Choosing to Preach Discussion

re: #6 - Preachers, Politicians, and Persuasion

Posted by Kallie Hutton on Aug. 24, 2010 at 19:02

I hope that we do not present the Gospel as would a politician or sales person. When I was younger, that is how I was taught to tell others about Christ: there was a strategy and lines that you would use in a well-scripted presentation on the gospel. Christ was the product to sell and if all went according to plan, the conversation would end with a commitment and a sinner’s prayer. The problem with all of this is that Jesus is not a product to sell and accepting Him is not like buying a time-share. If we present the Gospel and the messages that flow out of it in this way, then we are making a shallow, false presentation and will end up with disappointed "customers". The Gospel is not something to sell but something to live, share and experience. Preaching should reflect a relationship with Christ, not a knowledge of a product.

re: #6 - Preachers, Politicians, and Persuasion

Posted by Hyung Kim on Oct. 31, 2009 at 22:44

Hyungjun Max Kim

I am going to answer only the first question.
What can a preacher learn from the politician about persuasion?

There is always something to learn from anyone. This is what I have in mind. From the politician I have learned assimilation skill, unquenchable desire for success, undefeated spirit, taking risk for a goal, killer instinct, diligent work, and (for some cases only) optimistic mind set.

Persuasion comes from assimilation skill. In Acts 17:22-23 we can fine Paul’s strategy of assimilation to the listeners in Athens: “Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you.” What an amazing introduction that grabs the attention! If Paul had not mentioned about “the unknown god,” could he have had much attention from the listeners? The skill that Paul uses here is well known assimilation skill used by politicians.

Persuasion also comes from unquenchable desire for success (in the eyes of God, not temporal success found in temporal politicians) combined with undefeated spirit. Listeners are not a bunch of fools. They can sense whether or not a preacher has strong desire of accomplishing his or her objective (spreading the gospel and teaching what Jesus thought us). If a preacher has strong desire for Godly success, he or she cannot be defeated without a real good fight for what he or she believes. Listeners may not explain about the preacher’s strong conviction, but they can feel something. Something they cannot understand, but they sense something significant is in the preaching.

Persuasion can be manifested by taking unreasonable (for some listeners) risk. Nobody risk their lives without strong conviction. If a preacher risks his or her own life, then they will know what the preacher talks about is something crucial for their lives. Not only Paul but also other Christians risked their own lives for the sake of the kingdom of God. Not many politicians risk their lives, but some do.
Persuasion requires a preacher equipped with killer instinct. Being prepared with the gospel, a preacher should not miss an opportunity to preach in season and out of season. There is always a good chance of winning listeners mind. A good preacher does not miss that golden opportunity.

Diligent work is also good quality that a preacher should learn from a politician for better persuasion. Generally speaking, on politician simply persuade the listeners without rigorous hours of preparation and practice. As a preacher, I should be more diligent for my part of working while depending on the work of the Holy Spirit because the work of the Spirit does not nullify my effort for God’s work.

Finally, being optimistic is another significant factor for persuasion. If a preacher doubt after his or her preaching, the listeners too will doubt about the preacher and the message. A preacher can be optimistic because of the work of the Holy Spirit. It is up to God after a preaching, so being optimistic about the message helps a preacher to have more persuasive(I prefer effective to persuasive) preaching.

re: #6 - Preachers, Politicians, and Persuasion

Posted by Karl Popke on Nov. 11, 2008 at 17:20

re: # 6 – Preachers, Politicians, and Persuasion
Posted by Karl Popke on Nov. 11, 2008 at 17: 20

Communication skills are vital politically, and even more decisively when it comes to transmitting the Word of God. Yes, we can take a lesson from our politicians. Naturally I want to be as persuasive as possible with tools of communication God has given me, but my greatest dependence must be in work of Holy Spirit, for He has the ultimate power to change, not only one’s mind, but the heart and the spirit. There is a huge difference between the persuasion of politicians, advertisement and sales, to that of preaching. Politicians never seem to ask anything of their people except to their vote, otherwise they are always telling us what they will give us. With advertising or sales we are always being convinced that for the smallest cost products will make our lives better. However, the preacher is always telling his people, that what he offers is going to cost them their lives. They are going to have give their all to God. And he has to convince them it’s worth it. This is work that is beyond any preacher’s ability. Thank God He has given us a greater tool than worldly means to transform hearts and lives for eternity.

