Workshop 4: Call and Response

[Music] i wanted to say a few things first about i suppose you could say calling for response urging responses to what the text is calling for whatever the text implies whatever the text says summoning for that pleading for that and here's here's the reason i'm concerned that especially those of us who love doctrine who love to to trace the argument of the text who love to be expositional in our preaching may over time begin to feel a little uncomfortable or awkward with shifting into a mode of eyeball to eyeball pleading that's so different from teaching i'm explaining i'm a teacher i explain things i want you to understand that's your main job and what a different moment to look into somebody's eyes and say i want you to believe here's a here's a picture at a micro level you're you're at a restaurant say maria's down the street from me and you're meeting with a seeker unbeliever who's willing to talk with you over lunch about something you preached on and you have in your head okay he probably doesn't know the gospel from adam and so you're gonna you got it in your head and and he knows that's what you want to do and that's what he wants you to do and so you go through maybe a a 10-minute exposition of who god is you know i've got my god sin christ faith gospel presentation so who god is in his holiness and and then our sin you and me we we by nature rebels against god and there's this huge gulf between us and him and god remedies that by sending his son into the world to bear our our sin and the way we get in on that is faith now what and i just want i i don't think there's enough i'm looking right into your eyes saying i love you i don't want you to be lost i would like you to be with me forever in heaven or whatever words you use eyeball to eyeball pleading so that's i'm gonna say a word about that in in preaching because i have a sense maybe younger guys especially may feel a little awkward doing that because it it may not feel authentic to them but here's the kind of text i have in mind i i think in one of our other sessions i alluded to isaiah 55 come everyone who thirsts come to the waters and i don't have all these memorized but if i were preaching these this is the point where i would want to not have to look down at my manuscript so come come to the waters you who have no money come by and eden and you got 100 people in front of you or a thousand people in front of you or 40 people in front of you and what i've learned over the years is that you can't look everybody in the eye but they can tell when you're looking somebody in the eye so there's a person and there's a person and there's a person there's a person you're probably gonna look in four different places where you're reciting this come and you you linger there for five ten seconds as you're reciting this come to the lord you who have no money come by and eat and the holy spirit may guide you who you connect with at this moment so they feel personally whoa he just said that right to me so you you why do you labor for that which does not satisfy why do you spend your money for that which is not bread listen diligently come to me delight yourselves in rich food incline your ear come to me hear that your soul may live that's so different than exposition right that is pleading that people would come or come to me all you who labor and are heavy laden and i will give you rest take my yoke upon you and learn from me so that that moment in preaching where you look right at the people and take the words of god and make them your words and summon people to whatever the text is summoning them to and paul i think he basically told us to do this when he said in second corinthians therefore we are ambassadors for christ god making his appeal through us we implore you on behalf of christ be reconciled to god now if i understand that right it means that at a point in the sermon you on behalf of the creator of the universe are looking somebody in the eye and saying be reconciled to god now and and and i say now because i i think we should get out of our head that calling for response only happens at the end of the sermon right i mean wherever in the text it's there it's there and people get saved they get set free from sin they get re-deployed in mission at minute 10 minute 20 minute 30 and they'll tell you later right at this moment in the sermon when you said this everything changed not at the end when you said we could come pray with you at the end so let's i just want to encourage all of us as pastors to grow up into this and i say grow up into this because in a sense a child usually doesn't talk like that to his mom or dad but dad does to a wayward son son i love you i love you i want you to come home so if you feel like a child in the pulpit talking to parents it's awkward and i just want to say we've got to grow up we do have to become fathers 31 years old 27 years old 40 years old 80 years old 70 years old 50 years old and we're talking like that to them yes yes over time you can do that i mean billy graham did it to people you've never seen before and and there is an authentic love that god gives you for people those you really know well in your church and those who are visitors you can look at a a group of people half of whom you don't know and say i love you if god gives it to you if god gives you a love for those people here's another obstacle not just age and a sense of immaturity that we need to just grow up into but people like me who believe in the sovereignty of god and that no human being apart from god's enabling grace can respond with the kind of response that is saving a genuine authentic faith love can't kill sin without the holy spirit can't believe in jesus can't say jesus is lord without the holy spirit might draw the wrong inference therefore don't tell anybody to believe therefore don't tell anybody to kill their sin therefore don't use any exhortations or imperatives because you're giving them the impression they can do it that's unbiblical just plain flat-out unbiblical and the reason it's not a contradiction to the sovereignty of god in the transformation and the salvation of sinners is because the call that we give becomes the power to obey it i mean jesus clearly did that with lazarus right come forth dead man and the call created the life i think that's what he's called us to do so that over over my napkin gospel there at maria's if i say i love you i don't want you to perish believe that that imperative believe would you believe is god's power if he please so you don't need to be afraid oh i'm making this happen you know i'm i'm constraining some free will thing here when in fact no no you are the instrument of almighty god he's working here he's working there he's going to make a saving transaction happen here that will change this person's whole life so that that obstacle you get the obstacle of how i'm immature i can't talk like that to my people and you've got the obstacle um we might be forcing something that should be more natural i just think the the bible is just filled with imperatives filled with exhortations that we should summon people too we didn't teach them over time of course you can't do this without the holy spirit do it and trust him and then turn around and say thank you thank you um and and i don't just mean um exhortations to believe for the initial salvation event i mean believe exhortation to love exhortation to treasure to repent of a sin to forgive others