JourneyOnline
ERIC IS a tradie. He’s an intelligent 35-year-old bloke with a successful business in a complex and dynamic industry.
In the fourth pew from the back, Eric is reminded of the apprenticeship lectures at TAFE college and he’s falling asleep twenty minutes into the Sunday sermon at River Gum Ridge View Estate Uniting Church.
According to Redcliffe Uniting Church’s Rev Peter Armstrong, Eric isn’t like most of the members of the Uniting Church, but he is like most of the Generation X males in Australia.
According to the National Christian Life Survey the average Australian church member is a married woman in her fifties, someone of a generation who would listen to the message from the pulpit, and either take it or leave it. Eric wants to think his way through that message, ask some questions and see how it works in his daily life.
Mr Armstrong thinks Eric’s question is more often “who is telling me this” and “will this work for me?” than it is “what is truth”?
“This generation, especially the blokes, want to know who you are before they accept what you believe,” said Mr Armstrong.
After more than a year of study, and a year’s worth of weekly sermons, Mr Armstrong has concluded that Australian men want to hear a good story from the pulpit, not a lecture; action possibilities, not concepts or precepts.
“Preaching has always been central to spreading the Good News,” he said. “But while the news has always been good, the sermons haven’t. A good yarn has a beginning, a middle and an end – a point listeners can work through and take away – but how rare are the ‘Ah ha’ moments for our congregations?”
Mr Armstrong recounted how young Tom, who had come to faith and joined the congregation about four years ago, approached him after a service to say, “That’s been two great sermons you’ve done so far!”
That encounter prompted Peter Armstrong’s research into what makes a sermon “great”.
The same young man told him, “Great sermons connect the story of faith to my story, give me practical things to think about and act on, and inspire me to something more, something different to where I am now.”
Mr Armstrong’s research involved mapping the personality types of Australian men aged twenty-five to forty-five.
There appears to have been no previous studies on personality types and temperament within the Australian church.
Mr Armstrong found the largest group of men he spoke to were what is known as Sensing-Judging and Thinking-Judging men. They are concrete in their thinking, drawing heavily on what can be seen, heard, touched and experienced.
The bottom line may be that a message with a story of concrete experience, that fires the imagination, and calls hearers to action appeals to the largest group of male listeners.
That would qualify many of the great sermons of the New Testament.
“This isn’t only about keeping them awake on Sundays,” said Mr Armstrong.
“If there are lessons to be learned about reconnecting with a group that are turning away from church we might be able to apply those preaching lessons to the whole worship service, discipling young men and equipping them for evangelism among their mates.”
Sermons talk the talk, but do they encourage listeners to walk the walk?
Photo : Flowers are nice, but décor by Ducati adds Italian flare. Greg Trost, Barry Wilson, Andrew Krosch and Malcolm James helped prepare and present ‘Adventure Faith’, a Sunday service prepared by the Pine Rivers Uniting Church men that packed the church in July. Photo by Phil Smith
