I think the challenge before the church is not necessarily in the fact that there is a shortened attention span but that there is a new thirst for something that will teach and instruct – something that is beyond the old didactic method of student and teacher: you sit and I talk. That kind of modality has shifted and I think that’s what we’re experiencing more than anything else.

Preaching: Have you tried adapting to those changes in your own preaching?

Hicks: Probably not as much as I should. We do use power point. We do use projection on a large jumbo screen. We are also experimental and innovative with different kinds of music, liturgical dance and dramatic presentations of various sorts. What we don’t do on Sundays we do through our website. We try to find various means of reaching out to people.

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Preaching: How many people attend a service? How many services do you do on Sunday and how many people do you have there?

Hicks: We have two services. The sanctuary will hold approximately 1400 persons and usually both services are filled. I’ll see somewhere between 2500 and 3000 on any given Sunday. The new sanctuary will be approximately 3200 seats.

Preaching: What are the concerns that you have about the next generation of preachers coming along?

Hicks: I think that God will not be left without a witness. There will always be someone who will preach the gospel with integrity and with power. Having said that, I have a real concern about the solid biblical base of the coming generation.

In my formative years I learned most of my Bible in Sunday School. I went to seminary to have some skills honed, but the Bible, the doctrine, the fundamentals of the faith were taught to us in Sunday School. There was within the church an insistence that we understand the scriptures.

I talk with my congregation quite a bit about the value of the hymnal and the fact that contemporary music within the church has almost entirely walked away from the hymnal in our interest of creating new songs. We have created new songs but I’m not sure we have created hymns – those melodies that bear serious theological meaning, hymns which over a long period of time will carry the solace, the comfort, as well as the instruction that the worshiper needs.

Preaching: What would you like to say about preaching that I haven’t asked you yet?

Hicks: This will be my 40th year in the pastorate, so I look back now upon four decades of preaching the gospel. I recall a conversation with myself early in my journey inquiring: What is it that you really want to do? What is it that you want to be? When it’s all said and over and done, what would you like to have said? I thought then and I think now that the only thing I would want to be known is that somebody might say, “He really was a preacher of the gospel.” If by any means or stretch I have been faithful to that calling and I have kept that faith, in spite of my faults and failures, I shall be pleased and I hope that God’s benediction will rest upon it.