Every Monday I post one of The Basics. The Basics are simple steps every church can take to grow. They are the same steps that led my church from 87 people in attendance to over 700. These steps have helped my church see hundreds of people saved and baptized in just a few short years. Most of these steps you can take this week without even having a board meeting. These are The Basics.
Over the past few months, I’ve been sharing a few of the basic steps any church can take to see their church begin to grow. While I believe the steps I’ve shared have tremendous potential to impact your church, none of it matters if each Sunday you (pastor) get up and preach a message no one can understand.
If you’re still preaching from the King James Version of the Bible or any other version that takes a Bible scholar to interpret, you should stop it.
What does it matter how literal or accurate your translation is if no one can understand what you’re talking about?
Let me tell you a secret, the people in your community aren’t struggling with the differentiation between the Hebrew and Greek. They’re struggling with loving their spouse, their children, and their neighbors as themselves.
They’re not debating between the 1611 and 1769 versions of the King James Bible. They’re debating between going to church with their family or going hunting with their buddies.
Every time you get up on stage and preach a message only you and a few of your pastor friends can understand you’re wasting your breath.
I apologize if this is coming off as harsh, but I get aggravated. For years the church has had the greatest message in the world, and it communicates it in a way that no one wants to hear.
Lives are at stake, and we’re too caught up in our traditions to notice.
So, let me offer a solution.
- Preach from a version of the Bible a middle school student could understand. There are a lot of good ones out there: New Living Translation, New International Version, and the English Standard Version just to name a few.
- Preach in a way that your audience can take one thing from the message each week and apply it to their lives. If you can’t pick out one thing from your message they can use, scrap the message and start over.
- Preach on the topics every day people are dealing with such as marriage, family, money management, depression, anxiety, hope, discipline, etc.
- Preach the Gospel. We were all dead in our sins, and God sent a Savior. He lived a perfect life, was crucified for our sins, and rose again three days later so we might have life and life more abundant.
We have been given the greatest message in the world in a time when the world needs the message the greatest. Let’s make the most of it.
Which King James Version is your favorite? Does the Textus Receptus sound like an iPhone app to you?
