Sales Pitch

This last Thursday I went out to lunch with some new attenders from my church. One of these wonderful people recieved Christ as Savior on their first visit. As far as I know- and I could be wrong- the other two are not yet Christians.
One of the attenders that apparently is not yet a Christian leaned accrossed the table and said,” Let me talk to you about your sermons.” That’s good- I welcome such talks whether the feedback may be positive or negative.
He said that I needed to display the text differently in Power Point and needed to stop speaking in the middle of my message for a musical interlude.
He then went on to say that I shouldn’t talk so much about the Bible and try to limit the time I talk about it to 15-20 minutes; then after the musical interlude, tell some encouraging stories…
Now I respect the guy’s opinions. I even like the idea of a musical interlude in the middle of my message, but I know how the brain works and know that people would check-out once round one of the message was over and probably wouldn’t retian or understand any of part two.
The thing I had a problem with, though I respected his opinion, was the whole limiting the Bible and telling encouraging stories part.
You see, I preach to challenge the mind and spirit of the listener to live for Christ and spread His Kingdom. I preach to make people question their assumptions. I preach to convict people of their sins and draw them into repentance. I preach to show people the desparity of their very real need of Jesus. I hope and expect that these messages will make people uncomfortable. There may be a little encouragement here and there, but that’s one of the least important motivators for me as a speaker, and is very low on my priority list.
For thousands of years this has been the problem of humanity;” Tell us something encouraging!” “Make us feel good about ourselves while the world is ending!” “Make me laugh while my neighbor is on his way to hell…” etc…
I want to make clear to my listener that our time is short and that our mission is introducing people to Christ, not ‘finding our best life now.’
Later in the conversation the man reminissed of the good old days when he went to a very rigid denominational church and about how they ‘never pressured people to join them’ and never ‘gave a sales pitch’ to a non-believer. The pastor just told some good old fashioned inspirational stories and the people invited their friends to come ‘have fun with us- we’re Christians!’, instead of telling them Bout their need for Jesus.
So what’s my point of writing this? The point is this: I know that the Gospel is offensive- it offends me. I know that the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing. I know that Jesus is a stumbling block for some. But these are the things that I am radically unapologetic about. I have been called to preach the exclusive message of salvation through Jesus Christ and those who the Holy Spirit enables will respond.
Those reject the truth, reject the truth. I will not tell them nice little encouraging stories so that they can feel good about their fatal rejection of Christ and the fellowship of His suffering.