"Jesus Loves Me" Doesn't Put Food on the Table

The next time you go to a church, sit toward the back. Or better yet, sit at the front of a balcony if the church has one. When the sermon begins, watch the people sitting around you. I can pretty well guarantee you’ll see people tuning out in various ways. People browsing Facebook on their smartphones. People napping. Even people just clearly staring off into space.

Let’s be brutally honest: the traditional sermon model is broken.

DISCLAIMER: Okay, I probably should have started with this. I am a Christ follower. I love the church, and this isn’t a specific criticism about the church I attend nor the churches I have visited in the past. Sure, it’s a problem, but the reason I bring it up is because I truly desire for the church to flourish. Okay, back to the post!

If you think about it, you can probably figure out why it’s broken: pastors are rehashing the same material with slight variations over time. It’s no wonder why pastors get burnt out.

How would you like to speak about essentially the same topic over and over and over…?

Week after week after week…?

Year after year after year…?

Personally, I’d go insane.

Of course, calling something broken and not offering any solutions isn’t helpful at all. But fortunately, I had an epiphany hit me while on a walk today…

Telling me that “Jesus Loves Me” unfortunately doesn’t put food on my family’s table. How can we provide value to our regular attenders while encouraging new folks to come visit the church? I think the question below might be the answer.

What if pastors worked with a subject matter expert (SME) on teaching life skills while simultaneously sharing its biblical / theological foundation?

Topics could range anywhere from how to be a better marketer (I’m clearly still hung up on my previous post) to how to be a good parent. A pastor could reach out to a SME in the community on practical ways for a person to increase in that life skill and sharing Scripture on why the Lord would encourage us to do this.

Let’s use my last post on marketing as an example. If a pastor is well connected, he or she could work with Seth Godin in providing practical ways to better market a product. Seth might say “Encourage a quality output regardless of industry or position.” In addition to the practical advice, there is indeed a theological foundation. Colossians 3:23 states, “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters.” That’s just one example of many on working hard in the Bible.

I’ve touched on them already, but there are three key benefits toward moving to this model.

1. It prevents pastors from getting burnt out. A big cause of burnout is pastors literally running out of ways to speak on the same material over and over. Life skills provide a never-ending source of topics
2. It provides consistent value for long term members. People who have attended a church for a long period of time have most likely heard the same information in different formats over the years. They’re clearly getting bored because they checkout as soon as the pastor steps up to the pulpit, so this provides a fresh new reason to capture their attention again.
3. Most importantly, it provides a good reason to invite somebody new to church. People may not be interested in hearing about forgiveness or the love of Jesus, but they may certainly be interested in learning about how to increase value in your career or how to be a better parent.

I am not saying to totally throw away all sermons having to do with love and forgiveness. Teaching life skills are good, but if we totally abandon sharing core theological values, then people will walk away with more life skills but zero knowledge about the love of Jesus. To that end, my encouragement would be a 75:25 split. In other words, spend 75% of the sermons covering life skills and the remaining 25% on traditional sermon topics.

This idea really excites me. Like I said, I truly want the church to flourish, and I genuinely think this is the key.

Leaving you all with one final thought. At the beginning of Acts right before Jesus ascends into heaven, he leaves his disciples with this parting note: “…You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth.”

How can we expect to be good witnesses if we don’t have the skills to live amongst the people?