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PREACHING SKILLS The Blind Spot of the Spiritual Formation Movement Listening to a sermon is a spiritual discipline that needs to be learned. Craig Brian Larson

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7. Preaching and listening is a uniquely embodied, physical act. It literally puts us into the habit of having "ears that hear." There is something to be said for this physical act of listening and heeding. Good preaching is truth incarnated, truth mediated through a person from its ancient setting to today, truth we can feel through another person's heart, truth conveyed through an embodied person, truth we receive sitting shoulder to shoulder with other embodied Christians.
   
   
8. Good preaching does what most Christians are not gifted, trained, or time-endowed to do: interpret a text in context, distill the theological truths that are universally true, and apply those truths in a particular time and place to particular people in a particular church—all this with the help of resources informed by 2,000 years of the Church's study that average Christians do not own. This is a challenging task for well-trained preachers; how much more so for those untrained?
   
   
9. Listening to preaching has a much lower threshold of difficulty for almost all people. While many spiritual disciplines sound like exercises for the spiritually elite, both young and old, educated and uneducated, disciplined and undisciplined can at least listen to a sermon. It is God's equal-opportunity discipline. Preaching and listening is everywhere in the Bible because it is doable by the masses.
   
   

A legitimate question asked by some in the spiritual formation movement is, "If preaching is so important, how can some Christians listen to it for decades and not be transformed?" Part of the answer may be weak or unbiblical preaching in which the Bible plays little to no role in the sermon or the pastor preaches without authority. Another part of the answer is certainly the sinfulness of the human heart, capable of resisting even the preaching of Paul or Jesus himself.

But the answer may also be that people don't naturally know how to listen to a sermon. They listen for the wrong reasons: to be entertained (Mark 6:20), to justify their wrong actions (2 Timothy 4:3), or to earn God's favor (John 5:39). They seek knowledge rather than transformation (Romans 12:1–2; 1 Corinthians 8:1–2). They listen without paying careful attention (Mark 4:23–25). They listen without prayer (James 1:5). They listen without an awareness of the deceitfulness (James 1:22) and hardness of their own hearts (Mark 8:1–21), or with an attitude of selective obedience (Matthew 23:23–24). They are not regularly warned of the dangers of a rebellious attitude (Hebrews 3:7–16) and unresponsive hearing (James 1:21–25).

For decades the training of preachers has focused on how to preach better, but looking through the lens of spiritual formation we realize that little attention has been paid to training preachers to train Christians to listen properly to a sermon. The fact is, spiritual transformation requires not only God's working in a person, not only excellent, anointed biblical exposition, but also the spiritual discipline of listening correctly with the help of the Holy Spirit. Transformation through preaching depends 100 percent on God, 100 percent on the preacher, and 100 percent on the effort of the listener.

Listening to preaching is truly a spiritual discipline. Because of its unique benefits and easy adoption, it is a discipline that spiritual formation leaders should prioritize and teach how to do for maximum spiritual gain.

Craig Brian Larson is editor of PreachingToday.com and pastor of Lake Shore Church in Chicago. He is co-author and co-general editor of The Art & Craft of Biblical Preaching (Zondervan, 2006).

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	Average Rating:  by 6 members. (Members, please login to rate this item.) Kevin Miller   (Registered User) Posted: November 24, 2008 well said. Lee Eclov   (Guest) Posted: November 24, 2008 Brian, Right on! It isn't only that the spiritual formation movement doesn't consider preaching a spiritual discipline; they do not usually think of preaching at all. Nor do they ever help us think how to preach with a special bent toward spiritual formation. In one sense, of course, all biblical preaching is spiritual formation, but there is a soul-sense that some preaching has that contributes much more significantly to the shaping of souls that even biblical sermons which lack it. Thanks for this. Richard Doebler   (Guest) Posted: November 24, 2008 Just as people can listen to sermons for the wrong reasons, we pastors can preach for the wrong reasons: to be entertaining, to gain favor with people by appealing to their natural desires, to impress people with our great knowledge, or to fulfill an obligation (part of our job description). There may be other deceptive motivations for preachers as well. If these times when people will not accept sound doctrine but rather seek to satisfy their own desires (2 Tim 4:3), it should be noted that they have co-conspirators: "a great number of teachers [who will] say what their itching ears want to hear." Read all user reviews for this item