Preacher, Get to Work!

Hey preacher, pastor, evangelist, blogger,  or whatever you have chosen to call yourself, in view of your calling, don't just take a pharisaical posture jibing diatribes at your audience. 

Tone down the caustic edge in your message. You can be incisive without being corrosive.
You are not going to reach them by taunting them.

 "For God so loved the world (culture)." If the God who we claim to have sent us loves the culture, from where do we get such pulsating negative energy, venting hate speeches, under the guise of preaching the gospel or the truth. Stop ranting and lashing out, quit being angry and defensive as if culture is the enemy. Culture is an opportunity to engage and impact.

We are no more in the days of John the Baptist. It's a post-modern and post-Christian culture. Stop answering questions your audience doesn’t care about. Do your homework and build your capacity to engage with more nuanced thought. Read more, read wide. Do some research. Figure out the questions your audience is asking. Engage your audience's  questions, and worldviews at an informed level and in a winsome and persuasive way.

It is not enough to exegete the biblical text, we need to do more to exegete the audience and culture. Like Carey Nieuwhof writes, the future belongs to preachers who exegete the culture and audience as well as they exegete the text.