This is a post about the Christian virtue of patience. More specifically, about its tragic disappearance from our world.

Bear with me, though, because we’re going to take a bit of a circuitous route to get to the heart of the matter. I guess you could say that you’ll need a little patience to plow through this article about it. I promise I’ll get there, though, so just trust me for minute.

Let’s go back in time to March 2006. That was the month and year that I joined Facebook. At the time, it wasn’t technically open to the general public. It was restricted to college students and other people who were affiliated with a college or university.

I happened to have an alumni email address that was connected to Texas A&M University, so I was able to join it several months before it became open to everyone. I was a college pastor in 2006, so Facebook was a nice way for me to connect with students and let them know what was going on at our church.

The “news feed” feature launched a few months after I joined, and I remember it being very controversial. All of a sudden, everyone worried that their “private” status updates would be seen by all of their friends. According to Google, Facebook had somewhere around 12 million users at the end of 2006, compared to more than 3 billion users today. That’s important, because most people saw Facebook as a way to talk to their friends specifically. It wasn’t a platform for broadcasting your photos and ideas to the entire world.

Very quickly, though, the new format began to lend itself to a few things that the old format didn’t really accommodate: platform-building, public communication, and - most relevant to the topic of patience - group discussions.

Once people figured out that their posts were all public, they figured they might as well use Facebook to talk to their friends about politics, religion, philosophy, or just who had the best hamburgers in town.

And here’s where I think the story becomes fascinating: During the first few years after the news feed feature was introduced, people actually had real conversations with one another. For example, one of my old seminary professors often used Facebook to ask provocative and interesting theological questions. Sometimes he would even make a statement that he knew would generate some controversy, and he’d let the conversation roll with only minimal moderation on his part. With very few exceptions, the conversations were normally civil and thoughtful. I had the same experience with my own posts, and I remember “hosting” several biblical and theological conversations that never degenerated into the sort of vitriol or foolishness that is ubiquitous on social media today.

People disagreed, but they were generally respectful. In part, that was because you were still mostly talking to friends, people who knew you “IRL,” as the kids say.

At some point, though, I started to notice that the conversations got more difficult. It felt like in every comment thread, somebody would arrive whose sole purpose was to wreak havoc. In reality, I think their purpose was actually to shut down the conversation because they felt that their own perspective was the only perspective worth considering. Therefore, they thought it was foolish to even converse with people about it. In short, the goal was to win quickly and silence anyone who disagreed, rather than engaging in a good faith discussion.

On the one hand, that approach has its benefits for the person who employs it. Most people don’t like being participating in open conflicts online, especially when they feel personal rather than philosophical. Consequently, the loudest and most strident voices usually “win,” in the sense that everyone else stops talking. It’s like being at a party with a loudmouth who expresses his opinions so strongly that nobody really wants to argue with him. Later, he’s likely to tell other people that he raised some really good points and nobody could come up with reasons why he was wrong. In reality, the problem is really that nobody wants to argue with a fool. It’s a stressful waste of time.

In other words, people aren’t persuaded. They simply don’t care enough to fight with a person who can’t be convinced of anything.

Over time, the pot-stirrers multiplied once they realized that they could effectively squish any conversations that made them feel uncomfortable simply by acting the fool. Then the pot-stirrers became influencers. They realized they could actually build entire platforms, and huge ones at that, by straw-manning, ridiculing, and insulting anybody whose views deviated from their own. In the end, the point for such people is not whether their arguments have any merit, but whether they generate engagement. They’re less concerned about being accurate than they are about being important. Social media offers no incentive for people to be fair or truthful when talking about complex issues. It offers a lot of incentives for people to be noticed, and quickly.

And this is where we come back around to the issue of patience. It takes a lot of time and patience to accurately understand a position you don’t agree with. In the past, people used to actually read entire books written by those who had opposing viewpoints. And if they couldn’t read a book, they would at least listen for 5-10 minutes.

