Dear Preacher, We are so thankful for the preaching gift God has blessed you with – a gift that has blessed us and our children, and our church family, for longer than you’ll ever know.
But please, stop apologising for the length of your preaching or the number of points your sermon has! I worry about the message it sends to our children.
The challenges you face and the burdens you carry in preaching and pastoring in this Godless society have probably never have felt so difficult. (Note to self: keep pastor uppermost on our prayer list.)
The message of the gospel has never been so vital, not just to those who already profess Christ and to the unsaved in our community, but also our own children. They’re exposed to so much evil in today’s society – it’s heartbreaking the stuff they come across (however much we try to protect them).
They need to hear regular faithful preaching in church, whenever they can – without gimmick and without apology. I’m sure you already get a fair amount of criticism, so please take this letter as encouragement (or constructive criticism, if you have to!) and not as a reproach.
The niggle I have is this: it’s not unusual to hear you or visiting preachers apologise in some way for the length of your sermon – or a variation on that theme:
‘I won’t keep you for long, I don’t want you falling asleep....Don’t worry, I’ll keep it brief... You’ll be wanting to get home to dinner... I only have two points – you’ll be pleased to hear!... Sorry for going on for so long!
The message these comments can send is that The Message is a bore; that we’re just tolerating spending a half hour or so while you preach something that really isn’t worth listening to. If that sounds harsh, it’s because it really bothers me.
If the problem is me, then please tell me. But I’m more concerned about my children’s unconscious reaction to these expressions.
Look, I’m a mature Christian. I take comments like these with the pinch of salt I’m sure they are intended to be. I do have a sense of humour. I don’t want my beef joint to get burnt – but I know you’re not going to preach for 1.5 hours!
But still, the inferences are there for the taking; and as we know, children and young people see things very much in black and white. In this context, what message are they hearing? That the preaching of the word is valuable and important? Or that it’s a regular but boring exercise to be tolerated, broken by occasional surreptitious looks at the time?
We hold the preaching of the word central to our public worship. We all long for the Holy Spirit to speak through your preaching and to open our children’s hearts to what He has to say. We want them to listen expectantly to what the Lord has to say to them.
As parents, we try so hard to prepare them for church on a Sunday morning (almost an impossibility in a chaotic family!). While we accept it’s our responsibility as parents to bring up our children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, neither of us are gifted teachers or theologians. We’re just… simple Christian parents!
But you, dear pastor, have those gifts. Please don’t apologise for it! Don’t underestimate the power of the Holy Spirit, however long your message might be. We should be so filled with anticipation that we don’t want the sermon to end. And that’s what we want our children to see.
