And I'll just say to be thinking past your denomination — respecting your denomination, honoring your denomination, but not thinking that your denomination and particular form of worship or preaching is what heaven is going to be. And I think that when we start looking outside of our own particular microcosm of church experience, it really starts changing our hearts. We should be open to different ways and approaches of how we think of our worship and church and preaching. As long as we're sticking with the Scriptures — that is the important part.
Preaching: Are there some things you're learning about preaching and communication as you go through this process?
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Kimball: I would say almost everything I was taught in seminary I don't use. I do use the Bible classes and the theology, so I don't want to knock that. But breaking preaching down into an academic outline — you know, point 1a, point 2b . . . You can almost go two directions. One is to go so academic, historical that it doesn't mean anything in your life today. But then on the other hand, how most many churches go so "felt-need" applicational, that we are then basically throwing out so much of the content and depth and history. Then we're training people in our churches to think of Christianity, like one girl told me, "It feels like Tony Robbins with a Bible verse thrown in." And that's their viewpoint of Christianity and what Christian teaching is.
I think you get into some interesting dynamics of those that grew up within a church context so they just assume this is the way it is. As preachers, we have lost our voice in our culture.
I'm right now writing another book called I Like Jesus But Not the Church, and I'm interviewing eight non-Christians, all in their 20s and one in their 30s. And I'm just listening. They're all open to Jesus. They respect Him; they haven't read the whole New Testament, but there's a respect. Almost all of them have no problem believing He was raised from the dead, which is so fascinating. If you think about this, that changes our apologetics. You don't have to say, "Here are five reasons why Jesus rose from the dead," because they all believe that already practically.
And they find it almost amusing that we argue about evolution. Because they're saying, "You know, I want to experience God and find out about Him." They don't care if He created the world in six days or in six million years. It's more like, "I want to experience and know this God, and if Jesus is this teacher, what did he have to say?" But preachers are so negatively thought about because most of their exposure is TV preachers, radio preachers; depending on who you happen to watch or listen to, it's a mixed bag of what you're going to experience.
But what they really desire is dialogue. And for me, in our context you can't dialogue too well with 400+ people in the room. So we're setting up an open forum once a month right after the worship gathering ends. If you disagreed with me, if you have questions, if you want to challenge me on something — and I may not even have an answer, because some of this is so mysterious. But if you show that you are open to talking, to having questions asked, you don't just give your presentation and hustle off or not listen . . .