My dad, who was a quite opinionated person himself, used to tell my brothers and me, “If you’re going to argue with somebody, make sure you argue with the best version of their belief system. Understand their strongest arguments before you attack their weakest ones. And aim to accurately represent their perspective before responding to it.” He was warning us against the practice of caricaturing somebody else’s perspective based on a straw man that they don’t even agree with. In order to understand what someone else is saying, you have to actually listen and engage with what they’re saying, and you might have to talk to them for a while. This isn’t conversational weakness; it’s actually Conversation 101.

If it takes patience to understand another person’s viewpoint, it takes even more patience to develop well-reasoned arguments for or against it. If persuasion is your goal, you’ll never accomplish it by scrolling through TikToks and Reels and posting drive-by comments after 15 seconds of engagement. Most of us know that, but in practice we lack the patience to really sit and think about what another person is saying and why it might be correct or incorrect. And therefore, we also lack the patience it takes to present our viewpoint faithfully and thoughtfully.

Now up to this point, everything I’ve said might sound like just another version of “old man complains about the Internet.” But I think there’s something even worse happening behind all of the impatience we see manifested online.

I think we also lack the patience to believe that other people are even capable of change. If somebody doesn’t come around to our point of view within 5-10 seconds (or however long a TikTok video is), we give up. That might not have devastating consequences when we’re on TikTok, but it’s tragic in real life.

If you’ve spent any time in the Scriptures, you’ve noticed that patience is one of God’s attributes. When He appears to Moses in Exodus 34:6, He describes Himself as being “slow to anger,” or “long-suffering.” Peter tells us that God is patient, not wanting anyone to perish but all to come to repentance (2 Peter 3:9). That’s why God is willing to wait for a day or for 1,000 years if it allows more people the time they need to believe in Him.

Think about that for a moment. When was the last time you were willing to wait even a few hours, or a few days, for somebody to change their mind or their behavior? How do you feel when someone doesn’t immediately agree with you, but seems to resist what you’re saying? I think we’ve been conditioned to respond with anger and impatience, or even worse, apathy and disconnection.

This sort of attitude has permeated all areas of our society. As a pastor, I see it in the way that some people give up on their churches and relationships at the first signs of trouble or disagreement. To be clear, there are valid reasons to leave a church , or to move on from a friendship. I’ve been there myself. But I’ve also seen people give up on a person — or an entire community — after one or two short conversations about relatively minor disagreements, simply because they couldn’t immediately make the other person see things their way.

I’ve also seen the flip side of those conversations, where a pastor or a leader becomes inordinately frustrated and intractable when somebody disagrees or expresses concerns. The pastor or leader usually doesn’t leave the church, of course. Instead, they raise their voice, or shut down conversations by making simple generalizations designed to completely invalidate the other person’s perspective. “You’re saying that because you don’t trust God.” “This is just Satan talking to you.” And so on. While it might be true that the other person doesn’t trust God, or that Satan is at work (I do believe in the devil), it might also be true that the leader doesn’t have all the information, and he or she doesn’t have the patience to listen and respond graciously.

I’ve seen it in relationships between parents and children. Parents often panic when their young adult children begin to express views they don’t agree with. It’s understandable, of course, to want to fix the issue as soon as possible. But what if you can’t? What if all you can do is pray and wait? That’s extremely tough to do, which is why some parents respond by screaming, making threats, or even cutting a child off. And young adult children often do the same: Rather than take on the hard work of renegotiating their relationship with their parents, they simply give up.

Any number of articles and studies tell us that family estrangement is on the rise. Without denying that sometimes it might be healthy to limit or cut off contact with a family member (at least for a season), I can’t help but wonder if our cultural tendency toward impatience plays into the issue. We’ve been convinced that the best way to handle somebody we don’t agree with is to just keep scrolling. Move on. Cut them off. That way we don’t need to deal with it anymore. The “it” in this case being another person, made in the image of God.

