Preaching: What does your week look like in terms of planning an individual message as you prepare for the coming Sunday?

Pope: I work in the mornings on my messages; I usually have more than one message that I’m working on because I’m speaking in different places. But my first priority is my weekly message and Monday will be a time to kind of focus in on where I’m going, to kind of get the big picture. I try by Thursday to have it detailed enough that it’s just about there. I may look at it a little bit on Friday but I take my day off and just look at it a little bit. Then Saturday — I hit it hard on Saturday morning. Polish it, getting ready, thinking through it because we have a service on Saturday night. I like to build every morning.

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Preaching: How has you’re preaching changed during your 28 years at Perimeter Church?

Pope: Well, the major changes that I’ve seen over the years are basically knowledge overtaking ignorance. I started out preaching thinking that good preaching was telling people about God’s Word. And I did that for a long time. I got great positive responses. Lots of people coming up saying, “Oh, I love what I’m hearing”, “Never heard that before”, “That’s interesting”, “Wow, where did you get that? I didn’t know that.” So I got a lot of that stuff.

Then it came to me that preaching was not talking to people about the Bible; it was talking to people about themselves from the Bible. It’s no less truth. It’s what the apostle Paul went through when he wrote a different message to the Thessalonians than he did to the Ephesians. He was addressing people in a different situation with particular needs and truths and understanding. It has to be given to these people from God’s truths. And when that started happening I began to hear responses like: “Can I tell you what God’s doing in my life?” “You need to know that I called my brother who I haven’t talked to in 12 years and I asked forgiveness.” I’d much rather hear that.

Preaching: What do you see as the great challenge facing preaching today?

Pope: I’ve been the pastor and I’ve been in the same church for almost 28 years. If there’s anything that’s changing that scares me to death is that there’s a growing chasm between want and need. It used to be the wants and needs were pretty close. In fact I could preach to church people and I didn’t really break open the Word well. You’d hit the Word hard and you’d have people come and say, “That was very interesting” or “Let me tell you: I want the Word. Give me more of the Word.” Today you don’t have to give a lot of the Word if your preaching is enjoyable, entertaining, enough story line that they keep intrigued. I see a lot of preaching moving toward more of an entertainment than it is a real telling of the truth.

One thing that I’ve seen is that pastors have to work very, very hard to be communicators. We don’t want to become irrelevant to the message so that no one will come but at the same time we don’t need to preach a message that is not aiding the need so much as the want. And if you go back to tickling the ear with scripture . . . Today biblical, Bible-believing preachers can get away with almost being applauded and rewarded for not going to the truth of God’s Word. Our listeners go out the ceiling when we hit certain felt needs that are in the Word of God, but when I turn to truth that is not as much felt needs, people don’t feel that need for that particular truth as much. I can see why so many preachers are just preaching felt needs all the time — because that’s what they want, that’s what they applaud. I think the great preacher is the one who says: I know what I don’t have to popular in order to be successful.