Pseudoanointed Preaching

An acquaintance once told me about a sermon he preached for homiletics class when he was in Bible school.  He used no scriptures and made no reference to God, salvation or eternity.  He simply recited the alphabet.  However, as he progressed, he named each letter with more conviction in his voice and increasing enthusiasm in his demonstrativeness.  By the time he had reached the final letters of the alphabet, his classmates were on their feet, clapping and shouting.  He concluded his sermon with the statement, “It’s not what you say; It’s how you say it.”  The class instructor gave him an A (no pun intended).

This story puts a knot in my stomach, because I have seen this scenario play out in actual church services, where the sermon content had value not much greater than that of the alphabet, but because he delivered it with such charisma, people walked away talking about how anointed the preaching was.  I wondered if they even knew what they were so excited about.

I’ve also been in services where the minister taught profound and life-changing truths, but because he lacked charisma in his delivery, people felt the service was dead.  It makes me wonder what kind of an experience Bible reading is for these same people. Do they get excited about words sitting silently on a page, or do they require it to be read aloud with fervor for it to resonate with them?

It seems we have raised a generation who cannot distinguish anointing from emotion.  Don’t get me wrong.  I’m not saying the two are mutually exclusive.  Anointed preaching is often very emotional.  What I am saying is that they are not interdependent.  

Another popular modern method used to enhance “anointing” is rhyming.  The more consecutive sentences ending with “ation” you can throw into a sermon, the greater response you will get from the amen corner.  If these sermons were preached through an interpreter in a global missions setting, would the anointing get lost in translation?

Whatever happened to the days when we got more excited about WHAT the Word said regardless of HOW it was said?  Is our attention span so short that we cannot sit through a sermon that isn’t dominated by showmanship?  Are we so influenced by a society that demands over-the-top entertainment that we expect nothing less from our apostolic preachers?  

I’m not discounting creative presentation, not at all, but I wonder if we have become more concerned with the packaging than the actual contents.

Despite my ranting, I am hopeful.  It seems the next generation has a hunger for the old ways.  They’re not content with the status quo.  

I follow a number of them on Twitter.  Unlike their predecessors, their tweets are not always clever.  Often it’s just a scripture verse, no commentary, just the Word.  Perhaps it’s something they read that morning that really spoke to them.  Whatever they case, they felt it could stand alone.  It didn’t need help to be powerful and relevant.  It is this love for the Word that will compel them to affect their world in ways not seen in recent history.  

Pentecostal pep rallies can get us excited about church for a few days or even weeks, but it’s the Word of God that elicits lasting life changes that sustain us when the superficial wears off.  “Preach the word” (II Timothy 4:2).