Whoops: Preaching to the Unchurched (6)

The reason I started this blog was to try and help pastors who truly want to reach people who are far from God, but may need a little help with that. This is about the only thing I do well, so someone suggested I share ideas. — Anyway, I recently read a sermon by someone who is a great guy and great preacher and who wants to reach the lost. Yet in this sermon he made, in my opinion, some critical mistakes that would keep him from connecting with the unchurched, and may well keep them from coming back to his church. I received his permission to share some examples. — So here’s the deal…

Read the following excerpt from his sermon and see if you can spot the “mistake.” Then I’ll share with you what I saw, and how I would correct it.

The Modern equivalent of the Stoic is the person who doesn’t care much about anything except accepting your fate. This attitude is found most commonly among those influenced by atheistic evolutionism. Let’s just get through this life, because we’re simply a collection of molecules anyway. “Let’s just not think about it.”

So what’s the problem? Almost every single person this pastor wants to reach is someone who is “influenced by atheistic evolutionism.” This means it’s absolutely critical to not say this in a way that doesn’t sound like those who are “influenced by atheistic evolutionism” are “them.”

So what’s the solution? Make it sound like those “influenced by atheistic evolutionism” is US, not THEM. If you make it sound like it’s “them” that means you are not one of us, and if you’re not one of us, I won’t feel comfortable coming to your church. Maybe the way to say this is, “A lot of us have this kind of attitude, because we’ve all been influenced by atheistic evolutionism. We’ve been taught that there’s no God, no meaning, and so we’re all just a collection of molecules. And because of that it’s easy for us to just kind of accept our fate…”