I can’t help but think, though, about the many instances in Scripture of God’s almost unbelievable patience. He was patient with the Canaanites for 400 years, while they worshiped idols and sacrificed their own children. He was patient with the Israelites for even longer, hundreds and hundreds of years, before they went into exile. Jesus’s parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15 tells the story of an unbelievably patient Father, who waits with a broken but hopeful heart for the return of His younger son. The Father, who is a picture of God, doesn’t scold, destroy, or cut off His son. He just waits, always keeping one eye on the horizon, for the wayward son to return. He actively waits, of course, but He apparently never gives up. His patience is endless, even as His heart is broken.

I think some of us read a passage like Luke 15 and we wonder if God’s patience is too soft. Does patience with other people mean that we condone or endorse their sin, or their error? Of course it doesn’t. God never condones evil and sin. But He is very patient with sinners. I think some of us secretly think the Father should’ve given that boy a good lecture and taken away his supper for the next 30 years or so. The Pharisees felt the same way, in fact.

It’s easy to forget, by the way, that if anyone has the right to be impatient, it’s God. His perspective is perfect, after all. Mine is limited. He already understands perfectly what’s true and what’s false. He knows exactly what we’re thinking, and exactly where we’ve gone wrong at any given moment. He’s omniscient. We really, really aren’t.

Which makes me think, “If the omniscient, all-powerful, and perfectly holy God is patient and willing to wait, and wait, and wait for the repentance of His people, why am I always in such a hurry for people to believe and to do whatever I want them to?”

Why do we feel the need to coerce, threaten, or abandon people, rather than to pray, persuade, and stick beside them? Why is it so hard for me to wait on God to change another person’s heart, rather than rushing ahead to try and do the job for Him?

Ultimately, I think we’re deeply uncomfortable with the reality that we simply can’t control anybody else. And we hate waiting when there are no guarantees that God will do what we want Him to do. He’s patient with us, but we’re rarely patient with Him.

I do wonder, though, what it would look like if those who follow Jesus practiced patience. If the fruit of the Spirit is patience, perhaps we could demonstrate with our lives that God’s power is real, not with the sort of power that smashes our enemies into silence, but with the sort of supernatural patience that leads to self-control. Patience actually requires power, and true power comes from God.

Patience means we have to pray a lot, and hold our tongues when we’d rather speak. That’s really hard to do.

But few things are more countercultural than that. In a world where patience is in terribly short supply, we worship an infinitely patient God.

I still remember the words of an old song I learned as a kid, and that I taught my own kids:

“Have patience, have patience, Don’t be in such a hurry. When you get impatient, you only start to worry. Remember, remember, God is patient too. And think of all the times when others have to wait for you.”

I’d only change one line if I rewrote this. It’s the last one. I think it should say, “Think of all the times when God’s been patient with you too.”

His patience results in our salvation. Our patience reflects Him to a broken, impatient, and hurried world. The cultural death of patience is tragic, but the good news is that patience isn’t actually dead. God has an infinite supply. And He offers it freely to people like you and me, who need it so badly and lack it so terribly.

I have always had a strong sense of justice.

I didn’t cultivate it intentionally, but it’s always been there. When people do the right thing, I want them to be rewarded. When they hurt other people, or violate the “rules,” I want them to be punished. Or at least reeducated.

On the one hand, I know that my longing for justice reflects the heart of God. On the other hand, I often struggle with extending grace to people. In other words, it’s easy for me to assume the worst of others when they don’t conform to my own standards for how they should act.

Last weekend, my wife and I were traveling home from vacation. If you’ve flown very much in the past few years, you know that delays and cancellations have become routine. Nearly every flight is delayed by at least a few minutes, if not a few hours.

Our flight home ended up delayed by nearly 16 hours. We were scheduled to depart from Seattle at 1:55 PM on a Saturday. After a series of delays due to mechanical problems, air traffic control, and staff timeouts, we finally left Seattle at 5:30 AM on Sunday.

It was the first time we’d ever spent the night in an airport. By the time we landed in Chicago on Sunday (around 11:30), we were exhausted and dirty and really, really ready to be home.

My injustice meter was reading high numbers, and I found myself internally looking for someone to punish for all of this. I’m not saying I’m proud of that feeling, but there it is.

The problem, of course, is that giant corporations like airlines tend to be relatively impervious to punishment. If sternly worded emails or complaints could change them, they’d have changed already.

