{"id":16719,"date":"2019-06-22T09:39:50","date_gmt":"2019-06-22T14:39:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/mercynotsacrifice\/?p=16719"},"modified":"2019-06-22T09:39:50","modified_gmt":"2019-06-22T14:39:50","slug":"sugary-preaching-leads-to-truth-decay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mercynotsacrifice\/2019\/06\/22\/sugary-preaching-leads-to-truth-decay\/","title":{"rendered":"“Sugary Preaching Leads to Truth Decay”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Our Virginia annual conference happened in Roanoke this year. As I drove from my parents\u2019 house in Durham, my GPS routed me through some small towns in the Virginia foothills off the beaten path. And I came across a church sign that was very clever and expressed a sentiment that seemed worth pondering. It said, \u201cSugary preaching leads to truth decay.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the favorite passages of conservative evangelicals is 2 Timothy 4:3: \u201cFor the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires.\u201d In their understanding, that\u2019s what progressive Christianity is about: tossing out sound doctrine in order to preach sermons that accommodate the desires of people in the congregation in conformity with the fads of pop culture, LGBTQ identity being understood as the trendiest fad of the day.<\/p>\n

I definitely agree that accommodating our listeners\u2019 confirmation bias is a danger in our preaching. But what\u2019s \u201csugary\u201d or what scratches \u201citching ears\u201d is not as straightforward as it may seem. Furthermore, there\u2019s also a danger in coming up with a negative definition for how we should approach preaching: avoiding any good news that seems too sweet. If you think that bitterness is the measure of truth, then you\u2019re going to create a God who is more bitter than God really is.<\/p>\n

What I was taught in seminary is that the role of Christian preaching is to proclaim the good news of what Jesus has done, continues to do, and promises to do in the world. That\u2019s where the focus of the sermon is supposed to be: the hope that we have in Jesus Christ (not on our goodness or badness!<\/em>). It\u2019s not just supposed to be a motivational speech in which the preacher either criticizes or praises the congregation to cajole them into doing good. If there\u2019s no Jesus-based hope in the sermon, it may be a valid and important speech, but it\u2019s not really a Christian sermon.<\/p>\n

When we talk about difficult truths of our lives in our preaching, we do so with the purpose of helping our listeners get to the hope of Jesus. If we dance around painful realities, it makes our message farcical, so we name what\u2019s hard and even what\u2019s impossible to face and we grasp at whatever hope Jesus seems to bring to that space.<\/p>\n

One major obstacle to receiving the hope of Jesus Christ is when I live in the delusion that I\u2019m perfectly self-sufficient just as I am and don\u2019t need any hope because everything is perfectly fine. So there is a place for calling out sin and breaking up the spiritual dirt of the congregation so that a seed can fall into it and take root.<\/p>\n

But here\u2019s a tricky thing. It can be very easy for churches to get addicted to the \u201csugar\u201d of a \u201chard\u201d word that\u2019s preached against other people<\/em>. One form of spiritual stagnation is when I go to church to experience the catharsis of hearing the preacher rant and rave about other people\u2019s<\/em> sin so that I feel like I\u2019ve paid my dues for my own sin by listening to an angry man yell for half an hour (and thus don\u2019t need to do anything else). There\u2019s more than one kind of \u201csugar.\u201d<\/p>\n

The liberal churches I\u2019ve worshiped in over time actually mostly didn\u2019t do what the conservative churches assume that they do: preaching about an overly gentle, nice Jesus who has zero expectations. Liberal churches often preach \u201chard\u201d words about the social injustice that those conservatives<\/em> are perpetuating. I\u2019ve written some charged up pieces about political issues on this blog and social media, but one thing I try to never do is bash the \u201cother side\u201d from the pulpit because I see that as mostly worthless from a discipleship and evangelism perspective.<\/p>\n

