![]() I thought that the ideal message would keep a congregation spellbound for the duration of the sermon-locked in attention, immobile, perfectly hanging on every word. When I was a beginning preacher I had an idea of the perfect sermon that looked a lot like what I think is going on in Stanley’s sermon. Well, the speaker noted this from the front, and then suddenly left the front, marched to the back, and sat on my member’s lap! He then whispered in his ear (I found this out later), “Do you think you can stay awake now?” From that point on, everybody stayed awake, but when I asked them about it later they told me it was because they were terrified that the muscular speaker might do something to them! He had won his point, but lost his audience in the process. This was unsurprising-not only had he been up late, but he was a generally tired guy. After one (or maybe two) such nights, one of my members fell asleep in the back row of the hall where we were meeting. As is often the case at weekend Youth events, the youths stay up late fellowshipping, playing, and eating cup noodles (you can pick your own snack, but I was with Asians and cup noodles after midnight are a must-have). I was once at a Youth event with a guest preacher who was a short, muscular, African-American man. Those who can’t are, by implication, lesser Christians. It also creates a culture of performance-after all, the really faithful Christians are the ones who hang on every word, who take extensive notes, and who can repeat the points of the sermon easily at lunch after the service. This opens the door for phrases like Stanley’s, for gimmicks, and for any number of “creative” means for keeping congregations interested (movie clips, song lyrics, images, etc.). When a preacher continuously labours to keep your attention, it is because, at heart, he doesn’t believe you’re really listening, because he doesn’t trust you. It is dangerous, among other things, because it creates a climate of distrust and of performance. I think this kind of (attempted) control is really dangerous for preachers. ![]() They exhibited, to me, what appeared to be a desire for control over the congregation-control over their attention, their minds, their focus for the duration of the service. Instead, these were deployed in what I can only guess was an attempt to try to keep the congregation’s focus razor sharp on what Stanley was doing at a given moment. He would assert “Now this is important,” and he would command the audience to “Look up here.” Now, if Stanley had digressed from his main point, and then used phrases like these to gather the congregation back to the main point again, I can see why they might be useful. Throughout his sermon Stanley repeated two phrases so many times that I lost count. Since Stanley is so highly regarded as a preacher, and since I spend a lot of time thinking about preaching, I thought I’d suggest some reasons why we ought not to preach like Andy Stanley. While indeed it was the case that I found the content of his sermon troubling, even more than that I found the sermon itself-his delivery, style, and manner, to be alarming. In response to the recent furore over Andy’s April 29 th comments about the Old Testament, I watched the YouTube video of the sermon. He is an author, a traveling public speaker, and used to publish podcasts on leadership to which I would listen, in another life. Stanley, the son of megachurch and radio preacher Charles Stanley, has piloted NorthPoint Community Church for years, an Atlanta megachurch with some 39,000 people in attendance weekly at its six campuses. Numerous articles emerged ( one of the best in First Things) to discuss Andy’s dangerous theological direction.Īnd yet, not long ago, Andy was also in the Christian news circuit, listed among a set of the most influential Evangelical preachers. ![]() Most recently, he was publicly criticized for a sermon where he troublingly interpreted Acts 15 by saying that Christians should “unhitch” their faith from the Old Testament. ![]() Atlanta preacher Andy Stanley has crossed my news feed several times of late.
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