Since I couldn’t effectively punish the airline, or the Chicago airport, I was carrying around this unmet need to make the world right again.

When we landed in Chicago and pulled up to the gate, everyone on the plane was anxiously waiting for that little chime that lets the passengers know they can stand up and gather their belongings to exit the aircraft. Everyone was tired, everyone was ready to get home.

When the chime sounded, a toddler yelled, “YAY!” “Yay is correct,” I said, and his mother laughed.

Then, another passenger shoved his way past me. He pushed his way past everyone else, to stand at the very front of the airplane. He wanted to exit first. He didn’t say, “Excuse me.” He didn’t even apologize for shoving me out of the way in his apparently mad frenzy to leave the plane 13 seconds before everyone else.

“Bro,” I quietly whispered. “Bro.” (Not eloquent, but I’d been without sleep for a long time at this point.”

Suddenly my quest for justice found a target. How dare he? HOW. DARE. HE.

At first, I told myself that he might have had a close connection to make. But it became apparent that he didn’t when I spotted him standing at the baggage claim with everyone else, waiting to pick up his luggage. Shoving to the front didn’t even save him any time. He apparently just liked to be first. Like Diotrophes (3 John 9).

I complained to my wife. I stewed. I had an internal vision of confronting him, just ask him why. “Why? What was so important that you had to shove us to get to the front?” Perhaps if he had to explain himself, he would see the error of his ways and repent. He would go home wiser, telling his wife how glad he was that a stranger at the airport called him out. “I needed that,” he would say. “What a fool I was.”

In the end, of course, I didn’t say anything to him. And honestly, that in itself was a sort of small victory.

Later in the day, though, I was thinking about how my longing for justice can lead me astray. Certainly, we all want wrongs to be righted, sin to be punished, and righteousness to prevail in the world. Or at least we should. The Scriptures tell us over and over again that God is just. "

“The Lord loves justice and righteousness,” the Psalmist tells us (Psalm 33:5). As His image-bearers, we’re called to do what is just and right. If it’s in our power to nudge our world toward justice, we should do so.

But if I’m honest, my desire to confront that man had nothing to do with the justice of God. I was just feeling angry, self-righteous, and judgmental. It’s easy in such moments to convince ourselves that we’re acting on God’s behalf when we’re only acting on our own behalf.

At the end of the day, I was simply looking to control my circumstances when so many things were out of my control.

That guy was trying to take control of his own circumstances by pushing his way to the front. My temptation was to try to reclaim control by “reeducating” him about the right way to act. But over the years I’ve learned that when people act selfishly, it’s rarely because they’ve never been told otherwise. It’s because they’re sinners and they want their own way.

And the hard reality is, so do I.

The older I get, the more it seems like basic manners and civility are in shorter supply than they used to be. People are angrier and more selfish. They don’t say, “Please,” or “Thank you.” Patience is a rarer and rare virtue. American culture seems like it’s reached peak individualism. It’s become every man for himself, and the results are ugly.

As a result, you and I have to decide how to respond. For me, as a Jesus follower, I have to resist the urge to retaliate every time somebody offends me, or violates what I perceive to be my own personal rights. I certainly don’t condone selfishness, and I definitely shouldn’t stand by while other people are abused or harmed. But I have to ask myself whether I’ll choose to follow the cultural milieu, and just shove my own way back to the front of the line, or if I’ll model a better way.

The question at hand is, “Will I model the way of Jesus in a world where nearly everyone is constantly fighting to be at the front of the line?” What if I willingly took the place at the back of the line? Not because I’m less important than anyone else, but because I’m following Jesus,

“Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross!”
(Philippians 2:6-8, NIV).

When I’m feeling self-righteous, it’s not usually justice that I’m seeking, but esteem. The good news is that God’s justice is perfect. I don’t have to fix the world. But also, He offers me unconditional love, which is so much better than momentary respect or esteem.

