Preaching to Youth for Transformation
A sermon changed my life. The preacher began, ‘Why pray when God knows what we’re going to ask?’ He had me hooked with the first line. But then he carefully demonstrated that I had a problem with how I had been thinking about God, that I was not the person I thought I was, and that the Christian life does not function in the way I had imagined. And that change of mind began to change my life.
Our desire is to see young people changed by the power of God, and God has given us preaching—the proclamation of His very word to our young people—as a change agent. But even though our preaching is often successful at changing minds, it often seems to fall flat on hearts and to be ineffective at changing lives. Is there a way that we can understand the process of transformation—how people change—and then let that influence our preaching?
In The Transforming Moment, the late Princeton educationalist James Loder assesses the human dynamic of transformation, suggesting that it is a five-step process. Furthermore, he believes it to be the process the Holy Spirit tends to use to enable change. Remembering that the wind of the Spirit still blows where it will, we can let Loder’s insights about transformation shape the writing of our sermons and youth talks.
Conflict-in-Context
Loder suggests that the impetus for the transformation process begins with a ‘conflict-in-context’. Human beings long for ‘coherence’. Whenever we face something that does not cohere with our present understanding, it unsettles us.
The preaching of scripture initiates a conflict-in-context because there is always a difference between the horizon of God in the text and the horizon of the hearer. When made to face this difference, the hearer undergoes an unsettling experience of incoherence.
When preparing a sermon, we should ask, “What is the conflict which this passage sets up for the hearer?” The best place to introduce this conflict and unsettle the listener is at the beginning of the sermon.
Interlude for Scanning
When humans are faced with incoherence, they search for a solution to bring them back to coherence. Loder calls this second stage in the transformation process ‘interlude for scanning’. In general, our teens are experimenting intellectually and emotionally, scanning other viewpoints and worldviews for answers as their worlds get bigger. So when hearing a sermon, they ask, “How do other worldviews answer this conflict? Do any of them make better sense?”
In preaching, we can facilitate scanning by considering the answers from other worldviews and then ultimately from the text. When we respectfully examine and then reveal the fault lines in the answers that other worldviews give, we are equipping our teens to engage with the world.
We can help our teens ‘scan’ the text for the answer by asking, “How does God respond to this divine-human conflict?”
Insight Felt with Intuitive Force
When the conflict-in-context is answered, Loder calls this ‘insight felt with intuitive force’ (the third stage). This is the ‘aha’ moment. The conflict that came with such unease at the start is now resolved constructively, like pieces slotting into place. It’s like that feeling you get in Tetris when the pieces slot together and a complete line is formed.
During that sermon which changed my life, I had had such an insight: the preacher helped me to understand the sovereignty of God as a fatherly attribute. I realised that God is not a divine Santa Claus, to whom we bring our spiritual shopping lists, but a loving father, to whom we bring our hearts’ deepest concerns. This insight not only resolved the conflict the preacher initiated about prayer but also proved to be a powerful corrective to my thinking about God more generally.
Release and Repatterning
Because the solution comes with force, what follows is a release of ‘energy’. This release of energy enables transformation to take place. Loder calls this set of movements ‘release and repatterning’. The energy released is directed into working out how the solution ‘fits’—how it is to reorient the hearer’s life.
In a sermon, once we have delivered the solution in the text and thereby resolved the incoherence, new questions of coherence can be raised: How does this new insight affect related aspects of life and faith? How should the rest of my life look different because of this?
In my personal example, the preacher helped me see how viewing God’s sovereignty as a fatherly trait should bring about a change in how I view myself in prayer: I come to Him not as a needy annoyance but as a beloved child. In other words, a new insight about God led me to new, transformative insights about myself.
Interpretation and Verification
Beyond the moment of transformation, there is still need for ongoing ‘interpretation and verification’: Does this solution make sense of life? Are there aspects of it that still need to be tested? The sermon cannot shoulder the whole of this step, but the preacher can at least help students begin it.
In preaching, we often call this step ‘application.’ But preaching for transformation should offer something deeper than mere practical implications of a text. Rather, application should unfold as the final step in the five-part drama that began with the conflict initiated by the text at the start of the sermon (step one), fueled by the energy that comes from the release of the resolution (steps three and four). In this step, we ask, “If this is true, then what else needs to be adapted in my thinking and living?” Much of this step may need to be left for follow-up groups or further discussion—and that’s good. We haven’t given our teens a complete answer that shuts down the need for dialogue.
I have found that the most significant step to emphasize in my preaching is the first one: raising the opening conflict. If I can unsettle my hearers in a way that digs beneath their skin, then they are motivated to listen and are more ready to perceive their need for God as the answer to the incoherence they are presently feeling. Some of the latter steps will be beyond the control of the preacher and the scope of the sermon and may take place in later reflections, both personal and corporate. Even so, I have found Loder’s model to be helpful for understanding the process of change and how it might be initiated through preaching.
As I’ve been sharing, I have experienced change initiated through a sermon: ‘Why should we bother praying if God already knows what we’re going to say?’ the preacher asked, introducing an unsettling conflict-in-context. The question sent me into a tailspin which involved scanning desperately for possible answers. The preacher led me to explore whether prayer was pointless or whether God was unaware of the future, leaving room in the sermon for moments of doubt and questioning. He then led me to scan the text, which revealed the heart of the relational Father who longs for me to pour out my heart before Him in prayer. This insight came to me with such force and energy that it involved repatterning much of my Christian life. As I discussed it with friends, I was challenged to move from a mechanistic view of God, and therefore mechanistic way of life, into a way of life in which I walked with God my father through every circumstance.
Transformation is an important process for teenagers to go through as it helps them to make their faith their own, rather than presuming on what they have grown up holding to. It also means we, as preachers, have the potential to be vessels for God’s work of transformation into the likeness of Jesus. God changes lives through the preaching of His Word!