Again though I have to qualify this a little bit. One of the deep, good words that Jesus often preached to socially ostracized people is They\u2019re wrong about you<\/em>. He railed against the religious authorities in Matthew 23 not because judging them was his focus, but as part of saying to the tax collectors and prostitutes, \u201cYou are the ones to whom the kingdom of God belongs.\u201d Of course saying they\u2019re wrong about you is different then saying they\u2019re so terrible; let\u2019s build our religion around judging them together. When Jesus says they\u2019re wrong about you, his focus is saying don\u2019t believe the lies you have internalized because I will give you victory over all of them.<\/p>\n

I did a word study<\/a> one time on the Hebrew word yashua<\/em>, or salvation, that is the basis for Jesus\u2019 name. When I looked throughout the dozens of Old Testament references, it seemed like the connotation of \u201csalvation\u201d in Hebrew is when you\u2019re a battlefield and all is lost until a hero appears on the horizon and wipes out your enemy miraculously. So when we talk about the hope that Jesus brings, we\u2019re talking\u00a0 about the battlefields of our lives where we are getting our asses kicked and how we can expect Jesus to show up and destroy our enemies, whether internal or external \u2014 our own individual sin and complicity in systemic sin, or the people and systems who are actively oppressing us.<\/p>\n

A sermon that\u2019s \u201csugary\u201d is one that disregards the battlefield deliverance that we all need from Jesus. If it\u2019s all about other peoples\u2019 battles, that doesn\u2019t help me. If there is no battle in the sermon, that doesn\u2019t help me either. But we don\u2019t need to proclaim a bitter God to safeguard against a \u201csugary\u201d sermon. The solution to shallow, inorganic sweetness is not bitterness.<\/p>\n

The real gospel has an organic sweetness that doesn\u2019t need any sugar added. It\u2019s 100% spiritual fruit juice instead of spiritual high fructose corn syrup. Just as there are many forms of highly processed junk food with zero nutritional value, there are many ways to preach a sermon that will not inspire Christian discipleship. The goal is to inspire. Not nag. Not flatter. Not shame. But inspire. And we do that by offering the hope that Jesus brings.<\/p>\n