So I can relax. I can pray. I can be an agent of justice where it really matters, while letting go of my own need to be right about everything all the time. I have a dear friend who sometimes says that following Jesus means that we “give up the right to be right,” and I think he’s right. If I know the power and love of Christ, I don’t always have to prove myself, or assert myself, or correct those who undervalue me. Instead I can trust that I’m known and loved by the only One who is truly in control and who is truly capable of bringing perfect justice and grace into the world.

Meanwhile, I can bring my own small measure of grace into a world that’s increasingly ungracious, kindness to a civilization that’s disturbingly unkind, and selflessness into a culture of unrelenting selfishness.

I can refuse retaliation. I can stand at the back of the line.

In short, I can reflect the way of Jesus.

Nearly every Sunday morning, I sit at the front of our church’s auditorium. Sometimes I find myself watching those near me during the singing time. Yes, I know I should be focused on singing, but I’m easily distractible. Maybe you also do this sometimes. If so, you’ve probably noticed that some people seem disengaged. They shove their hands into their pockets, look down at the floor, and refrain from singing. I have to admit that I’m sometimes one of those disengaged people. I don’t always show up at church in a singing mood. Perhaps I’m distracted, or sad, or plagued by doubts. Maybe I’m tired, and standing still just takes less effort than singing.

Other people sing loudly, of course, as if they’ve been waiting for this moment all week long. Their eyes are fixed on the worship leader or on the lyrics. They raise their hands and close their eyes. When I see someone singing like that, I usually think, “Wow, that person must really be feeling God’s goodness right now. That must be why she’s singing with such abandon and joy.” And that’s often true. Our praise frequently reflects what we’re feeling. If we’re singing joyfully, there is a good chance that we’re actually feeling joyful.

It isn’t always true, though, at least not for me. Sometimes I sing loudly because I don’t feel God’s goodness. I want to feel it, and I know I need to feel it, but I don’t at the moment. In those moments, my songs become prayers. As I sing, I find myself praying, “God, this song is about who You say You are. Will you remind me of that, and help me to believe it’s true? Because right now I’m not sure whether I believe it or not.” It’s the musical equivalent of saying, “I do believe. Help my unbelief” (Mark 9:24)!

Every Sunday, people walk into church filled with personal and spiritual pain. Maybe you’re one of those people right now. Sometimes I’m one of those people too, even though I’m also the pastor. Nobody is immune to feeling distant from God. Nobody is immune to doubt, to pain, or to grief. All of those are realities for those of us who live in a broken world.

When I’m struggling, I don’t really feel like singing. When the worship leader starts singing about how Jesus is our Living Hope, or how God is our good, good Father, I feel resistant to the words. It seems dishonest to sing about things I’m not feeling. As a result, I am tempted to fold my arms and close my mouth.

But over the years, I’ve learned something important about myself: Those moments of pain are when I really need to sing anyway. I’ve experienced it time and time again. I enter the worship service wondering how I can possibly stand up and sing about the goodness and the love and the power of God this week. I’m the pastor, but sometimes it just feels like too much to ask.

What do I do, then? Well, I try to sing anyway, and I try to sing loudly. For me, something very powerful happens when I sing about God’s power and goodness, even when I’m not feeling it. By the time I finish singing, I usually find that I’m ready to stand up and preach what I know to be true about God. It doesn’t happen every time, but it happens often enough for me to realize that singing is very powerful. This is a mystery of God’s grace, that singing aloud can somehow realign my heart.

I know I’m not alone in this, either. I see this same pattern over and over again in the Bible. In Psalm 63, for example, a distraught and spiritually struggling King David wrote a song to remind Himself of God’s goodness. He began it in despair, singing about how he was lost in the desert and desperately missing God’s presence. In his distress, though, he sang about who God was and what God had done for him. “My mouth will praise you with joyful lips,” he wrote, “when I remember you upon my bed.” David made a choice to praise God, even when his life felt dark. He decided that he would open his mouth and sing, even though he most certainly didn’t feel like it. As a result, this psalm ends on a note of joy. “The king shall rejoice in God,” David proclaimed, “And all who swear by him will glory!” Singing praises reoriented his entire perspective, and transformed his emotions. David shows us the power of singing praises, even in the face of our struggles.

