What do you expect to happen when you preach?

Are you preaching for a decision? Or, are you preaching to fill the time until the cafeteria opens down the street?

Every Sunday pastors collectively use millions of hours of valuable time that is entrusted to them by their parishioners. If you are going to take it, you’d best use it well. In my opinion, that means preaching for a decision.

Preaching for a decision can mean many things. You could be preaching for conversions. Or you might be preaching to produce repentance of sin. Or you might be preaching to evoke worship, or to produce generosity, or to encourage one of many proper behaviors or good habits. But whatever you do, preach to produce a result. Otherwise, don’t waste our time.

If you were preaching to 20 people. Is it conceivable that you might preach well enough that the Holy Spirit might use your message to produce a decision by 1 person? Of course! That would be a 5% response.

If 5% of the people you preached to last Sunday responded publicly to your message, how many people would respond? If you were seeking a public response—let’s say to a sermon offering salvation—and 5% of your congregation responded would you be able to handle, process, and counsel the respondents?

No?

I didn’t think so.

So let me ask you this: if you aren’t willing to strategize to handle response by 5% of your congregation, and if you don’t preach for response, why should God give you a response?

I’m not a pastor. But when I was, on occasion we’d have a response from roughly 5% of our attendance when I’d give an invitation. We had a method for receiving those responses, and counseling and processing them. However, I notice today that pastors often don’t have any mechanism in place to receive respondents.

It’s really not that hard. But you have to think about what happens if a certain number of people wanted to respond. How would you receive them?  Who would talk with them? What would they say to them? Where would that conversation take place? How would you make the invitation and their reception effective and avoid creating a fearful or weird experience?

If you want people to respond when you preach, you need to preach a sharp pointed message designed to evoke response. Then, you need to expect a response. If it’s a public response, you need to know what you and everyone else on your team is to do when the response comes.

I’m inclined to think that the blessing of conversions, recommitments, and the surrender of sin might most often come in churches where the leaders have designed a reliable system for receiving and helping those who respond.

What do you think?