Can Science Help Preaching?

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.

Preaching Experience and the Limits of Sermon Critique

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth, and it is about ready to snow here in New England. In no-code time, it isn�t probably snowing, but in real time, it�s about ready to have everybody freak out, going to the grocery store, getting all your Y2K supplies.

Anyway, you can write me at info at nocompromiseradio .com. You can follow us at Twitter at NoCoRadio, Facebook, Worldview Weekend, and the list goes on. I have, over the years, I don�t know, we�ve done about 1 ,500 NoCo shows, and my guess is that�s about how many sermons I�ve preached over the last 20 years.

Maybe more, maybe 2 ,000, I�m not exactly sure. I�m no expert preacher. There are so many times it�s, you know, one Sunday you preach something, you think it�s just excellent, the next Sunday you think, �Shouldn�t I be better at preaching by now

I did my doctorate of ministry in expository preaching. We probably had to read about 50 preaching books, probably read another 50 over the years. I teach a preaching class at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary�s adjunct campus in Boston.

Well, they call it Boston, but, you know, not quite Boston. And so, anyway, all that to say, I�m fairly familiar with preaching. Oh, for the days that I could take certain sermons back, I think of the kind of funny story of when I first began preaching 17 years ago when some of the team at the church didn�t get my sermons up on the web, and I was disappointed, and I think they lost some of the sermons and the cassette tapes, you know, didn�t get transferred.

And now I�m so glad they�re not online. So, but we all learn. We all grow. I get all that. But today on No Compromise Radio, I want to talk from a leadership magazine. It�s called Leadership Journal, and the title of the article is called �How Science Can Improve Your Sermon.

So, you know, I�m always after improvement and sermon improvement. And, you know, you have folks that give you critiques after the sermon, right? And here, Rob Moll, ChristianityToday .com, I think Leadership Journal is owned by Christianity Today.

Here it says www .christianitytoday .com forward slash le forward slash 2015 January online only. Oh, oh, only online. Special. �How Science Can Improve Your Sermon. So, you know, if you�re a layperson, you think, �Well, I could encourage the pastor by encouragement, thank you for preaching the word.

I could pray for him. You get the kind of sermons you pray for. If you�re a pastor, how can you improve your sermon? Well, you could read books, Evangelical Eloquence by Dabney, or what�s another one?

I�m looking over at my Bryan Chapel, Christ-centered preaching. You could pray also if you�re a pastor. I hope my sermons are more biblical and we�re after biblical fidelity. But now, see, why didn�t they tell me this earlier?

Science can help. You can have science improve your sermon. Now, I think I�ve actually had Rob Moll on No Compromise Radio five years ago. I thought he wrote an excellent book on, what�s it called, The Art of Dying.

And then I read this. It was an odd sermon introduction. The guest preacher stood up to speak and told the congregation, �If you don�t know better, you think that this was a classroom or a seminar. I�m standing here at the front and you�re all seated to listen.

Many of you have pens and notebooks ready to take notes, but our purpose today is to worship God, not to teach a class. Moll says,. �As I glanced around, I could see he was right. Aside from the drum set and instruments up front, the room�s arrangement looked a little different than a college classroom.

The preacher had a point. The purpose of a sermon is to do much more than impart information. Okay, so far, that last sentence, I would agree with. Our job is not to just impart information and to regurgitate data.

I understand that. Partnering with the Holy Spirit, never thought of it that way, but it aims at transforming lives by bringing people closer to God. Okay, so preaching, the goal is not impartation of information, but along with the Holy Spirit, transforming lives by bringing people closer to God.

Now, you know, you say it�s early on, Mike, and you�re just kind of nitpicking. I know what you�re going to say, you�re going to talk about, it�s the glorification of the triune God, it�s an exaltation of Jesus Christ, and it�s speaking well of Him, you know, secondarily or residually, it�s a transformation of the people into one likeness of Christ, from one level of glory to another.

Mole says,. �Yet that doesn�t mean conveying information effectively isn�t important. Knowledge is a crucial part of transformation. A recent research has yielded insights into how our brains receive information.

For preachers, these insights are especially important. They can enhance our teaching and help cultivate the soil onto which the seeds of God�s Word will fall each Sunday. All right, so I basically don�t really know what he�s said.

We don�t want to just give data, there�s more to that. Okay, what is that? Well, science will tell us. Well, how did Paul preach so well without this scientific data? That�s what I want to know. What happened?