Sometimes we sing because we already feel that God is close to us. But sometimes we need to sing because we don’t feel Him close at all. Quite often, the best way to fight the darkness in our souls is to sing loud and joyful songs about the Light.

Last week, author and former pastor John Piper posted an intriguing statement on X (formerly Twitter) about people, frogs, and grace:

“I have heard it said, “God didn’t die for frogs. He died for humans, implying we were worth the sacrifice.” This turns grace on its head. We are less deserving than frogs. They have not sinned. They have not rebelled and treated God with the contempt of being inconsequential in their lives. God did not have to die for frogs. They aren’t bad enough. We are. Our debt is so great, only a divine sacrifice could pay it.”

(As a side note, I’m not sure why frogs were the specific subject of this discussion. If I were to make this particular point, I’d have chosen a more lovable animal like bunnies. But that’s neither here nor there).

As you might imagine, this statement generated a lot of conversation and controversy.

Critics of Piper’s post pointed out Jesus’ statement in Matthew 10 that a human being is “more valuable than many sparrows.” After all, we are made in God’s image. Frogs are not.

Defenders of the post insisted that Dr. Piper was talking about the biblical concept of human depravity. In other words, we’ve done nothing to earn God’s grace, nor to earn Christ’s sacrifice on our behalf. We are all sinners, “worthy” of condemnation. This, too, is supported by Scripture. For example, Romans 3:10-12 says, “There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.” In Romans 5:6, Paul reiterates, “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.” If we were powerless and ungodly, then we don’t deserve Christ’s sacrifice for us. In that sense, then, we are worse than frogs. Frogs have never sinned, as Piper pointed out.

Which perspective is correct, then?

Interestingly, what very few people pointed out was that this entire discussion involves a huge category error. Resolving the error actually resolves the whole problem. Here’s the distinction that got lost:

“Worth it” and “worthy” are two separate concepts.

“Worth the sacrifice” is a value statement. The idea is that human beings have inherent value, or worth, because we are made in God’s image. God decided that we are valuable enough that He sent His only Son to die on our behalf. Our worth is determined externally - not by anything we do, but simply because God says we’re valuable. If we are not “worth the sacrifice” in this respect, that would mean that Christ’s sacrifice was wasteful. Why would the Son of God die for people who aren’t worth saving in the first place?

If we aren’t “worth the sacrifice,” then God’s judgment is called into question. Why would He pay such a high price for relatively worthless creatures?

On the other hand, “worthy” is a statement about how deserving we are. To be “worthy” of God’s love means that we have done something, or we possess some specific quality that makes us lovable. Our value, our “worth,” is externally determined. But our “worthiness” is based on our works, or our lovability relative to frogs or bunnies, and so on.

God is “worthy” of our worship because He is righteous, holy, powerful, and so on. We are not worthy of worship, because we don’t possess those qualities. Similarly, we are not worthy of Christ’s sacrifice, because we are sinners. We didn’t deserve it.

The point of this post is not to nitpick or to criticize John Piper. In this particular instance, though, his word choice lacked the necessary clarity to effectively communicate the distinction between “deserving” and “valuable.” Those are two separate ideas, and most of the controversy came about because critics and defenders alike missed the category error.

The Scripture says that we are valuable and undeserving. Both are true. You and I matter more to God than frogs, bunnies, or sparrows, because He made us in His image. But we are no more deserving of salvation than any of those creatures, and - as Piper points out - we’re arguably less deserving (or worthy) because of our sin.

That said, it is true that God died for people for a reason: We are made in His image. And He loves us (John 3:16). Now, he loves birds and frogs, but not in quite the same way.

When we properly understand the distinction between “worth it” and “worthy,” though, we actually understand grace in a deeper way. Instead of turning grace on its head, we can see how amazing grace really is! By the grace of God, we are made in His image. And by the grace of God, He chose to save us while we were still sinners (Romans 5:8). Everything is grace, from beginning to end.

Valuable and undeserving.

Created in love. Saved by grace.

More sinful than frogs? Sure. But worth more in the eyes of God? Absolutely.

