KevinPurcell.org

My family and I have been visiting various churches over the last couple of weeks before I take a new position in a couple weeks.

My hope was that I would be able to enjoy some really good, creative preaching. I picked a few contemporary style churches each of the first two weeks I had free. I was terribly disappointed that neither of these churches had preachers that really preached “from the word.” In truth they were preaching what was best termed topical, in the worst way. There is good topical preaching, when a preacher chooses a topic and finds a text that relates and preaches from that text letting the text control the subject and content of the message. Unfortunately, there is also topical preaching where the preacher lets the passage serve as a springboard to allow them to rant about the subject, not really that focused on the passage or more regularly passages they use. Often the passage will be about their subject, but the content of the message is not really controlled by the passage. The worst example of this is when a pastor posted a sermon outline on a web site and then proceeded to say, “And there are a lot of verses that will go with this sermon.”

If the majority of contemporary style churches are stuck in this hodgepodge of spiritual pontificating, then the future of the church is in trouble. I pray that these pastors will rediscover God’s word and allow the text to govern their sermons.