From Preaching to Communicating
Fred Smith Sr.
Vision, policies, and plans are more or less useless unless they are known to all who may be concerned with them. Lord Montgomery, commander of the Eighth Army, made it a rule that the plan of the campaign should be made known to every soldier. Preaching will forever remain at the core of the church's program. Along with teaching, preaching is one of the chief sources of spiritual power. Any attempt to reduce its importance is, in my opinion, a dead-end street. The message of preaching forever remains the same, but the form changes to successfully reach the hearers, just as the Bible itself has been retranslated in our time to great advantage. I was once given a framed page from the Geneva Bible of 1560—and I can't read it. It is the Word of God, all right, but its form is such that modern people cannot easily understand it. One of the most significant developments in the church today, as I see it, is that old-style "preaching" is going out, and "communication" is coming in. Those preachers who have adjusted to the change in people's listening habits and interests are having no trouble drawing a crowd; they're able to match the gospel with current needs. (Certain legendary preachers will not change, and do not need to change. They became who they are in another generation. But they cannot be imitated successfully today.) How the Ears Have Changed
This need for change has been brought on by several concurrent happenings, one of which is our transformation into a society of television watchers. TV has conditioned us to getting information quickly in short blasts, "capsules." In the dramas, a whole life situation is developed and solved in thirty minutes or an hour. In the newscasts, world issues are given a couple minutes, and authorities ...
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