That�s Stephen�s message. You know, if he only would have had science, maybe, who knows what. Our brains, the article says, cannot handle information the way it is presented in a traditional sermon. The average person can only pay attention for about 10 minutes.

What did he just say? Just kidding. Just kidding. My name is Mike Abendroth, this is No Compromise Radio. We�re talking about science-improving sermons and just, okay, you already know what I�m going to say, just how ridiculous this all is.

But just to show you what avenues we�ll take versus faithful plotting. Remember William Carey? I can plot. Paul says, �I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. 2 Timothy chapter 4, you see Paul�s labor.

You see Paul�s kapia 'o, that is labor to the sweating, to the sweat of the brow. And he just charges his legate Timothy to preach the word, right, in season and out of season. Reprove, rebuke, and exhort with great patience and teaching or doctrine.

Oh, wait a second, I thought it�s just more, isn�t it more than that? Imparting doctrine? Imparting teaching? What�s going on there? Well, let�s go back to the article because here�s what happens in my mind.

I consider these thoughts. I say to myself, you know, I�m not seeing the congregation grow in maturity week by week, but I also don�t see my kids get taller week by week either. And so I will have to walk by faith and not by sight.

I tell my kids, yes, you are growing. Yes, I can see you get taller. Your hair is growing. Your fingernails are growing. The rest of your body is growing too. And we�re just going to just keep going, right?

Eat well, get some exercise, stay out of dad�s way, stay out of my hair. Oh, there are no, there�s not hair on my head anymore. It�s all, you know, just grows everywhere else now. And so that�s what we�re after.

I don�t need science to try to help me. And now you watch what�s going to happen. You don�t have to read much further to get the gist of what�s going to go on. Good preachers can hold, says Moll, an audience� attention at first, but they must continually re-engage it during a lengthy sermon.

And so I am all for, ask questions, because the people think 400 words a minute. You talk 100, 200 words a minute, they�re thinking about twice as many things as you can talk about. So ask questions, tell them to look at the text, do you see it in your own Bible?

Use inflection, use pitch, use variety. We have Philip Brooks� definition of preaching regularly discussed here on No Compromise Radio, truth through personality. And so use your personality. You know, it�s a sin to make the Bible boring.

I get all that. But here�s what he says, and now we just, we have to part ways. This presents preachers with two options, shorten the sermon or intentionally create attention-grabbing elements at least four times in a 40-minute sermon.

Shortening a sermon does not mean that you are dumbing it down or compromising the message. Thank you. A 10-minute tightly constructed sermon can pack as much punch as a 40-minute sermon. Now, of course, if you�re just rambling along saying nothing for 40 minutes and you do say biblical truths for 10 minutes, okay, but this is kind of a false dilemma, isn�t it?

So there�s nothing wrong with shortening your content to accommodate the brain capacities of your audience. See, here�s what we say at No Compromise Radio, that instead of me dumbing things down for you, I�m going to preach consistent with the glory of God found in Scripture accurately representing authorial intent, Christ-centered preaching, verse-by-verse in context, and it will help you elevate to Scripture.

See, that�s the issue. And so when you go to a church and you say to yourself, �You know, he said some words I didn�t know. I think you should have a little notebook and write them down and go study.

Every pastor has got to pick a grade level to preach to. And so you pick fourth grade level. Okay, well, everybody would understand except third graders. And then the problem is then those in college level in the Christian faith, the mature, then what are they going to do?

As a matter of fact, this is what most churches do. This is what the average church does in evangelicalism today. Every week it�s the same old gospel message and some kind of altar call, and then on Wednesday night you get the real Bible teaching.

So it�s bring in the converts on Sunday morning. It is, instead of feeding the sheep, it�s trying to evangelize. I mean, we�re not talking about seeker-sensitive people who, you know, are trying to amuse the goats, as Spurgeon would say.

But they�re just teaching this same, and for, you know, many times it�s the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. What they say is pretty fine. I mean, it�s going to be Arminian, but it�s going to be fine, delivered in an Arminian way to be more precise.

And so, what if you pick the twelfth grade level, then what are the new immature believers going to do? Well, they�re going to grow. And you, instead of saying propitiation and leaving it at that, you can say propitiation, that is to say the wrath of God assuaged because of the person and work of Jesus Christ, it�s different than expiation.

