think they may have been believers who just fell into a really bad way of thinking and thought they could pull one over.

I think the thing is they thought they were just going to be, you know, fooling Peter or, you know, fooling these uneducated

Galileans and not really thinking that they were going to be lying straight to God.

Jared For their sakes, I hope they were Christians, right? But either way, it doesn't really matter to me. It does make me think if they were

Christians and believers, the dictum of a

Christian can commit really any sin. There's no sin that a Christian can't commit. Petey Well, I think it certainly shows, you know, regardless, because they knew about the miracles, they knew all these kind of things.

And even in spite of that, they were still willing to sin in this way. So, I mean, even if they were unbelievers, they should have had the sense to just think, maybe we should not try to pull the wool over their eyes since these guys are healing people and, you know, doing all these wonderful things that only

God can do. Petey The show is needing to be wrapped up, Steve, but I would like to know why you picked

Acts because I'm preaching to Luke, you're preaching to Acts, same author. Steve Short answer is because it was in the next book after John.

Petey Seriously. Yeah. Well, and you know what? I just thought, I thought it would be interesting to just kind of walk through the early

Church, watch the Acts of God. I mean, much like because I thought I enjoyed

John a lot, because it really made me feel not just closer to Christ, but like I understood some of his, in spite of the fact that the theme is

Jesus as God, I felt like I understood his humanity, maybe a little bit more.

And I thought I would get to know the apostles, especially

Peter and then Paul, but get to know them a little bit better as well, you know, as I'm, as it were, walking through ministry with them and just watching the struggles.

I mean, even with Peter and Ananias and Sapphira, I can't help but think, you know, obviously he loved these people and that, you know, but here he is pronouncing judgment on them.

And I still think, well, that could not have been easy. Pete Thanks, Steve, for being on the show today.

We talked a little bit about preaching and listening, and I think we're going to have to have an eight -part series on this now, packaged with real cool graphics.

Steve The graphics are a must. Gotta have it. Pete Steve, what about the blue lights behind us in the studio and stuff like that?

You got to have the blue lights. Steve Well, just as long as they're not strobe lights, so we don't have some kind of strobe or something.

Pete Can you imagine? Maybe that's what some of these people do who have the healing crusades. They put the black lights on and the strobe lights, people have seizures, and then they try to heal them.