“Your sermon had some interesting ideas and illustrations, but I don’t really know what point you were trying to make. In fact, I’m not sure you had a main point at all. It a nice sermon to listen to, but I don’t know what you want me to do with it.”

I’m paraphrasing, but that was the gist of my seminary professor’s evaluation of one of my first sermons in his class. That was more than two decades ago, but I still remember feeling hurt, defensive, and more than a little bit embarrassed in front of my classmates.

But my professor was right. I wish he hadn’t been so blunt, but his critique was right on the mark.

To be honest, I was resistant to the “big idea” approach to preaching. Like so many first-year students, I had to read Biblical Preaching by Haddon Robinson. Robinson makes the case that every sermon should have one clear and memorable main idea (the homiletical proposition). The main idea should derive from the biblical text, but it also should connect the ancient text to the modern listener in a way that leads toward application.

Arguing in favor of big-idea preaching, J.H. Jowett somewhat famously said, “I have a conviction that no sermon is ready for preaching, not ready for writing out, until we can express its theme in a short, pregnant sentence as clear as a crystal.”

Our professors encouraged us to clearly state this main idea, and then to repeat it several times during the course of our sermon.

I did not like that approach, though. It felt pedantic and condescending to my listeners. I wanted my hearers to feel like I was “digging deep” into the text, and not merely dispensing simplistic platitudes. I wanted them to feel like I trusted them enough to understand the point of the text without needing me to pound them on the head with it. What’s more, some of the best preachers I knew didn’t use the big idea approach (and this is still true today). They tended to build their sermon on a general theme, but they didn’t have one clear and applicable main idea that they repeated over and over again.

Today, though, I am an unapologetic big-idea preacher. I have a single main point to every sermon. I display it to the congregation on the big screens at the front of the room, usually more than once during a 40-minute message. I usually repeat my homiletical proposition more than once.

What changed my approach? How did I go from being suspicious of the big idea to embracing it so wholeheartedly?

First, I started to notice that people often remembered the “wrong” ideas from my sermons. They might remember a particular detail or subpoint, but they weren’t sure what the message was about. In some cases, they actually remembered things I never said at all, because they were filling in the gaps in my sermons with their own main ideas. In other words, since I didn’t provide them with a clear point, they constructed their own.

Second, I heard a few “big idea” sermons that were masterfully constructed, without being pedantic or condescending. On a road trip one weekend, I listened to several sermons by Andy Stanley while I was driving. Whatever you think about his theology, Andy Stanley is an excellent big-idea preacher. I remember one sermon in particular, because his main idea was “There’s no win in comparison.” I heard that sermon more than 10 years ago, and I still remember his central idea. He repeated it over and over and over again. It was short, memorable, applicable, and tied to his text. And yet, he managed to explain that single concept in depth, without it feeling trite or shallow. I realized that it was possible to be crystal clear while also doing the text justice.

Finally, I realized that I am simply not gifted enough to develop complex biblical sermons that are also clear and relevant, without using the big-idea approach. In other words, some of my favorite preachers don’t use this approach, but they are frankly better preachers than I am. Some people know how to make their main idea clear without repeating it word for word. They have an eloquence that eludes me, but that’s ok. My goal is to be as clear and applicable as possible. For 99% of preachers, I think a big idea approach works best. If you’re Charles Spurgeon, you can probably get away with a less direct approach. (But you’re probably not, and neither am I).

Since I began using this approach to preaching, I’ve noticed that listeners remember my big idea, if they remember anything at all. Sure, they might grab onto an illustration or a story here or there, but they usually connect that story to the big idea. The big idea allows me to make sure that what people remember is what I’m intending them to remember. And I’ve also found that, contrary to my initial objections, having one main idea actually lets me dig deeper into the text. I can now explore the many facets of that one idea in depth rather than bouncing from concept to concept.

One last thought: Whether you’re a preacher or you give presentations in a corporate setting or some other non-profit context, I think this big idea approach will serve you well. To serve your audience well, they need to understand your main point. Everything else you want to say flows from that.