 |  Tough ministry choices about the right thing to do.
Winter 2003
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Sunday's Comin'
by M.Craig Barnes
January 1, 2003
"Words are cheap."At least that is what we keep hearing. It is certainly what contemporary society has taught people to think. So what is the value of a sermon?
Is it just more words?
Preachers spend hours and hours carefully constructing their sermons in the belief that words are not cheap, but are costly, powerful, and even dangerous.
Just two words, "I do," have the ability to create a marital covenant that will last a lifetime. And just a couple words of anger can do a world of hurt. In his book Modern Times, Paul Johnson has demonstrated that the killing fields of Cambodia began with just words being tossed around in a Parisian coffee shop.
Words are like TNT. Combining them in careless ways can have devastating effects; putting words together carefully can rearrange a life.
Few now believe this. Before worshipers make it into a sanctuary, they have been bombarded with words all week by a society that no longer values them. Marketers have domesticated words into jingles, like circus elephants pulled out of the wild to balance balls on their heads. Words pouring out of car radios are only background noise. In the course of a day, we pass hundreds of advertisements peddling things we don't need. On the Internet unwanted words pop up and must be "closed."
The boss uses words to motivate, if not manipulate. The guy in traffic uses words to curse. And in every congregation there are some who heard tender words like "I love you," only to discover it was, well, just words.
Then on Sunday morning the preacher says, "Hear the Word of the Lord." And every word-weary person there hopes somehow these words will be different.
How do we in the pulpits reassure the congregation that God really knows how to use a word, that these are sacred ...
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