Do Our Messages Matter?

Long ago I heard two bits of advice on messages in youth ministry.  One is that “students don’t care what you know until they know that you care”. There is an element of truth to this.  Yet history shows us great itinerant preachers who led revivals without relationships.  This would suggest that we can communicate that we care without personally knowing each individual that we are speaking to.  A passionate message that conveys a genuine concern for the souls of people can communicate a genuine care for people.  Yes, I do agree that students in our ministries are far more attentive to our message if we take the time to get to know them and if they know that we love them and care about them deeply.  But history is broader than that pithy statement.  People do care what we communicate even if we don’t know them personally. If the truth of God hits them in the face, they care and they listen. The second bit of advice was not to spend much time crafting clever messages because that is not what we will be remembered by.  I didn’t really believe this one. I really felt it was important to captivate students by my communication, so I spent a good bit of time developing messages.  Guess what students said when I left my first church after ten years?  They thanked me for the challenging messages I delivered each week.  I was shocked by that!  All the youth ministry training people said that our message did not matter.  What mattered was our love of the students. Now, I don’t think for a minute that it was not important to care deeply for the students. But my messages did matter.  Students could remember things that I had taught them. I know because they recited things back to me when I was leaving!

So I ran across this article:

The article suggests that our messages don’t really matter. I agreed with the importance of relationships, but really did not resonate with much of the article.  It suggests that people are not transformed by a sermon. Honestly, I don’t think that people are transformed by the words of men and women… but God’s word transforms lives.  So, if we are preaching, teaching, or proclaiming God’s word, we should expect transformation. I know a lot of people who came to faith because of a message they heard.  It was always a gospel message. The article also suggests that time spent crafting our messages is time wasted.  I’d disagree but agree on one level.  If we spend our time making our messages cool and figuring out the most clever illustrations, we are wasting time.  Yet if we are working out what God’s word really says and figuring out how to convey that to students, we are not wasting any time. God will speak through us if we are speaking from His word!