What went wrong? He says that he spent the whole sermon wrestling with tough theological issues. It was all valid, but it didn't speak to the life questions of his audience.2 So What?

Good application needs a balance between what preachers do in the study in exegesis -- the leading out of the text -- and how they design their sermon -- leading to the listeners.

YBH? is "Yes, But how?" A sermon may have great passion, but sometimes people are left wondering how on earth they could work it out practically. Some of our churches appear to cope better with the first call to repentance and faith (by giving an invitation) than in subsequent applications to life-long discipleship, worship, and lifestyle issues. Bryan Chapell says: "Even experts give rare thought to how people can do what God requires. It is so much easier to say what to do than to enable the doing."3 The Holy Spirit is the great applier of God's word but he needs consecrated preachers who know and love their hearers in order to sharpen His specific challenges.

On the way to answering these two major questions you need to answer another three:

WHAT Does God Actually Require Now?

Preachers should be clear about Specifics. Concrete, practical, life related aims should be clear. The sermon subject may focus on who God is, who we are, and all points in between, but it should never be left vague and forgettable.

WHERE Does God Require It of Me?

"Location, location, location" is not just a house buyer's watch word. Which of many contemporary situations really matter here? Is this for home, place of work, or church? Too often preachers opt for church application when listeners are longing for applications in their work, lives, and relationships. What a tragedy, for example, when every reference by a preacher is dominated by a million dollar church refurbishment project.

WHY Must I Do It?

The work of the Holy Spirit is key to being moved by God's agenda rather than by a preacher's. The more a preacher uses guilt or anger or church ambitions for making applications, the less God can make His applications.

The Secular Context

These questions are always necessary but never more so than in dealing with secular culture. "Culture" is one of those buzz words in recent Christian writing. Culture refers to the "ideas, customs, skills of a given people in a given period of time." Our Lord's incarnation meant that the gospel is enfleshed in culture. This does not mean accommodated to it, or compromised by it, but, at best, standing over against it -- relating, critiquing, and transforming. Ever since the Kingdom of God Christians know that they live for something different.

In contrast, secular culture is short hand for living without reference to God As Western society has become increasingly secular, so the proportion of people living without belief in the biblical God has grown.

The litmus test concerns the number of 15-32 year-olds in your church. I am interim preacher in a church where at the second service there are 150 high school and college students all sitting near the front. They participate in singing, but their heads go down as soon as a preacher fails to connect. Their body language is ruthless. In general, the younger the people you are trying to relate to, the more secular their outlook. Ironically they may say that they are intensely spiritual too, but frequently this is likely to be a kind of spiritual materialism -- a search for a 'feel-good' spirituality with a minimum cost.