Preaching Through Their Defenses: An Interview with John Ortberg

Preaching: You served several years at Willow Creek—an affluent, suburban community outside Chicago. Now you are in the Bay Area of California. I'm guessing that Menlo Park, although culturally different from suburban Chicago, still has a lot of the same kind of folks—successful professionals and others who are not particularly interested in listening to discussions of their own mortality.

Ortberg: There was actually an article in the New York Times with the headline "Millionaires Who Think They're Not Rich," and it was about Menlo Park/Atherton/Palo Alto where we live right now. The housing is just so outrageous. There's an 850-square-foot house not far from our church that just sold for a million dollars. And one of the guys quoted in the article said, "You know, out here with 10 million dollars you're nothing." That was the quote: with 10 million dollars you're nothing. Well, how much does it cost to be something?

But once you get on that treadmill it becomes so overwhelming to you that you can't see it's possible to get off that treadmill. All you can think of is, "Can I run faster? Can I run harder? Can I make more?" It just dominates people to such an extent that they really cannot see there's the possibility of life beyond the treadmill.

Preaching: What are some things you try to do in terms of preaching and teaching with such an audience? What are some things you do to try to get past those defenses?

Ortberg: I will try any vehicles I can think of to get folk's attention. One time I just had ladders set up all over the place—up on stage, in the sanctuary, out on the campus—so when people would come they would see all those ladders. The whole message was about climbing the ladder and about how Jesus, instead of being a climber, was downwardly mobile, as we would put it. The problem with spending your life trying to climb the ladder is you're likely to go past Jesus on His way down. So I try to find ways visually, try to find stories, try to have people tell stories, playing out the contrast.

Let's say you devote your whole life to making more. Where is that going to lead? Paint the picture. If you devote your life to being generous, where is that going to lead? Paint the picture. I'll use any ways I can to get underneath the surface.

Then the other big thing for us as preachers—it's so tempting for me to overestimate what will happen if I just say something. You know, preaching is very powerful and very important, but generally transformation requires experience and action, not just preaching. And so to try to hook it up—like we do one weekend a year where we cancel all of our services. We call it "Compassion Weekend." We have everybody just go out and serve all around the Bay. And people will go on adventures where they actually take action or experience something or get to know somebody who is poor. That makes a much bigger difference in their life than listening to 20 sermons could.