Why Should They Listen to Me?
Tim Timmons
To stand and drone out a sermon in a kind of articulate snoring to people who are somewhat between awake and asleep must be wretched work.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
The apostle Paul wrote, "How can people hear without someone preaching to them?" Tim Timmons wonders, "How do we make them even want to hear?"
No preacher wants to preach to empty pews or vacant stares.
In our day, we cannot assume the sermon will fall upon willing ears. In some circles, sermon is a dirty word. "Don't preach to me!" is practically the motto of a generation. Gone are the days when the great sermons were broadly read and discussed. Today, preachers must capture the ears of the crowd if they will be heard at all among the cacophony of compact discs and Coke commercials.
Timmons, immersed in the life of Irvine, California — the capital of Southern California chic — has spied out the unpromising land of secular life. At South Coast Community Church, swirling, shifting, unsettled secularity surrounds him. He knows the shuttle buses run to Disneyland and Newport Beach rather than his church. So why would anyone come to hear his preaching?
Timmons has found a method. And people do flock to hear him preach — people who could be polishing their convertibles or jogging under graceful palms or enhancing their year-round tans.
This first chapter tackles a question prior to any convincing the preacher might accomplish: "Why should they listen to me?"
A fellow attended a special evening service at the church but sat near the door. After the speaker had droned on for some forty minutes, the fellow got up and left. On the way out, he met a friend coming in. The man asked, "Am I very late, Zeke? What's he talking about?"
"Don't know. He ain't said yet!"
In every speaking ...
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