If your church could reach more people for Christ by focusing on one “people group” in your community, would you do so?

Certain people around your church are more receptive to the Gospel than others.  I suggest that good stewardship of your church’s human and fiscal resources calls you to find and focus on these receptive people.  They are the “fertile soil” (see Mt. 13:1-23) who are “ripe unto harvest” (Jn. 4:35).  And your successful evangelistic results will be praised by the Master with the same words heard by those who returned more talents than they had been given: “Well done, good and faithful servant” (see Mt. 25:14-30).

The “Receptivity-Resistance Axis” below illustrates a person’s openness to becoming a new creation in Christ.  Every non-Christian is somewhere on this Axis.

Some people are open and responsive to the Good News—the “good soil,” as Christ described them in the Parable of the Sower.  Others are resistant to the Gospel—the rocky soil.  When Jesus concluded this parable with, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear,” I believe he was suggesting that the Good News we proclaim will not be received with equal receptivity.  And we are called to identify those who will hear, listen, and respond.

It is also important to note that people are always moving on this Receptivity-Resistance Axis; some are moving toward greater receptivity, others toward greater resistance.

A key question I hope you’re asking is: “How do we identify the receptive people in our community?”

One proven way is through life events.  Or, more specifically, transitional life events.  Here is the principle: The more disruptive a life event is to a person’s psychological equilibrium, the more it will cause him/her to be spiritually receptive.

Robert Pierson rightly observes: “People most often make decisions for Christ when they are going through transitions. Most do not make decisions about new commitments and directions in their life when everything is going well. We make those decisions when we are in the midst of stress and difficulty. When the church is there to help and share the gospel at the point of their greatest need, people respond, because those are the times people are the most open” (Needs-Based Evangelism, Abingdon Press, 2006, p. 28).

The “Social Readjustment Scale” below was originally developed by two cardiology researchers at the University of Washington Medical Center.  The events were identified as precipitators of a heart attack.  (The numbers to the right are the relative severity of the event, from 1-100.)  I, and other researchers, have found that these same events are also excellent indicators of a person’s openness (receptivity) to Christian conversion.

Put simply, people who rate high on this Scale will be more receptive to repentance and conversion than those who rate lower.  And, when multiple events occur, in relative proximity, receptivity increases even more.

As you think and pray about responding to Christ’s command to “…go and make disciples,” use this “Stress Scale” as one way to begin identifying the people in your community whom the Holy Spirit may be preparing to invite into the Kingdom—through you and your church.  Creative, caring, genuine, need-meeting Christian love—at these times when people are most receptive—will bring great fruit.  Watch… listen…be sensitive to these windows of opportunity… and then be ready to “give witness to the hope that is within you” 
(I Pe. 3:15).

There’s just something about Stephen. He possesses the most important preaching characteristics. Acts 6:10 states “But they could not withstand the wisdom and the Spirit with which he (Stephen) spoke.” The content of Stephen’s preaching (“wisdom”) and his character (“Spirit”) became a brick wall for the enemies of the Christian movement. Stephen demonstrates that when sermonic content and the preacher’s character are congruent with Christ, preaching is hard to “withstand.” Most of us would agree, I think, that wise sermonic content is a necessity for Christian proclamation. However, I wonder if the Church has forgotten the other side of the Stephen-coin, that the Christ-congruent character of the preacher is just as important as Christ-congruent content.

Do I sound a bit like a Donatist? The Donatists of the 4th century put too much emphasis on the character of the clergy. They believed that if the priest administering the sacrament of Communion was a spiritual weakling, then the sacrament would not be efficacious for the recipient. Augustine was among the chief opponents of the Donatists. He asserted that the grace of God comes through the sacrament regardless of the spiritual state of the person serving the sacrament. This historical controversy begs some pressing contemporary questions? If we over-emphasize the person of the preacher might we become homiletic donatists? Do we really want to suggest that the preacher’s character has significant bearing on the effectiveness of the sermon? Can a preacher’s sinfulness really inhibit the power of God that comes through the preaching event?

Clearly, we need to avoid extreme homiletic donatism. But, we must be just as suspicious of homiletic docetism. Docetism was a heretical belief of the 2nd century that denied the physicality of Christ. Docetism under-emphasized the humanity, or personhood, of Christ. Homiletic docetism, then, is an extreme neglect of the person of the preacher. A homiletic docetic thinks preaching is entirely dependent on divinity and that humanity, or the preacher, doesn’t matter at all to the dynamics of preaching. As long as God shows up through the preaching, nothing else matters-not even the preacher!

It seems to me that, somehow, the Church must live between the extremes of homiletic donatism, an over-emphasis of the preacher’s character, and homiletic docetism, a complete denial of the importance of the preacher. For some reason, God has decided to do his best work through a combination, a wedding together, of divinity with humanity. The Bible is the divine word through the humanity of its authors. The Incarnation is the act of divinity coming through humanity. And the sermon, as far as I can tell, is another example of our gracious God’s willingness to come to us through us, divine truth bursting through a human agent we call preacher. Stephen proves that when a good sermon, full of divine “wisdom,” comes through a good preacher, full of the “Spirit,” that the homiletic sparks fly!

