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 and getting these tips sent to your inbox every week, sign up here.
As we preach, it can be hard to “meet people where they’re at” when we’ve got people in our church who can count the number sermons they’ve heard on one hand sitting one row behind those who were alive when Paul was still writing letters.
If we try to tailor our sermons to first-time guests (or to sixth graders, as I’ve often heard encouraged), we can get into a pattern of continuously feeding our parishioners a menu of milk when they’re ordering steaks. But if we tailor our sermons to our most regular attenders, we risk feeding T-bones to teethers.
What if—rather than thinking about what age and spiritual maturity to tailor our message to—we start including portions for everyone along the spiritual spectrum of maturity?
Let’s try a quick example:
In John 3, Jesus talks about how He will be lifted up “just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness.” For someone new to the Bible, they won’t know that reference, so you may want to spend 30 seconds explaining that.
But Jesus also tells Nicodemus about how we must be born again—and then in the next section, we see Jesus and John baptizing. For the seasoned saints in your church, you could spend 30 seconds helping them make the connection that Jesus is talking metaphorically about being “born again” and then is embodying that when He pulls people up out of the water (a connection that may never have made in John 3).
Do you have something for seasoned saints in your sermon? Do you have something for toddling teethings? Make sure you have something for everyone in your congregation.