Column Title: Fanning the Flame: Reigniting the Joy of Christian Communication for Pastor, Pew, and Public
Column Entry: “A Sustainable Metric for Christian Communication”
By Joseph Bird, PhD, MDiv, William Carey University
Column Description: Preaching and teaching are public communication art and science, but never easy. It is especially difficult when we lose the joy we once had to effectively communicate God’s Word. This column aims to encourage Christian communicators–whether in the pulpit or in the pew- to find joy once again in preparing, crafting, and delivering God-honoring messages that equip the Body of Christ and witness the redemptive power of the Gospel to the world. The column engages with Scripture, Christian thinkers, teachers, and theologians throughout Church history, contemporary homileticians, rhetoricians, and other communication scholars and practitioners to rediscover a deep, lasting joy in Christian communication that nourishes and transforms.
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A Sustainable Metric for Christian Communication
As humans, we are constantly measuring ourselves. We measure ourselves against our own past efforts. The runner compares today’s 5k time to her time from last month. The painter analyzes his past work against his previous efforts. Likewise, we compare ourselves with others. The student hopes her friend also bombed the geometry test, and the powerlifter tries to squeeze out more reps than his training partner. However, some things in life are not easily measured.
Case in point: How do we know if we are succeeding as preachers and teachers of Scripture? What metric can we possibly use? Often, we equate attendance to communication effectiveness. If the crowds are trending up, we must be doing a good job; if attendance is down, we must be failing in our preaching. Clearly, that system is riddled with flaws. This metric fails because it is far too simple to measure the complexities of preaching and church growth. Sometimes, the church grows despite insipid preaching, while other congregations decline in size precisely because the truth is faithfully preached.
Another metric we may be tempted to use is the “ear test.” Our spirits rise or fall depending on what people communicate about our teaching. This metric, too, is defective. Some congregants will smile and praise every sermon we ever preach, while others will pick every discourse apart until nothing remains. The truth is that most people will never say anything positive or negative. They will just come, sit, and leave. If we are basing our effectiveness on what we hear, we are doomed to rollercoaster between pride when we are praised and despair when we are critiqued.
Often, with seemingly no other option available to us, we rely on our feelings to measure how our communication is going. Around the dining table after Sunday morning service, we say things like,
- I don’t feel good about how the sermon went over.
- I feel everyone was bored to tears.
- I just feel like I started off bad and only got worse.
- I feel like I can’t get through to them no matter what I say.
- I do feel like this week was better than last week, but that isn’t saying a whole lot.
This system is wretched because our feelings are constantly in flux. Raking our preaching and teaching over the coals of feelings will always leave us in anguish.
This is the point where I wish I could offer an objective method for evaluating our Christian communication. I sincerely wish a foolproof checklist existed that we could use to measure our preaching and teaching. Unfortunately, that is not the nature of Christian communication.
We must accept that what we do is, at least in part, unmeasurable—at least by human standards. Or, to put it another way, while we are communicating in the physical realm, our words pierce into the spirit realm as well. In fact, on any given Sunday, one man may be drifting in and out of sleep, while the woman beside him is literally being “delivered from the kingdom of darkness and transferred…” to the kingdom of light.[1]
How are we supposed to measure that? We must admit that we can never have a totally objective, scientific metric by which to judge our success as Christian communicators. However, that doesn’t mean we should throw up our hands in frustration. We must accept the tension between the following three areas: 1). Areas of clear analysis, 2). Areas of imperfect analysis, and 3). Areas beyond our assessment.
Areas of Clear Analysis
One of the courses I teach at the undergraduate level is REL 481, Christian Preaching and Teaching. At the end of the course, students must stand up and preach or teach from a biblical passage to their classmates. While the student is presenting, the rest of the class is analyzing observable areas such as the following:
- Did the introduction capture your attention?
- Was the discourse’s purpose clearly expressed?
- Were the main divisions in the body of the discourse clearly connected to the biblical text?
- Were the transitions between divisions clearly expressed?
- Was the speaker’s body language natural?
Clearly, these areas are easily observable. While it is exceedingly painful, I encourage you to objectively analyze pertinent areas in your preaching and teaching. Many preaching textbooks include a tool that you can use to help you analyze observable areas of your Christian communication. It is worth the price of the book to have a thoughtful tool to help us evaluate our communication skills.[2]
Areas of Imperfect Analysis
Of course, other areas of our communication are not as easy to analyze. Here, we consider intangible areas such as the following:
- Did I sense the Spirit at work as I communicated the message?
- Was I spiritually prepared to get up and proclaim the Word of God?
- Was my attitude towards the congregation filled with grace and pastoral love?
- Did I really expect for people’s lives to be changed by God’s power?
- Was my communication done in a spirit of worship to the Godhead?
These areas are challenging to assess accurately because of their subjective nature. While I do think there is some benefit to thinking through areas such as these, I do not think simply contemplating them will truly help us grow. Instead, I suggest that the best way to analyze these areas is to ask for help—help from whom? The Spirit of God Himself.
To be blunt, these areas are too deep for us to navigate alone. Furthermore, even if we can come to some conclusions about what we find, we are powerless to bring about the needed change. The best practice here is to humble ourselves and ask the Helper to aid us. His analysis is supremely important. We should ask Him to reveal to us what needs to change and to empower us to do what we cannot do on our own. This practice of inviting the Spirit into our personal assessments will encourage and transform our Christian communication.
Areas Beyond Our Assessment
Origen (A.D. 185-254) was once asked who wrote the book of Hebrews. Origen responded, “Only God knows.” Some areas of our Christian communication will never be able to be assessed because they fall outside our realm. In some areas, only God truly knows.
- Only God knows why we were drawn to a specific text on a specific occasion for a specific audience.
- Only God knows what would have happened if we had used this illustration instead of that one.
- Only God knows the full extent to which people’s lives are impacted as a result of our teaching and preaching.
- Only God knows if we truly fulfill His call on our lives as Christian communicators.
My best advice here is to remember that God sees what we do not see. God hears what we do hear. All the mysteries that come with being a preacher and teacher of the Bible are not mysterious to Him. Rest in the knowledge that God knows, sees, and hears what we do not.
To sum all of this up, we need to work to improve our skills as communicators. We must see our communication as worship and understand there is room for improvement. In the same way we expect the guitar player or the drummer to practice their instrument before leading the congregation in worship, we should enhance our communication skills if we desire to teach God’s people. Yet, we must concede that some areas of our communication are inherently spiritual, and we need a spiritual Guide to help us. This is where we ask the Holy Spirit to lead and teach us. Finally, we must have faith that much of the fruit of our efforts is known only to God. We must remember that “God is not unjust so as to overlook your work and the love that you have shown for his name in serving the saints, as you still do.”[3]
Don’t give up! Keep preaching and teaching God’s Word. Keep working and seeking and asking.
Notes
[1] Colossians 1:13, ESV.
[2] I recommend Tony Merida’s Faithful Preaching: Declaring Scripture with Responsibility, Passion, and Authenticity. In Appendix 2, pgs. 218-220, Merida offers a Sermon Evaluation Form that can serve as an excellent starting point for analyzing your preaching and teaching of Scripture.
[3] Hebrew 6:10, ESV.