Check out my book How Jesus Saves the World From Us<\/a>!<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our Virginia annual conference happened in Roanoke this year. As I drove from my parents\u2019 house in Durham, my GPS routed me through some small towns in the Virginia foothills off the beaten path. And I came across a church sign that was very clever and expressed a sentiment that seemed worth pondering. It said, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1934,"featured_media":16468,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[169,893,1238,1411,2174,2534],"class_list":["post-16719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-2-timothy-43","tag-evangelical","tag-hope","tag-jesus","tag-preaching","tag-sermon"],"yoast_head":"\n"Sugary Preaching Leads to Truth Decay"<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Our Virginia annual conference happened in Roanoke this year. As I drove from my parents' house in Durham, my GPS routed me through some small towns in\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mercynotsacrifice\/2019\/06\/22\/sugary-preaching-leads-to-truth-decay\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\""Sugary Preaching Leads to Truth Decay"\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Our Virginia annual conference happened in Roanoke this year. As I drove from my parents' house in Durham, my GPS routed me through some small towns in\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mercynotsacrifice\/2019\/06\/22\/sugary-preaching-leads-to-truth-decay\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Mercy Not Sacrifice\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2019-06-22T14:39:50+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/447\/2019\/01\/gavel-on-Bible.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"600\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"333\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Morgan Guyton\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Morgan Guyton\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mercynotsacrifice\/2019\/06\/22\/sugary-preaching-leads-to-truth-decay\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mercynotsacrifice\/2019\/06\/22\/sugary-preaching-leads-to-truth-decay\/\",\"name\":\"\\\"Sugary Preaching Leads to Truth Decay\\\"\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mercynotsacrifice\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2019-06-22T14:39:50+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2019-06-22T14:39:50+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mercynotsacrifice\/#\/schema\/person\/32bff953b247bf1885d0323f969d801d\"},\"description\":\"Our Virginia annual conference happened in Roanoke this year. As I drove from my parents' house in Durham, my GPS routed me through some small towns in\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mercynotsacrifice\/2019\/06\/22\/sugary-preaching-leads-to-truth-decay\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mercynotsacrifice\/2019\/06\/22\/sugary-preaching-leads-to-truth-decay\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mercynotsacrifice\/2019\/06\/22\/sugary-preaching-leads-to-truth-decay\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mercynotsacrifice\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"“Sugary Preaching Leads to Truth Decay”\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mercynotsacrifice\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mercynotsacrifice\/\",\"name\":\"Mercy Not Sacrifice\",\"description\":\"The blog of Morgan Guyton\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mercynotsacrifice\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mercynotsacrifice\/#\/schema\/person\/32bff953b247bf1885d0323f969d801d\",\"name\":\"Morgan Guyton\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mercynotsacrifice\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/ccc7edabc6e70bd443d33eab0f05ce8d?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/ccc7edabc6e70bd443d33eab0f05ce8d?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Morgan Guyton\"},\"description\":\"I\u2019m the director of the NOLA Wesley Foundation, which is the United Methodist campus ministry at Tulane and Loyola University in New Orleans, LA. My first book How Jesus Saves the World from Us: 12 Antidotes To Toxic Christianity was released by Westminister John Knox in 2016.\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mercynotsacrifice\/author\/mguyton\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"\"Sugary Preaching Leads to Truth Decay\"","description":"Our Virginia annual conference happened in Roanoke this year. As I drove from my parents' house in Durham, my GPS routed me through some small towns in","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mercynotsacrifice\/2019\/06\/22\/sugary-preaching-leads-to-truth-decay\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"\"Sugary Preaching Leads to Truth Decay\"","og_description":"Our Virginia annual conference happened in Roanoke this year. As I drove from my parents' house in Durham, my GPS routed me through some small towns in","og_url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mercynotsacrifice\/2019\/06\/22\/sugary-preaching-leads-to-truth-decay\/","og_site_name":"Mercy Not Sacrifice","article_published_time":"2019-06-22T14:39:50+00:00","og_image":[{"width":600,"height":333,"url":"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/447\/2019\/01\/gavel-on-Bible.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Morgan Guyton","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Morgan Guyton","Est. reading time":"5 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mercynotsacrifice\/2019\/06\/22\/sugary-preaching-leads-to-truth-decay\/","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mercynotsacrifice\/2019\/06\/22\/sugary-preaching-leads-to-truth-decay\/","name":"\"Sugary Preaching Leads to Truth Decay\"","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mercynotsacrifice\/#website"},"datePublished":"2019-06-22T14:39:50+00:00","dateModified":"2019-06-22T14:39:50+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mercynotsacrifice\/#\/schema\/person\/32bff953b247bf1885d0323f969d801d"},"description":"Our Virginia annual conference happened in Roanoke this year. As I drove from my parents' house in Durham, my GPS routed me through some small towns in","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mercynotsacrifice\/2019\/06\/22\/sugary-preaching-leads-to-truth-decay\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mercynotsacrifice\/2019\/06\/22\/sugary-preaching-leads-to-truth-decay\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mercynotsacrifice\/2019\/06\/22\/sugary-preaching-leads-to-truth-decay\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mercynotsacrifice\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"“Sugary Preaching Leads to Truth Decay”"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mercynotsacrifice\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mercynotsacrifice\/","name":"Mercy Not Sacrifice","description":"The blog of Morgan Guyton","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mercynotsacrifice\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mercynotsacrifice\/#\/schema\/person\/32bff953b247bf1885d0323f969d801d","name":"Morgan Guyton","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mercynotsacrifice\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/ccc7edabc6e70bd443d33eab0f05ce8d?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/ccc7edabc6e70bd443d33eab0f05ce8d?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Morgan Guyton"},"description":"I\u2019m the director of the NOLA Wesley Foundation, which is the United Methodist campus ministry at Tulane and Loyola University in New Orleans, LA. My first book How Jesus Saves the World from Us: 12 Antidotes To Toxic Christianity was released by Westminister John Knox in 2016.","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mercynotsacrifice\/author\/mguyton\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mercynotsacrifice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mercynotsacrifice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mercynotsacrifice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mercynotsacrifice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1934"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mercynotsacrifice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16719"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mercynotsacrifice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16719\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mercynotsacrifice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mercynotsacrifice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mercynotsacrifice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mercynotsacrifice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}