re: #6 - Preachers, Politicians, and Persuasion

Posted by Yong Wang on Oct. 30, 2008 at 22:32

Both preacher and politician need to persuade certain people. Communication skills are important for both politician and preacher. The great difference is that preachers have a supernatural force they can rely on while politicians do not necessarily have. The work of the Holy Spirit is powerful and irresistible. Meanwhile, the subject of speech is different. The politician talks about something promising, but not necessarily true. The preacher’s content is the Bible, which is the forever true and living Word of God. Usually politicians show great enthusiasm and conviction in their speech. If politicians can show such great enthusiasm and conviction in something that is not necessary real? (sometimes the politician may not even believe in what he or she says) Why cannot preachers show similar or greater enthusiasm and conviction in something which is real, which we firmly believe in?

Preaching is like advertising or sales is because its ultimate purpose is for people to change, whether it is to make decision to buy certain product or to live a Christ-like life that God calls us to. The difference is whether the content is true. Sales or advertising can contain something which is not real or authentic. On the contrary, what the preacher says is based on the Bible, the unchanging truth.

re: #6 - Preachers, Politicians, and Persuasion

Posted by Kevin O'Coin on Oct. 09, 2008 at 22:42

I am very hesitant to say that a preacher should learn or adopt anything from the politicians powers of persuasion. In popular stereotyping, the politician puts a spin on everything and tries to paint the picture as rosey as possible, because he or she has re-election as the goal. But the preacher’s goal can hardly be re-election. Certainly it may be tempting for a preacher to please those who pay his or her salary, but the true preacher cannot be governed by a desire to please people.

Paul says to the Corinthians that "My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on men’s wisdom, but on God’s power" (1 Cor 2:4-5). What becomes clear from these words is Paul’s disdain for using the puffed-up rhetoric, so common in his day, to capture the affections and minds of God’s people. The power of our message rests on the beauty of Christ. That said, however, homiletics, by its very nature, is the learning of a process that can aid in making one’s message more easily understood by one’s audience, and doubtless this requires persuasion, and a more practiced speaker, most often, can get better results. Still, I am very hesitant to take lessons form the politician or the person who is trying to sell any product, no matter how much they might believe in it themselves. Evangelism as a sales pitch (where we seek to :"close the deal" as soon as possible), is passe, if not downright scorned. We are not hawking Jesus, and anything that even smells of sales will turn people off.

re: #6 - Preachers, Politicians, and Persuasion

Posted by George Bedlion on Dec. 03, 2007 at 00:17

Preachers can learn many lessons from politicians, both good and bad. One important lesson about persuasion is that most people come with their mind made up about an issue and I’ve noticed that when politicians assert their argument without empathy or care towards another person they usually end up doing the opposite of persuasion and end up polarizing. With that said, Christians cannot be afraid to use the truth we have be persuasive just because of polarizing people- the message of Christ is very polarizing. Yet Christians can take a lesson in caring about the people we might be persuading and making sure they know we care about them. Now, the difference between preaching and advertising should be simple- we are offering a free gift— no catch, no gimmick, and no need for credit card numbers. The gift is free for the taking and free for the rejecting. We just need to be ok with the rejecting as long as we represent Christ to our utmost ability.

re: #6 - Preachers, Politicians, and Persuasion

Posted by Marian Tong on Oct. 22, 2007 at 21:04

I guess whether or not PowerPoint is effective is depending on the preacher’s style. Personally it is not my style, and I don’t think I’ll use that very often unless I want to illustrate some findings where it will help the congregations to understand about the settings and backgrounds. It’ll actually confuse me more because I can’t multi-task myself. If I’m not familiar with the computer I won’t even risk giving a try.

My experiences in two different churches taught me two things: one church said the PowerPoint background should be as static as possible because it’ll take away people’s attentions when it is too graphical. One church uses insightful backgrounds and beautiful pictures as backdrops of each slides and you’ll find exciting to see them. I found both practices interesting – because it does distract me somehow when I focused on the pictures and lost the lines, so the ways of using static background does really help me to keep focus on the meaning of the words in worship songs. However, some pictures do draw me into deep thinking and I become more touched by the worship, because something on the PowerPoint background reminds me of God’s grace on my life. So I believe that it really depends on situation and the population – if there are lots of elderly I may not use this approach, while if I have a full house of kids and youths I may try to use it.

re: #6 - Preachers, Politicians, and Persuasion

Posted by Marian Tong on Oct. 22, 2007 at 21:03

Some pastors sometimes joked that after they retired, they could be good salesmen, because they are now selling something that people aren’t able to "see". (Sounds arrogant sometimes to me :>) I don’t deny that tactics because sometimes people really don’t know the salvation are both "beneficial" in the current life and the eternal life, so preachers really have to sell it.

