Why? Your sermon topic and structure are not text-based for a simple reason: some audiences don't hold the Bible in authority. When an audience shares the same worldview as the preacher, he may use phrases like "the Bible says" for points to take root, to make waves, and to incite response from the audience. You can definitely do that with multi-text topical sermons.

However, if preacher and audience do not share the same world­view, the preacher is left to find audience-driven topics and develop them in terms of audience categories and experiences via non-text­based presentation. You would use biblical concepts. You would normally not repeat, "The Bible says" to state or prove your point. That would be like a Muslim evangelist preaching, "The Koran, Sura 10, says" to prove his point to a Hindu or Christian audience, with no great advantage to his presentation.

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Worldview matters much more than you might acknowledge. We operate not out of vacuums but from worldviews. A worldview is the comprehensive console that controls everything about a person — his virtues and values, his beliefs and behavior. One's worldview answers questions of origin (where did I come from?), identity (who am I?), meaning (why am I here?), destiny (where am I going?), and morality (what should I do?). While "not straightforwardly verifiable or falsifiable,"1 a worldview functions to explain, evaluate, justify, integrate, and adapt to life.2

In contemporary cultures, the majority worldview can change within a generation. For instance, much was made of postmodern­ism both in the academy and among the intellectual elite in the last two decades of the twentieth century. Then came September 11, 2001, when Western postmoderns began to debate calling anything universally evil. Some defected back to the shredded and discarded philosophical underpinnings of undeconstructed modernism.

You can't even assume homogeneity of worldview at church anymore. Though churchgoers are likely to share a Judeo-Christian worldview, or they most likely won't be at church, you still cant take worldview affinity for granted. People who have rejected the Judeo-Christian worldview can still make sense of the preacher, for normally they know what they have rejected (it was formally pro­posed that a person who rejected the Christian worldview be called a "bright").3  But when speaking to people outside the dominant Judeo-Christian worldview, you have to present the gospel in terms of their concepts and categories for understanding and assimilation. Worldview distance and dissonance between preacher and audience causes a misunderstanding of the message, not to mention a mistrust of the preacher. In topical evangelistic preaching, you can better address the misunderstanding problem.

How? By choosing audience-driven topics and developing your sermon in view of the audience's needs, values, beliefs, experiences, and behavior. Missionaries have long practiced communication principles and techniques across worldview, culture, and religion, often in one-on-one situations. Preachers also use these cross­cultural missions principles to overcome worldview distance in public and formal environments.