Stuart: It is really initially asking the question “so what?” So I have done it to all this information. I have just been teaching, not in a preaching situation but in a Bible school situation; I have been teaching 2 Corinthians. It is absolutely fascinating, and there is so much we can learn about Paul, so much we can learn about the early days of church, so much we can learn about the enormous problems.
I was thinking about them last night. It took me almost 17 hours to get from Milwaukee to San Diego—stuck on airports and in lines, and all this stuff, couldn’t land. I was thinking about it and refused to feel sorry for myself because I was thinking about Paul. So there was an unconscious application for myself; but I think there is a danger in teaching something like 2 Corinthians and being fascinated with Paul, very intrigued with the sort of stuff he put up with—shaking our heads and tut-tutting and and thinking, I could never have done that. But that is not doing the trick. We have to put ourselves in his sandals; and I think we have to ask ourselves: How would I have reacted to that? What similar situations—certainly not identical, certainly not in the same league—but what situations do I get myself in? That certainly is helpful.
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Preaching: You preach more outside the United States than in the United States. How does application change when you preach in other cultures?
Stuart: It is dependent on your knowledge of the culture or certainly some degree of sympathy, if possible empathy if you’ve got time to get that deep into the people’s lives. We preachers are very good at talking; it’s the listening where we fall down very often. I find that it is important just to begin to get a feel for where they are living, get some degree of understanding of what they are up against. The problems that we run up against in our pastorates here are often not even on the radar screen in other cultures.
Take divorce for instance. I used to say divorce was the biggest headache for a pastor. You will earn more sleepless nights dealing with that than anything else. Yet it is not even on the radar screen for a lot of these [third-world] people. What they are dealing with is that they have no medical care; and because the missionaries in many instances are not too sure what they believe about healing, they go to the witch doctors. That is a very different situation. I doubt if there are many people in the congregations I served who go to a witch doctor on a regular basis.
Preaching: When you are preaching in another culture that you are not as familiar with, do you find yourself doing more exegetical work and less application? Do you modify your style in anyway?
Stuart: No, I don’t think so. I think what I do is that instead of making an assertion in application I would often phrase it as a question. Often that opens up an area of discussion. They love to instruct you. They are thrilled that you would ask them a question because you don’t know. That doesn’t really fit into the normal style of preaching I suppose. It is not exactly an authoritative declaration. It is more a fascinating dialogue.
