The aversion to repetition also affects preaching adversely by creating a fear of systematic series. Some preachers refuse to preach through books because of the necessity to stay with a particular theme for an extended period of time. Also, systematic series usually require some degree of “review” each week in order to establish the connection between individual passages. A preacher’s neglect of such an approach robs the church of an important aspect of Bible teaching.
Probably the biggest tension created by the call for repetition in preaching comes in the pastoral pulpit. Many pastors shrink from preaching Christ and the cross because of the awkwardness of saying the same thing over and over to basically the same group of people. This element of awkwardness exists with all true gospel preaching. In the local church especially, a pastor will be preaching to some of the same faces week after week and year after year. The awkwardness sets in when that sameness is coupled with the biblical demand to continually preach the familiar theme — the crucified Christ.
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I, along with many others in our community, enjoy walking and running for exercise. The oval-shaped perimeter of our seventy-five-acre campus in New Orleans makes a great exercise area, and people are always moving around it both directions. If you have ever made laps around a track, a gym, or in some other kind of circular pattern, you probably have experienced an awkwardness that I frequently encounter. Do you know what the toughest part is for me? Its not the discipline it takes to get out and do it. It’s not having enough strength or breath to complete the laps. It’s not even the frustration of trying to determine whether or not it’s doing any good. The toughest part of that whole deal is trying to figure out creative ways to greet the same people moving in the opposite direction every time you pass them!
We have to be honest here. There are only so many ways to sincerely greet the same people within a ten- to twenty-minute time period. And depending on where you enter the circle, you might pass the same people just going around once or twice. This is a real problem!
Now my limited observation has led me to conclude that people respond to this awkwardness in three ways. Some of these serious health nuts never acknowledge that anyone else is on the planet! Or, if they do, they stop acknowledging them after the first greeting on the first lap. It’s as if they were on a mission for God, and no one or nothing else matters. Others, who are more recreational in their journey, make small talk after the first greeting which serves as a token acknowledgment. After the first lap on which they say “Hello,” “Hey,” or “Hi,” they offer comments like, “Beautiful weather today, huh?” “Nice shorts!” or “How ‘bout those New Orleans Saints?” But there are always those social exercisers who find a variety of creative ways to offer a token greeting every time they pass you. They wave, they nod, they speak, all in a potpourri of attempts to be cordial. All three of these responses are simple attempts by human beings to overcome the awkwardness of repetition.
While figuring out how to greet people doing laps creates some element of tension, choosing how to respond to the awkwardness of gospel preaching in the local church is a far tougher and more important assignment. But the options are the same. First, the pastor can stop talking about Christ and the cross after he’s been on the field for a short while. That would be apostasy. Second, he can make small talk in the pulpit with extra-biblical material clothed in “practical and relevant” rhetoric, giving only token acknowledgment to the person and work of Jesus. That would be compromise. There is a difference between Jesus as a good example or pattern and Jesus as the crucified Lord who lays claim to every person’s life.
Third, the pastoral preacher can find creative ways from the plethora of biblical literature to preach the same old story of the crucified Lord and His claims on the lives of people. For Paul and for us, only the third option is acceptable.
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Used by permission of Broadman & Holman Publishers, Nashville, Tennessee. From the book The Passion-Driven Sermon by Jim Shaddix. Copyright 2003.
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Jim Shaddix is Dean of the Chapel and Assoc. Professor of Preaching at New Orleans Baptist Seminary. He is also Pastor-Teacher of Edgewater Baptist Church.