PreachingToday.com: Is it so important to preach on the Trinity that we should schedule it into our preaching regularly?

Randy Frazee: In the early part of my ministry, I would have said yes for the same reason other preachers would say yes. I would have said yes because it's like saying I think prayer is important. But today I say yes in a much more significant way.

First of all, the Trinity is a big idea in our faith. It's a big idea in Christianity. Whether you look at the Bible or at church history to see what have been considered ideas worth fighting for, it's clear that God's identity is one of those big ideas. It is foundational.

The second reason is just one statistic: according to George Barna's book Think Like Jesus, only eight percent of adult Christians in America have a biblical worldview. If Barna is right in his research, then most adult Christians have a worldview that is not impacted by who God is. American Christianity suffers from a serious epidemic. We don't have a society in which evangelical Christians have the capacity to read—most Christians are not theologically literate.

We need to establish a way of seeing the world that is functional for people. And that means that teaching popular series, like series on finances or relationships or family, or even teaching the Bible exegetically, is not good enough. Components of the Trinity may show up everywhere in the Bible, but we're often so bent on relevancy that we don't teach on the big ideas with enough consistency to give reason for our people to have a biblical worldview.

If you want to see where your own congregation is theologically, pose to them a kind of litmus test. Ask them a series of theological questions, and intersperse a variety of views. For example, pose a question about the Trinity and ask them how true they believe that to be on a scale of one to five. Then ask a few questions that would support modalism, and then some that support pluralism. Do they believe that our God is the only true God—Father, Son, Holy Spirit—or that we have our God but other people have theirs? I bet you're going to find that, in most congregations, people are equally Trinitarian, modalist, and pluralist.

Of course, all this begs the question, So what? And for years I couldn't really get my arms around the significance of the Trinity. I got my arms around the significance of God, but I couldn't get my arms around the significance of the fact that our God is three persons, yet one essence.

And perhaps some pastors would say the Trinity is for pastors of large churches and writers who don't really have to work with real people. They think pastors who talk about stuff like this have too much time; they're dealing with people who have gotten a divorce or who can't make their mortgage payment, and we're sitting around talking about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. But we have got to bring this idea to bear for people who are divorced, for people caught in addictions, for people who are lonely. We've got to do this. If we don't, I challenge whether our preaching is actually biblical.

You said it's not enough to go verse by verse exegetically through the Bible; what is the distinction between exegetical and theological preaching?

I have a concept of a three-legged stool of preaching. It doesn't matter which leg you start with, but you have an obligation to deal with all three.

First, there is a biblical leg, in which you open up the Bible and your starting point is a text of Scripture. And then from that you reinforce theology and answer questions of everyday life.

The second leg is a theology leg. Instead of starting with a text of Scripture, you start with a big idea of Scripture, like the Trinity. And you might refer to several passages of Scripture that teach or reinforce a component of this big idea, and you also tell the so what about that truth.

The third leg is the relevance leg; you actually start with a real life situation and then look back into the theology in the Bible to see how that idea is reinforced in a particular passage of Scripture.

In a lot of contemporary churches, pastors are starting with the relevance leg, and my challenge to them is not to start with the relevance question—because sometimes we never look back into the Bible or theology that way. We spend so much time trying to relate to the culture that we never actually give people a solid answer.

I'm not being critical of those pastors, because this was a big eye-opening experience for me. But I think a lot of the time we give answers that you could find in Barnes & Noble. We try to find a proverb to put a sort of window dressing on the truth, but we're not giving foundational answers. We haven't been trained as preachers to see the connection between theology and relevant life.

How do you incorporate the subject of the Trinity into your own preaching?

Well, the first way is through biblical teaching, like starting with the Book of Luke and then pointing out the concept of the Trinity within it. For example, I just did a message on Jesus raising the widow of Nain's son from the dead. I had an obligation to tie that individual message into a theological idea. I said the main idea of Jesus entering the town of Nain and raising the widow's son from the dead has everything to do with the Trinity.

The principle contribution of this particular passage of Scripture, while it is a fascinating story, is that Luke is trying to prove to his friend Theophilus that this person, Jesus, is not just a prophet, good teacher, or good man; this Jesus is God. And I think a lot of Bible teachers tell the fascinating stories of Scripture without attaching them to a big idea.

But even connecting a story to the big idea is not enough. I think you also have to teach specifically on the Trinity, so a second way I incorporate it into my preaching is by actually teaching the doctrine of the Trinity. For example, when I was in Texas, for four years in a row I devoted three weeks out of each year to teaching on the Trinity and taking that big idea—We believe the God of the Bible is the only true God: Father, Son, Holy Spirit—and reinforcing it. And each year I took a different approach to it; I just wanted the congregation to get a reinforcement of the notion of the Trinity every year.