So, what do you think? Are you more prone to be a homiletic donatist who is so enamored with the holiness of the preacher that the sovereign power of God through preaching is ignored? Or, are you more likely to struggle with a homiletic docetism that ignores the role and person of the preacher in the preaching event? Does your theological tradition lead you toward one of these homiletic heresies? Most importantly, how can you avoid both extremes through your development and delivery of sermons?

You are invited to the Festival on Preaching!
The human hunger for life-giving, hope-inducing, and identity-shaping good news has never been more intense. Yet the complexities of preaching today are more significant than ever. The Festival on Preaching is designed to inspire and equip preachers to meet these challenges and maximize the opportunities of preaching today. On May 20-21, Wesley Seminary and College Wesleyan Church are co-hosting what we pray will be a significant investment in your preaching ministry. For more information and to register click on the following link: Festival on Preaching.

The $25 registration fee is waived for Wesley Seminary students!

“If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that its stupid.” – Einstein

We have come to understand that people do not all learn the same way. Through trial, error, and observation educational theorists have concluded that people learn through a variety of means and our personal experience as both students and teachers confirms that to be true – different people learn best through engagement of different learning styles (hear it, see it, touch it, explore it) and different instructional formats. We also know that different people learn best in a variety of environments and conditions – supposedly girls learn best in a room that is yellow while boys learn best in a room that is blue for example. Howard Gardner also suggested that there is not one measurement of intelligence but “multiple intelligences” that include spatial, bodily kinesthetic, musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal, linguistic, logical-mathematical, naturalistic, and existential. Each modality relates to certain skill sets or abilities and being “smart” in one of the intelligences does not necessarily mean you will be “smart” in all just like being “not so smart” in one does not necessarily mean you will be “not so smart” in all.

We could spend a lifetime analyzing how people learn and continue to be amazed at the complexity and individualism involved in the learning process – we truly are “wonderfully made”.

Unfortunately what we know to be true does not always impact our practice, which is why many people experience educational failure. Our educational systems, although fully aware of varied needs in learning, often provide an educational experience for a few while ignoring and thus frustrating many. We have all seen the child, teen, or young adult come home from their failed educational experience and refer to themselves as “stupid” – frustrated at their lack of ability to learn perhaps due to an educational system that did not understand their learning style needs; an educational system that expected the “fish to climb a tree”.

It is easy to “throw stones” at educational institutions, especially public education, and their inability to adapt to the needs of their students, but do our own Christian “educational systems” also ask fish to climb trees? Do we truly function in a way that demonstrates we fully understand God’s unique creation and individual learning needs or does our approach seem to suggest in faith formation “one size fits all”?

Think in your mind to the last small group you facilitated, Sunday school class you taught, worship service you led, or sermon you preached and ask yourself – was everyone in the room engaged? Could you see by their expression, eye contact, and reactions that they were engaged, excited, learning, and growing? If your answer is a resounding “YES!” awesome – keep investing in your people and seeing great reward. If you are not quite as confident, below are a few things to try:
• Vary your style of “delivery” (how predictable are you?)
• Incorporate their sense of smell (women are more likely to remember when the “lesson” is tied to a smell)
• Give them a chance to move or at least use their hands
• Help them become a part of the story and truly experience it
• Give them a chance to talk
• Connect the main point to an image, icon, picture, or video (give them a picture in their mind to remember)
• Get out of the room and change the environment
• Put music to it
• Let them create something
• Pay attention to who is bored, asleep, disengaged and make it your mission to find out what they need in order to learn

Learning plays a significant role in formation, and Christian education experiences should result in spiritual growth. How well are your people learning and growing?   No one should think they are “stupid” when it comes to faith formation.  Provide experiences that engage all of your people and please provide an opportunity for your “fish” to swim!

Rev. Colleen Derr, Ed. D.

Assistant Professor of Congregational Spiritual Formation and Christian Ministries

I am writing this blog post in the shadow of the bombings at the Boston Marathon today.  I had planned to write a different blog post but I am forced by circumstances to ask the question:  will we have forgotten the tremendous horror and suffering of our neighbors in the East by the time that Sunday worship comes?  By this, I mean will the bombings receive more than a sentence of the pastoral prayer as we rush to the happy clappy music that we have grown to love or will we sit in the ashes with them to grieve and pray – even for just a little while?

I was pastoring a church in Asbury Park, NJ when the planes of 9/11 changed the way that we relate to one another. We only had to drive a few miles up the coast to see and smell the flames that burnt for weeks; every conversation with pastors of neighboring churches revealed new levels of loss and pain.  Since much of the Jersey shore was a bedroom community for New York City, the losses were surprising:  church members who worked in the WTC building, sons and daughters of the area churches who worked as support staff in the massive high-rise.  One church lost most of its administrative council on that fateful day!   Those of us who were so close to New York, who had lost someone from our families or social networks, sat in pain and sorrow for months.  In downtown New York City, pastors experienced on-the-job training in helping the community (not just their members) work through grief and loss. My church was 75 miles away.  Ironically, as close as we were to the epicenter of the wave of pain that swept across the region, pastors found it difficult to allow the grief, and the questions that were undoubtedly directed at God, to come to church!  Once phone service was restored and we were able to talk to our friends across the country, we were saddened to learn that in many churches, our grief had been reduced to a footnote in the morning prayer. A few hundred miles and a Sunday or two removed, it was back to happy clappy as though nothing had happened!

