Why Does the Music Start Before the Sermon Ends…and Other Thoughts

Morning Friends,

As of late, I have tried to expand my listening habits to take in pastors who I have typically neglected.  This list includes pastors of some of the megas who don’t usually show up on my “theologically sound” list but do show up on the, “Let’s grow big list.”  My motivation hasn’t been to try to jump into the megachurch arena but merely to know more about what is happening in our church cultures.

I don’t include their names here as I am not trying to take folks down but only learn.  My goals have not been to throw stones or even to disparage.  It appears that God is doing great things in churches that don’t run their sermons through a theological or confessional grid.  There are pastors gifted with incredible speaking skills.  There are pastors who have much to teach all of us.

And there are some who almost none of that matters.  To my ears, their sermons scream, “Run away.”

So, please allow me to run through some personal pros and cons that I have gathered lately.  I offer them as lessons that I have learned, and in the reading, you have the choice to throw out either the baby or the bath water.

Pros:

Every congregation needs hope.  No matter the text, no matter the passage, and no matter the church venue.  Hope is significant to the scriptures and significant to the human heart.  The pastors of the churches I have heard do a great job of offering hope.

Every congregation needs to be engaged.  These pastors do a great job at engaging their folks.  Preaching is different than teaching.  Lectures are not preaching.  If folks feel like they are listening to the pastoral equivalent of someone reading a dictionary (ala a list of facts to be assimilated), they will checkout mentally.  Their growth may very well be limited to the Biblical equivalent of a Fantasy Football League team.  You know a lot, but to what purpose?

Cons:

A sermon that preaches change without addressing sin and repentance is just empty motivation speaking.  If the primary point of the pastor’s message is about your missing out on God’s blessing and your living at a higher level, but all the talk skips the issue of sin, be wary.  Believe me, I’ve been to the dour faced, “All we talk about is sin,” depressing churches.  That is not what I’m talking about.  Repentance is walking in one direction and then turning and walking in another.  That is how the scriptures define change, and offering grace in the face of sin to motivate and sustain is true change.  Not doing that is rah rah pep talk.  It only motivates for a season.

A Christian sermon must ultimately be about and point to Christ to be Christian.  Casual references to Christ are only casually Christian.  If Christ is unnecessary for a sermon, then anyone from any religion could preach it.

If the music starts in the background 5-10 minutes before the sermon ends and then rises to when the pastor gets to the frenetic, high energy climax of his sermon, you should feel emotionally manipulated.  That is just classic, emotional, crowd manipulation.  The Stones, Zep, Kiss, etc perfected that technique years earlier.  It might work in terms of crowd reaction, but be prepared for the drive home/post sermon emotional crash.

And so, I’ll listen to a few more sermons in the next few weeks.  As a disclaimer, I am not saying that only the pastors of the megas are guilty of these cons.  Many pastors are.  For example, I know the music starts early in tons of churches.  I just don’t trust why they do.  This was simply an exercise and a collection of observations of my own in the past few weeks.

Thanks,

Gordon