Preaching: Why do you think that application seems so much more important now than it was a generation ago?
Stuart: Well, I don’t know if it is necessarily the case, but I think you are probably right. I think of the story of the two little ladies who loved the new preacher they got and would come up to him every week and say, “I love my preacher!” Until one day he started making application, and then they came to him and said, “You’ve quit preaching and took to meddling.” I think we obviously have a sensitivity in that regard.
Another thing, of course, is that we are dealing with chronic biblical illiteracy. That probably speaks to a great lack of the stuff that needs to be applied. Since that lady helped me, the simple formula I have adopted is the well-known formula: What? So what? and Now what? There must be careful exegesis and the solid exposition of the eternal truth—which as I see as our prime job—but if we don’t get past the What? and get over the So what? hump, then it really is just an exercise in cramming our cranium with data.
Advertisement
So we have got to get over the So what? Hump; but there is even more to that in application, and that is the Now what? What is the take away? I think one of the problems we have in preaching is that people become sermon tasters. They go away deciding if that was a good sermon, a bad sermon, or a mediocre sermon, or if he is a good preacher or a poor preacher; instead of the Word of God and the power of the Spirit resonating in people’s hearts so that they go away saying, “I’ve got to do something.”
I had an interesting experience many years ago when they asked me to team teach down in Trinity Seminary in Illinois with an Old Testament professor. We were going to prepare sermons based on the psalms. He took the first hour of the class doing an exegesis. He said, “I will be in the kitchen preparing the various courses; I want you to put it on the table and make it look appetizing.” It was a very interesting exercise.
About halfway through the class—there were about 25 students—I said, “When do you all graduate?” To my amazement they said that they had all graduated. So I said, “Well, why are you here?” They said, “We graduated long enough—we have been in classes long enough—that we know how to do the exegesis, but we don’t know how to do illustration and application.” They said, “They don’t teach us that.”
That is not a reflection on Trinity because I talked to Howie Hendricks about this, and to my surprise he said, “I don’t think you can teach illustration and application.” With all due respect to Dr. Hendricks, I think you can give them some pointers! Apparently they were all struggling with this as well.
Preaching: I find pastors usually say the hardest thing for them in preaching is application. Are there some things that you do to work through the application process?