I’m actually de-sensitized by the promotional strategies for a few agencies where they presented images about kids who are doing much poor than us and ask for donations. Not that I don’t feel mercy about these poor kids (I worked with these places before!), but I guess it’s better to show how the money benefits them in their grown and well-being. I’m glad that their marketing strategies are changing because it presents hopes to the donors – which is less manipulative.

Seeing preaching with marketing and advertising terms do have problems – because that implies the preacher has a quota or goal to move people towards his plan. It can be viewed both positively and negatively, but if the message fails to present hopes, it can be as manipulative as secular marketing practices.

I love to watch politician speeches – they do have different styles, yet they all convey the same message: "I promised you’ll have a better future than now if you elect me". I don’t reject these messages here, because they still install hopes to the audiences – it’s just that when people match the practice applications later on they find that the politicians haven’t keep their promises. But I believe that if the preachers preach the messages of hopes, with solutions to address their issues and problems, they’ll find the promises to be true one day down the road.

re: #6 - Preachers, Politicians, and Persuasion

Posted by Thomas Calamunce on Oct. 19, 2007 at 12:06

In some ways our preaching is less like sales since the Gospel is not something that will immediately seem attractive. I would compare it more to a doctor trying to get the patient to understand that something needs to be fixed in their life; that without the correct prescription the problem will just increase and eventually lead to death. In that light I think that it is okay to try to persuade as it is in the best interest of the listener. Is there still a choice? Of course, a doctor cannot make you lose weight or eat less salt to lower your blood pressure. Still it is the responsibility of the doctor as it is the preacher, under the supervision of the Holy Spirit, to implore the listener towards a change in their life.

re: #6 - Preachers, Politicians, and Persuasion

Posted by Mike Keigley on Oct. 15, 2007 at 15:50

I think that it is naive to think that when we preach we do not in some way sway people with our opinions or our position. Political relationships in any community are inevitable. However our goal differs from a politician. A politician seeks to persuade people to vote based on their agenda, a preacher seeks not to persuade through wise words but a demonstration of the Spirits power (1 Cor. 2:4-5). This may be a fine line but something that all preachers must keep at the forefront of their minds. Whose agenda am I trying to advance, my own or Gods.

re: #6 - Preachers, Politicians, and Persuasion

Posted by Tom Reynolds on Oct. 03, 2007 at 23:10

Hopefully not much. Unlike your examples in the textbook, too often politicians rely on gimmicks rather than the big idea. As preachers we are called to preach God’s big idea in an engaging manner but it is still God’s big idea. Often God called his prophets to preach a message that would more likely result in their death than re-election. I work in sales and the ‘best’ sales people are those I wouldn’t trust as far as I could throw them. Salesmen tell people what they want to hear in order to make the sale, the truth be damned. Preachers tell people what God wants them to hear even if the truth be damnation. As Chris notes below, it is ultimately Holy Spirit who gives the sermon power rather than the method or manner of the preacher.

re: #6 - Preachers, Politicians, and Persuasion

Posted by Tim Durksen on Mar. 06, 2007 at 16:01

I think we are usually as preachers trying to "sell" our product to a marker, the Christians. We want to make sure the packaging and the delivery is appropriate to make people understand that they need what we are speaking from the front.
Obviously we try to show the benefits of what we talk about, we also show the negative aspect of what will happen if they don’t heed our warnings.
I think a lot of what we do is persuasion, but hopefully in a good way. We attempt with each sermon to repackage and give away a product that will enrich, change, etc their lives.

re: #6 - Preachers, Politicians, and Persuasion

Posted by Chris Synesael on Feb. 07, 2007 at 14:47

i like this question. my initial reaction was to play defense..to hide behind the mask of the ‘divine work’. maintaining that there is a differance between me being persuasive and a politician being persuasive.

then i had to preach about sex to a group of teenagers…and i found myself asking the question, ‘how can i persuade them of this truth?’ and i realized that it is our job as preachers to persuade. we are limited (however, in some ways it is actually freedom) to what we are to be persuasive of based on the text we are looking at.

but i think i am more aware now of a preachers duty to be persuasive. the Holy Spirit does the work, but he can do it through me and my persuasive words.