Preacher's Block

This preaching tip was shared by Preacher’s Block co-founder, Hunter Bethea. If you’re interested in joining the most focused preachers in the world, sign up here.

Have you heard this story before: An old fish swam up to two young fish and says, “How’s the water today, boys?” The young fish scoff as they swim away. One turns to the other and says, “What the heck is water?”

Our people have been shaped and formed by many different forces around them. As John Mark Comer identifies in his book Practicing the Way, people are shaped by the stories they believe, their habits, their relationships, and their environment. It’s helpful if we’re able to identify ways that people may have been mis-formed out of the image of Jesus in our sermons before sharing how Jesus invites them to be re-formed.

One example: Today in my sermon, I mentioned that people might want to practice simplicity to become away of the opportunities God has given them to do as Jesus does. I could have left it at that but I wanted to help people identify the ways their lives have become “un-simple”: busy calendars, homes filled with stuff, poor financial management, unprocessed emotional wounds, the need to fit in, etc. My hope was that someone would say, “Wow, yeah, my life has become un-simple because of ____. I need to surrender that to Jesus.” But sometimes, the only way we can do that is by teaching fish what water is.