April 28, 2009: Against Cheap Manipulation In Sermons

This one is for my fellow preachers: Don't be a manipulative jerk in the pulpit. I suppose a stronger word than "jerk" could be applied to those who do the things I condemn below, but as a man of the cloth myself I will tame my tongue as I call to account some colleagues who irritate the living snot out of me.

A pastor I'll call "Will Bibles" recently (according to a Christian journal) "challenged members of the congregation to raise their hands if they were willing to surrender their possessions and lifestyles fully to God and actually decide to use their resources to serve the poor and honor God...Then Will said he wanted to have a word with all the folks who did not raise their hands: 'I hope you have a terrible afternoon. And then I hope you have a terrible evening. I hope the Holy Spirit keeps after you, and you have to keep thinking this one through until you're able to raise your hand as well.'"

What a cheap shot. First of all, Will doesn't have the moral authority to summon heaven's rebuke of the greedy. (I read one of his books where he wrote - guiltlessly - of tooling around in a sports car that costs more than double my annual salary, and about all the friends he made at his sailboat club. Yes, his sailboat club.)

Second, it is so easy to turn the "I-pray-you-have-a-bad-afternoon" mantra against anyone - Will included - who falls afoul of the conviction you're harping on at the moment. For example, at my former church I hosted an organizational event for the Hike For Life, and the representative from Will's church explained that she couldn't make any announcements there because the church had a policy against public pro-life statements which might offend pro-choice seekers. (Grrrr. They have no policy of refusing to condemn racism just because that might offend seekers from the Klu Klux Klan.) A man of my convictions might want to thunder from the pulpit, "RAISE YOUR HAND if you are willing to take a public, uncompromising stand against the slaughter of the innocents," and, if Will were present and did not raise his hand, stare him straight in the eye and say, "I'll keep praying that you be miserable, miserable, until you repent." But that would be wrong. It is never right to try to influence behavior by calling for a show of hands and then browbeating those who keep their hands down.

A preacher I listen to on the radio was troubled that some in his congregation did not applaud one of his rhetorical flourishes, and at the conclusion of his message he actually prayed for all those who did not clap. I'm not kidding. I had noticed in the preceding months that he was developing the bad habit of crafting emotionally laden crescendo lines, slowly biting off the words of paper-thin monstrosities like "I...Will Not...Bow...To Satan...even...If...He...CAN raise the dead!" and then stopping to wait for the applause. Sometimes he'd provoke up to five ovations in 20 minutes, and it always made me groan. I suppose that if he thought that non-applauders needed prayer, then eye-rollers like me needed exorcisms! But I maintain he was just being manipulative and should cut it out.

One pulpit manipulation trick is to treat your audience like ventriloquist dolls. At both a Promise Keepers convention and at a mega-church service I was instructed to "Turn to the person next to you and say" something really inane. I did it, like a lemming, but if it happens again I'm not going to bother. That kind of thing needs to be discouraged.

Some manipulations have heart-breaking effects. Years ago I talked with a sweet-spirited woman, a school teacher in her early 50s, who had recently experienced the sorrow of losing her husband-to-be to a sudden heart attack just before their wedding. In the course of our conversation she mentioned that she had gone to a large church where a multi-part "invitation" was given. If you were willing to give your heart to Jesus you were supposed to stand. Then if were already a Christian you should stand too. Then if you weren't in either of those categories but were "on the way" as a seeker and willing to respond to God's call, you should stand as well. She was left as the only person sitting surrounded by a sea of the standing, and she felt conspicuous and awful and never wanted to go back. I apologized to her on behalf of my Christian brothers. (Is this how we call people to Christ - through peer pressure and social embarrassment? For shame.) Thankfully she read and responded well to a copy of C. S. Lewis' A Grief Observed that I gave her.

Say no to homiletic pressure tactics. Gospel truth conveyed with conviction, reverence, earnestness and love has a power all its own and needs no manipulative gimmick to support it. You cannot straighten a soul by twisting an arm.