Posted on December 14, 2007 - by Stephen Murray
When You’re Not Preaching at Home
Here’s a question for all the preachers out there (and anyone who cares to respond). On Sunday I’m preaching at my friend’s church. Its a church that I attend when I’m in Durban on break and its the church that I’ll most likely be working with at the beginning of 2009. But at the moment its not my home church. I don’t move and live amongst the members of the congregation. Although there are similarities between this church and my current home church in Cape Town there are also big differences.
So here’s the question: How do you prepare your application for a congregation you know little about? How does it differ from when you’re preaching to your regular congregation? Or does your preparation differ at all? For the last three years the vast majority of my preaching has been as a guest – in fact in the last five years (as long as I’ve been preaching to adult congregations) the majority of my preaching has been as a visiting preacher – so I have some of my own thinking on the subject but I’d love to hear from those of you who have a more permanent pulpit than I do at present.
3 Comments
We'd love to hear yours!
Leave a Reply
Here's your chance to speak.
Stephen Murray
Christian, husband to my beautiful Robin, missional dreamer, pastor, church planter, Arsenal, Sharks and Springbok supporter, surfer (in the real sea), patriotic South African, Capetonian. 
Visit My Website
December 14, 2007
Permalink
countryparson said:
Hi,
Personally I don’t think there should be that much difference if you’re preaching at ‘home’ or visiting. We all share common common challenges in the Christian life.
Obviously it helps to know the people and context intimately to be more specific, but at the same time there can be a freedom in not knowing the details of a congregation– you can preach to topics without making people feel like you’ve purposely singled them out.
Not related to application, but one thing my homiletics professor recommended to do was to adapt to specifics of the place you’re visiting. For example, if you are using an illustration of shopping for groceries, instead of using the generic term ‘grocery market’ or whatever, use the specific name and location of a store in the town. Not really profound, but people do seem to perk up if you have taken time to pay attention to them and their situation.
Blessings,
-Scott
Visit My Website
December 20, 2007
Permalink
lucasmiles said:
Hey I’ve enjoyed your blog. (Plus we have the same layout) I’m fairly new to the blogging world, but I’ve been pastoring about 10 years, starting in Youth MInistry very young (18), and have now been leading a church plant near South Bend, Indiana for the past 3.5 years. I’m also involved with a church planting organization called OasNet (www.oasnet.net – I’m the younger guy in the video on the front page.) At any rate, obviously cross culturally, some things might have to change. I travel a lot with our network, so if I’m in Germany or Mexico, my examples might be different, but the principles the same. But locally, I preach in different places in the states or in my city, and I don’t really change what I do based on where I’m at. Ideally, if you’re preaching the gospel (of Grace), it should work anywhere. People at the core are people. The rich and the poor alike can understand the seed principle, or more specifically, the love of God.
An acquaintence of mine always says, we are translators for Jesus. I’ve had bad translators before – they are the ones that are always putting their own twist on things. But a good translator cuts themselves out of the equation. They just say what the first speaker said, as close as possible, in the other language. Ideally, I think that is what preaching is. God what are you saying (which I believe is always good news) and how can I communicate it to my audience. He’s real good at never leaving us empty handed.
Best of luck in South Africa. I’d love to hear more about the church planting situation there.
Visit My Website
January 2, 2008
Permalink
Michael Wiles said:
Interesting subject, that of “application.
Personally, IMO I think that it is something which preachers emphasise too much. Most of the time if you do a good job of explaining the text then people can apply it themselves, and if an application is necessary and appropriate then explain it. I can guarantee that someone will benefit from it.
I mean we we base our Christianity on letters written to people in a vastly different socie-economic situations to us and yet we still get immense value out of it.
And on the issue of not knowing the people you’re preaching to… Even preachers who know their congregations don’t ever say, and so Mr ‘X’ you should stop spending so much time at the pub and spend more time with your family.
Think about how you treat your local church… you know them well and you thus know the weaknesses, and you address them, but you can only address them over a long term, not in one message. So if you were to do maybe 4 weeks at a foreign location it might be useful to find out something about the environment in order to maximise the effect, but only one message, just preach the Gospel and call people to Godliness.