What�s the difference between propitiation and expiation? And then you explain those terms. So right away, this article is, let�s water everything down to the cultures level. Now the article goes on to say, �So there�s nothing wrong with shortening your content to accommodate the brain capacities of your audience.

If preaching shorter sermons is not an option, try to tell a new story or an illustration at least every ten minutes to recapture your audience�s attention. Now see, they never told me that in seminary, and here I�ve been teaching all these men how to preach.

And I should say every ten minutes you need a story. Now I will say things to them like, you know, explain, illustrate, apply, E-I-P is the wrong acronym, explain, illustrate, apply, E-I-A, E-I-E-I-O, and so I will say some of those kind of things, but it doesn�t mean you have to get a canned illustration, it doesn�t mean that at all.

�The important thing Moll says, �for any length of sermon is to clearly articulate a single big idea. Okay, that�s not too bad. �Research tells us that the brain is very good at capturing the gist of a situation or experience.

If in a conversation, a friend may not say she�s late to an appointment, but from a combination of tone, a voice and body language, we can pick it up. Alright, skip that there. He�s already lost my attention.

He needs to do less stories. �In a similar way, a sermon filled with details that consistently point to the central idea will help make that idea memorable. Okay, so I can understand that. �Even with careful preparation, a memorable sermon can�t stand alone in a worship service.

It can�t? What does that mean? I have no idea what he means. �Research tells us that the brain takes in information best in experientially rich environments. What does that mean? Beverly Hills? You�ve got to be experientially rich, okay, what does that mean?

Like emergent churches and incense and collages. Like the time I went to Vintage Faith Small C Church in Santa Cruz and it was some broken beer bottles up in this collage and people making murals of Jesus and you could walk up and take communion when you wanted.

That kind of thing. My kids were little and they�re looking around and they�re going, �Dad, this is a church I said, �No, no, son. That�s a good thing. When the brain works harder, it�s more apt to retain the information.

The key word here is to, �Okay, now, see you pay a lot of money to go to seminary, and they never told me this, but they don�t, and the Bible says if you go to the seminary I've been to Talbot, I've been to Masters, I've been to Southern, come on.

The key word here is to enhance the learning experience, not to make people multitask. Science has proven over and over that our brains simply cannot multitask and take twice the time to do so. Instead, as you plan your worship services and your sermons, carefully consider whether each of the individual elements enhance or distract from the central message of the morning.

How about, for those of you who aren't completely Presbyterian, for those of you that aren't completely OPC, you know, you PCAers out there and others, even the regulative principle, the scriptures regulating what God wants in terms of worshiping Him, ask Nadab and Abihu for their own kind of desires fleshed out, it didn't last long as God punctuated His displeasure of man-described, prescribed worship in Leviticus 10.

For example, use illustrative pictures in your PowerPoint presentations instead of words. See, now see, this is going back to Francis of Assisi's kind of, you know, we don't know if he said it or not, but a lot of people, you know, preach the gospel, I preach the gospel every day and sometimes I use words, that kind of thing.

Back to pictures. Preaching is not supposed to be about natural revelation. Natural revelation does certain things, of course, Romans 1 will tell us that, but we are here to specifically preach about the Bible.

You see Jesus when He walks into the synagogue, He's not drawing pictures of the Jordan River, He's talking about Isaiah chapter 61. I have to tell you, if it's a PowerPoint presentation for a seminary class, for a Sunday school, maybe for a Sunday night, maybe a missionary's in town giving you an update.

Hey, I'm all for that. But for Sunday morning, I mean, this is no compromised radio after all. I don't have any respect for sermons that have PowerPoint backing on Sunday morning. Now maybe there's some great preacher who uses them, say, Mike, there's an exception to everything.

But I just pretty much shut off because the text is grand, the text is glorious. And so I just want to know what that is. This is a preaching the word. It's not drama the word, it's not PowerPoint the word.

Frankly, I don't want my pastor, now maybe there's a church that has a large staff. I don't want my pastor taking the time to first work through the text and then preach it and spend two or three hours that he could have been working on authorial intent and how is it applicable to today's society?

I mean, it is, but how is it? And he's wasting time on PowerPoint, PowerPoint slide stuff. It is just awful. Show me a PowerPoint preacher and you won't find me around. That's pretty much the little motto around here.

