December 28, 2020
Sometimes when I’m feeling nostalgic (or masochistic) I’ll listen to the podcast version of sermons from my old church or another popular church in my town.
I’ve noticed that the modern sermon has a deliberate structure:
Part 1: Analogy
Part 2: Message
Part 3: Application
The analogy is almost always a humorous story from the personal life of the pastor. It’s usually something funny that their young kids do or a quirky, minor disagreement they’ve had with their wife.
It’s something light, funny, and relatable. It gets the congregation laughing and nodding along.
That analogy is followed by an abrupt and clumsy segue into the meat of the sermon—the message.
- “And this got me thinking about how God says…”
- “And this reminded me of how when Jesus…”
- “This situation is a lot like when Paul writes…”
The pastor then dives into whatever Scripture he’s talking about. He’ll give a brief history lesson if needed or explain some context for those in the audience that have still neglected to read the entire Bible cover to cover.
Next is the application, which to me is often the most entertaining part of the entire show. This is where the pastor takes the verses written in a thousand-year-old manuscript and tries to shoe-horn it into the relevance of daily life in the modern era.
This application is easy when preaching about Jesus. Many of the clever parables and one-liners can easily be interpreted to fit into the broad scope of our daily lives.
What isn’t as easy is when other books of the Bible are used in conjunction with this sermon formula, especially Old Testament books. Those don’t fit as cleanly.
One of the most cringe sermon series I ever listened to was on the Book of Joshua.
Of course, at the beginning of the series, the pastor announced that they would be covering the book of Joshua and felt it was important to do this because it isn’t often done. After the sermon series was over, it was quite clear to me why books like Joshua are neglected.
In case you need reminding, the book of Joshua is pretty much all about God’s chosen people conquering the Promised Land through violent warfare. In it are many infamous passages of God commanding his chosen people to slaughter women, children, and even animals. God’s chosen people obey, and are “blessed” for doing so.
Much of these violent details were glossed over in the sermon series, of course. They were mentioned sometimes, although the pastor preferred to use terms such as “conquered” and “invaded” rather than explicitly tackle the hard specifics, which is essentially genocide.
I may have respected this particular sermon series more if the pastor had simply told the story of Joshua as it is. But that doesn’t fit into the formula. Oh no. There needs to be an application!
How do you apply Joshua, a book about war and bloodshed, to every day life?
By keeping it as vague as possible, of course.
Most of the sermon applications sounded like this:
- “Trust God, even when you don’t fully understand what he’s telling you to do.”
- “Have faith in God no matter what.”
- “God will build his kingdom in his way, even if we humans don’t fully understand the plan.”
These applications are useless at best, dangerous at worst.
In fact, as I grew older, these feeble attempts at trying to apply the Bible to daily life in the modern era were a big reason for me to eventually conclude that the Bible wasn’t inerrant and that much of it was metaphorical rather than literal. That eventually led me to my brief “liberal Christian” phase.
What about you? Did your old church use a similar formula in their sermons? Were their attempts to apply Scripture to your life in the present just as absurd and ridiculous? Let me know in the comments below!