Preaching In The Prevailing Church: An Interview With Randy Pope
I at least tell people that if you’re in a church where a pastor is gifted and runs best in one versus the other, balance your personal time in the Word or your Bible studies that you’re into and get some of the other approach. Don’t be just as systematic theologian or a biblical theologian or vice versa. Be balanced.
I preach in series. And I feel today we’re a more mobile society so good faithful church people who used to take one vacation a year now may be out 8, 10, 12 weeks. So good people are even there less as a result of that. I think today you’re seeing that linear thinking is being replaced more by circular thinking. Linear thinking was where we used to say: open your Bible to this book, and there are 12 points here and we’re going to walk through these 12 points. Well, a point should never be made without putting it in its context. You can still make a point without having to hit every point before and after.
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My view is that you hit a truth of God’s word and you circle it with another truth and it circles the same truth and we move on to a few truths and you circle it with an illustration, you circle it with an explanation point of some sort that restores it, and that makes your point. Even now I think we have to tell that again the next week. It’s got to connect. I like to think of an eight-week series as one sermon. If I had 4.5 to 5 hours that I could preach a sermon, this would be my sermon. But I’ve got to make sure that if you weren’t here last week you’re not lost. I’ve got to make sure that you’re hearing the same sermon and it’s just adding and adding.
I find that people in first week of a series are going, “Yeah this is going to be helpful.” But by the end of the series you’re seeing God’s power come to life. You go: this is gripping, this had changed me. And I say, “What if I hadn’t given that first week? This wouldn’t have happened.” But week after week I‘ve got to say it over and over and over, and somewhere in that eight-week period they get it. They’ve just got to hear it over and over and in different ways and in appropriate ways. And I think God’s Word makes that easy to do because there are so many ways different authors of scripture have shown the same principle of God’s truth in many ways.
Preaching: How far out do you plan?
Pope: I try to get the overview for a year. But that’s flexible to change as I sense a need for whatever reason. I think now you’re seeing more churches like ours that find that there’s a great circular sense of worship, when your music is supporting what you’re teaching, that your liturgy is supporting what you’re teaching. Well, for people to do a good job in preparing they need to know in advance. I can’t prepare a sermon but I at least have the bigger picture early enough that they can come together.