As bombs and violence continue to break out in the most unlikely places, it has become “normal” for us to become desensitized to their impact. Sadly, it has also become normal for us to draw into the safety of family and close-friend circles while scanning our surroundings for potential (or imagined) danger.  The unintended consequences of needing to play it safe, is that we have so “contracted”  or drawn into safe places, that the arms of hospitality, friendship, neighborliness, and concern for people everywhere have also shortened.  To the extent that we may not have recognized that when Boston was bombed, our neighbors were bombed too!

Yet, the issue, I raise about today’s bombings and Sunday’s worship is more than sociological. I believe it to be more than our not recognizing our neighbors because we are so drawn into ourselves.  I propose that worship reveals both the community’s affirmation of faith and theological stance. Retired Old Testament scholar, Walter Brueggemann, often talks about the need for lament in the life of a congregation.  When things are not well with our souls, he encourages, this is the time to vary the order of worship and allow the entire community to engage in a time of a lament.  There are several examples of this in Old Testament life.

We have so many neighbors standing in the need of prayer.  On any given day, we are reminded of neighbors who have been flooded or quaked, bombed or shot, snowed in or displaced or challenged beyond their strength in any number of ways – the most recent being this tragedy in Boston!  What might happen if hundreds of churches across the continent and places beyond abandoned the order of worship in favor of a call to fervent prayer?  What would it be like to have an entire service devoted to intercession for those who grieve and for those who have been wounded in the process of just trying to live?  What would it look like to transform so many praise houses into houses of prayer?

Sunday’s comin,’ and though the evening news will have moved on to something else of interest, our neighbors out East won’t be able to move on for some time.  You still have time to make a few changes in the order of worship.

Although I currently worship at a larger size church, I have spent a fair amount of my life attending smaller churches. Recently I attended a smaller sized church, and it gave me some time to reflect on these numerous islands of Christ that permeate America.

Their number is a little deceiving.  For example, 1 in 5 Wesleyans attends a single large church. That means this large church has the numerical equivalence of hundreds and hundreds of small Wesleyan churches.  So while the small church outnumbers large churches in buildings, it does not outnumber the people in larger churches or the influence.

Churches of all sizes are notorious for their antics from time to time.  A large, seemingly fruitful church can undergo a split and its pieces disintegrate. This can especially be the case when a church is built around a particular charismatic personality.

But smaller churches have their splits too.  In a small church a strong individual can wreak untold havoc.  A person with a key decides to paint the inside of the church without telling anyone. Another person leaves because the pastor took down the attendance billboard in the back by the door. Small churches can also be islands of legalism, where visitors who do not dress correctly are snubbed.

A church of any size can get distracted from the bottom line of Christians being in the world: love God and love each other. In church, we love God in worship.  We love each other inside the walls by getting along.  We love those outside the walls by mission. That’s really all there is.  The rest is distraction.

God doesn’t care what the music is, who plays the piano, or who sings the special song. If the worshipers are worshiping, that’s good enough for God. It’s not an excuse to fight with each other. Worship wars show that Satan has gotten the best of us by distracting us.

We can get caught up in fighting political issues from the pew and pulpit. Sometimes this is also a hard heart disguised as faith.  Are you preaching love of one another in the church and love toward both friend and enemy outside the church?  If not, you’ve gotten distracted. The prophetic message is primarily a message for others, not against them. So who is your message protecting or wanting to rescue–or is it just an excuse to excoriate sinners because you think it is allowed in this case?

The thought occurred to me, What would happen to the small churches of America if they focused on loving each other inside and outside their walls?  What if, whenever someone felt like fighting over anything, you returned to the theme–anything but love is a distraction?

I don’t like that style of music. Distraction. I don’t like the way that family dresses. Distraction. Those kids are disruptive and should not be allowed to come back. Distraction. We need to contact our politicians. Probably a distraction.

Might it not transform the church?  Might it not transform America?  A friend of mine said here’s what would happen: they wouldn’t remain small churches for long.

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Behold the following 6.15 reasons why you want to come to the 6:15 event on April 4th:

#6) Because you want to see inside the new Seminary facility!

#5) Because you want to see if your professors can speak for only 15 minutes each!

#4) Because you want to do penance for missing the first 6:15 event last October!

#3) Because you want to visit the seminary to discern God’s will for you life!

#2) Because you want to eat hors d’oeuvres at 5:30!

#1.15) Because it’s free!

#1) Because you want to be equipped and edified in your faith, life and ministry!!!