By the way, if I only had some science, I can improve my NOCO show. Your congregation won't have to choose between reading and listening to you. Add sensory elements such as scents. Incense anyone? Or sounds?

Okay, so here's what science would say. You know, when you think of the smell of bacon, it reminds you of those camping trips or that coffee on the Oregon Trail. And now let's have some incense. When I smell incense, I think of Santa Cruz.

I think of Hinduism. I think of some Bhagwan, Rajneesh kind of thing. That's what I think of with a nog. I need some nog incense here. I get scent mugs. I get scent peach coffee. And now I need to have some nog incense scent.

And if anybody will send me some, I will light some in this NOCO studio while Steve and I are doing the show. And it will enhance the sensory perception of my faux sermon. Use different colors and images every week of a sermon series to visually reinforce your messages.

This is just hogwash. This is Hogwarts. This just is, this undermines the stewardship of a man of God. I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom, preach the word.

Light the nog. Change colors. I mean, okay, I change colors. I just try not to wear the same tie every week in a row up there. And you're shocked, I know. You think I wear a robe, one of those Presbyterian robes.

I don't even wear one of those baptismal robes for baptisms. What do you wear when you get in water? You wear a swimsuit and t-shirt, like any good fundamentalist school would teach you. Now we're going to do colors, you know, it's the color deal.

Let's see what else. Find hymns or choruses that reinforce the message and perhaps even play them softly as you preach. Now I've heard it all. Softly and tenderly, Jesus is calling, calling for you and for me.

All of these elements taken in the brain together as a cohesive message. I just thought they told me I can't multitask. I thought they told me that it just takes twice as long, so there's going to be a hymn in the background, Battle Hymn of the Republic, Came Upon a Midnight Clear, you know, a good Unitarian song or two.

They play Battle Hymn of the Republic in Texas? I don't think so. Maybe at Unitarian churches they do. And now I can't think, I'm out-tabbing my schizophrenic way through this. I mean, this is causing me problems.

The Holy Spirit, the Sower, and Faithful Preaching

In worship we adore God and engage actively in the transformation of our mind. Our latest understanding of the brain can assist us as we spur on our congregations to these tasks. So much of our Sunday mornings are devoted to learning.

It behooves us to be wise gardeners, carefully cultivating the soil in preparation for sowing of the Word. Well, see, that's just it, my friends. It's not my job to cultivate the soil. That's not my responsibility.

That's the Holy Spirit's prerogative and privilege. I am to sow the seed. And you look at the parable of the soils as well, and the sower just keeps sowing on all kinds of different soils and surfaces, and it's the Lord God who will bring fruit from and in His sovereign plan.

How Science Can Deprove Your Sermon. Oh, sorry, I misread that. How Science Can Improve Your Sermon, Rob Moll, Christianity Today, January 2015. Christianity Today, Leadership Journal, click here. So what do you do if you're a grandma or a grandpa, or you like to evangelize, or you're teaching a Sunday school class, or you're a mom teaching your kids, a dad teaching your kids, or you haven't been to seminary and you're a pastor and you're just out in the middle of Timbuk3 someplace and you don't know much of science, you don't know much about history, you don't know about neurons and color-coded schemes and PowerPoint presentations?

If you know nothing like that or of that, and you realize that our society will not endure sound doctrine, that our churches even sometimes have itching ears, what do you do? You say to yourself, I'm not going to turn away from preaching the Word of God to these people.

They may turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths, but here's my responsibility, as Paul says to Timothy in 2 Timothy 4, as for you always, be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.

And so for the Christian, the responsibility is simple, faithfulness. Not novelty, not innovation, not how science can improve your sermon, and I'll say once again for repetition's sake and big idea's sake, I think the sermon should be delivered with enthusiasm, with passion, but of course with biblical fidelity and clarity.

And show me when those things are all put together in God's wonderful workings, and I'll show you a sermon that I'll pay attention to. And then I'll sit up, I'll sit forward in my chair, I'm going to take notes, I'm going to say, Lord, thank you for having somebody who has the courage to stand up and tell me the truth, your truth, I need to know your truth, I need to understand Jesus Christ, the Lord of the Church, and He says to preach the word in season and out of season.

My name is Mike Abendroth, NOCO Radio.

Closing Credits and Station Disclaimer

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth 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 10 .15 and in the evening at 6. 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.

The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.