to yield to god's conviction to renounce a sin to pursue some resolve for good to be humble and tender in other words texts in the bible are either explicitly full of things we ought to change about ourselves or implicitly be less caustic with your wife be less belligerent with your children is implicit in this text so i think we should say dad dad let's not do this anymore look right at him we're not going to do this anymore in the name of jesus by the power of the spirit we're done with this kind of treatment of our wives and kids so i don't just mean to say that this summon for for uh response is at the moment of salvation it's it's way bigger than that i'm pleading for a an essential component of preaching as an eyeball to eyeball pleading for whatever the text wants to happen pleading with people it will it will it will make the preaching event utterly unique in what people experience in the world there's no place this happens to them they don't do this on the news they don't do it in dramas they don't do at the movies they don't do it in songs at concerts when i go to church i'm expecting my pastor to look me in the face and plead with me to change something in the power of the spirit because of the gospel which i think would be wonderful if that's what people expected i thought you were going to go someplace else with the calling response tell me tell me where you thought i thought you were going to go with the uh so i think about preaching in my uh church in jersey mostly african-american context where there's a call and response from the pastor or the pulpit to the people whether if it's the amens or can i get a hallelujah things of that nature but i see the connection there because you're still calling your people to respond to the word so you're asking them to do something that you don't have any other place in this world whether if it's this amen that says i agree with what you just said because i see it in the text or fathers let's not do this but it is something that you're calling your people to not just be um bumps on a log ass but you're saying this is addressing meddling yeah so whether it's the amens and the hallelujahs or if it's the whatever the please is i it's just that's why i thought you were going at first whether if it's um how do you how do you make sure your people recognize that they're sitting down and they're not they they are not just bystanders and hearing but you're supposed to respond to this what if it's doing amen yes okay now let me maybe maybe i'll make a question of this [Music] in in your sermon which we're going to talk about just a minute um there was a point where you said really effective the problem is not that this church is in corinth with this worldliness and secular reality the problem is just in the church and then you gave a couple of specifics and then you paused and you looked down at john erickson i presume when you said john and you said john i didn't get any amens there i didn't expect to now that's a kind of stepping outside the flow and commenting on a response that didn't come or that might have come and you could come in on it my suggestion there is do little of that here's what i have in mind i i've i've sat in speakers even in our own conference where almost every minute or two they're commenting on what just didn't happen nobody left right or i did this or i did that and you always get the impression this is awkward this man is so self-conscious about what he's saying what others are saying to him that he's way too outside himself he needs to be more in the flow so my guess is can i get a whatever is not exactly like that and yet it might become that it could become that could be come down yeah i think transitioning background off the great context baptist church then coming to bc at bethlehem college of seminary more into a reform background the preaching obviously has a different style to it right it's it's i've had to ask myself in preaching do i need that call and response because i think you can go so far with it where if you don't get it you become self-conscious and then you're wondering if it's getting to the people and things that nature but the other side is you want your people to you're seeing something glorious here yep right we see the the football catch that the player made from the vikings and no minnesota vikings fan sat dispassionately right right right right right but we unpack something in the text and we want you to get that same we want you to get that same response so to speak so it's not the same but then it could fall into that here's and i totally get that and love it um in a certain setting you might only see it with a twinkling in their eye that's right that's right here's here's a here's a concern and i've set in situations and and this is not just a african-american way of give and take but a certain kind of style of intensity or rhythm of any preaching that does that loses its connection with the content so that the announcement of the hymn is said in the same way as jesus is lord you you this man is going on an automatic pilot that's my that was my impression i said this man has gone on to automatic preachy pilot and at this level it sounds normal and he just stayed on it you know he's got these engines blazing and he's landed whatever the analogy is so that that is i think for all of us whether it's a give-and-take or any kind of a stylistic mode you get into you can it disconnects from the nature of what's being said there's some things massively important and some things mine are important something's horrible something sweet and it seems like the the tone and the demeanor should alter as you move through those realities so that they don't sound the same and the people need to be taught i think don't you say amen to what i just said because that was not worthy of an amen because they may get into the same i mean the people may be in the same mode as the pastor and lose lose connection with the reality of what's being said here so yeah i wasn't going in that direction but thank you for going in that direction um because it applies because i said don't not we're not talking just at the end we're we are summoning these people not just later this afternoon to treat their kids a certain way but right now right now are you do you love what i just said i can't tell and i i like that idea that we should be able to tell more than we do i was saying to jason my pastor i said to him last week i wrote an email i said brother i just want to encourage you that what you just did with that text was so wise and so helpful and the way you closed that sermon was so rivetive rivetingly uh relevant and personal that through the video downtown he wasn't there and i'm looking at about 600 people in that nine o'clock service and i'm i'm being drawn in but at one point i i draw out and i look around these people are motionless they are motionless nobody's taking notes nobody's putting on a coat nobody's whispering nobody's fixing their hair nobody's shuffling he god has just met this people and there's more but that's part of what you're saying that's kind of the non-verbal sense of it's here and we could use a lot of variety in the ways we respond appropriately

Channel: Desiring God

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Keywords: Desiring God, John Piper, God, Jesus Christ, Christianity, Christian Hedonism

Id: nMvn9d4Se_8

Length: 20min 3sec (1203 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 02 2021