A third way, then, is beginning with relevant topics like belonging or community. You can start with something relevant, like loneliness, which is a major problem today for many people, and you can bring out why loneliness is such a problem. Loneliness bugs us so much because we were created in the image of God, and God is a community. Instead of just giving two or three things that people can do or think to fix their loneliness, it's very important to talk about why it's such a problem. Why is this epidemic? It's epidemic because we've been created in the image of God, and God is a social being. So you can reinforce doctrine by starting with the relevance question, and we need to do that sometimes.

Do the history of the doctrine of the Trinity and the creeds surrounding it ever enter your preaching?

Yes, they do. You have to be careful that the student in you is not getting into the pulpit, but if you teach history in proper balance, people are intrigued and feel like they're learning and getting connected to the history of their faith. And when you do that, you also help to reinforce that, hey, they didn't have it figured out either. They disagreed with each other. We call these our church fathers, and even they didn't agree. So let's not get all huffy and puffy over the church down the street that doesn't see this point exactly like we do.

History is also useful to show people that the Trinity is not a new idea. This idea has been around for centuries. Giving an example of what someone who lived and ministered in the third century said about the Trinity can show how absolutely important this doctrine is.

PreachingToday.com: When we're preaching on the Trinity, what sort of preaching is edifying and what sort is not?

Randy Frazee: One phrase that has guided my preaching is, "in the essentials unity, in the non-essentials liberty, and in all things charity." When we preach, sometimes we need to put differences aside. Preaching becomes non-edifying when we get into particulars related to things like the Trinity and we create dividing lines in non-essentials.

It's also not edifying to preach as a student as opposed to preaching as a teacher. What I mean by that is, those of us who have a fascination with theology can, as students, sometimes bring in knowledge of counsels and debates, which is not useless or dangerous to the congregation so much as it is boring. If we're not careful, theology like the Trinity gets a bad rap, and people see it as dull. We need to be careful to think of our congregations and what they need when we teach.

As to what is edifying, we must give people the idea that the Trinity is extremely important, tell them who our God is, and try to put that into language they can understand.

We not only need to teach and re-teach the big idea of the Trinity, but we also need to teach the so whats. If our God is the only true God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—then I must understand that I'm created in the image of this Trinity and what that means in my life.

You mention that our preaching could become unedifying if we start getting into issues that are not essentials. Could you give an example of an issue that is essential and an issue that is not?

I must understand that I'm created in the image of this Trinity and what that means in my life.

For example, the fact that God the Trinity is a social being—that there are three distinct persons who share a soul—is not necessarily a new idea, but it's not a widely accepted idea, either. I would teach it from this standpoint: This is not a new idea, but it's probably going to be the first time you've heard it, because I've been in this thing for a long time. I'm not saying you have to believe this; I just want you to enter into the intrigue of this with me. Notice that the word Trinity is not even used in the Bible, so when we teach these things we should be careful with the dividing line.

We also need to show the big idea; we need to show the hill worth dying over. One such essential would be that of Trinitarianism versus pluralism—the belief that God is the one true God versus the belief that God is one of my many gods.

So, where the postmodern extremists would say not to present anything as absolute truth, I would say, no, there is one God. And our community is willing to be dunked in a lake until we die on that one. I'm willing to say there is absolute truth.

What should preachers who are especially concerned about non-Christians and visitors say when they're preaching on the Trinity?

The good news for those preachers is there's a new spiritual seeker. The non-believer or seeker has changed, and is actually fairly interested in this stuff.

The thing we have to be careful of is language. Rick Warren said we're all ignorant; we're just ignorant in different subjects. An engineer can talk to you in engineering gobbledygook, and you'll have no idea what he is talking about. I can do the same thing in theology. When we're teaching, I think that it's okay to use theological language, like "imminence"—you just have to say, now, what is imminence?

So we have to be careful with language. You don't have to shy away from it, but if you're going to use it, you're going to have to take the time to tell people what it is—and even re-tell them.

Is it a mistake to try to "put the cookies on the bottom shelf?" If not, how do we do so?

I think it's the job of the teacher or preacher to take deep truths like the Trinity and make them accessible to everyday people. We have the responsibility of making theological truths palatable. At the end of the sermon, people should not say, Oh, our pastor is very, very smart; they should say, I am deeply moved about the implications of the Trinity on my personal life. We must be careful not to become disconnected.

We've also got to be careful, however, that "putting the cookies on the bottom shelf" does not come to mean dumbing down. We should constantly be reevaluating our idea of the congregation's level of understanding.

Real life stories tap into people's hearts and can help people understand the so what of the Trinity. For example, if a husband and wife can't get along—they've gone to counseling for three years, and they still just can't get along—share their story. Say, anybody like that? And even though there are thousands of different angles you could take on this topic from the Bible or from theology, just talk solely about the Trinity. How would our understanding of the Trinity, if embraced, change this marriage? When you teach like this, you're dealing with where people are at in their life; you're not just teaching them the Bible.

Randy Frazee is senior minister of Oak Hills Church in San Antonio, Texas, and author of The Connecting Church.