I am always on the lookout for “hooks” on which I can then hang sermons or series.
And the hooks are everywhere: billboards, television, radio, colloquial sayings, the internet, and popular music. In other words, the hooks are in the language of our culture.
Because that’s the language people speak, isn’t it? Regardless of people’s level of church involvement.
For example, when I say Tiger Woods, something entirely different comes to your mind today than did just seven days ago. Because he’s in the news. It’s the language of our culture.
So in preaching and worship design, we want to leverage that common language.
But not for its own sake.
We want to leverage cultural language to teach counter-cultural truths. Biblical truths.
I’ll show you what I mean. In January of 2010, we’re going to do a series called There’s An App For That. The phrase is everywhere, and if you have an iPhone, you know there really is an application for almost every conceivable life situation.
Except for those life situations that really matter. Things like integrity, faithfulness, serenity, and wisdom. Apps for those are nowhere in cyberspace.
They are instead in the timeless book of Proverbs, which marks a cornerstone in the Hebrew Scriptures. So we’ll have a series from Proverbs delivered in packaging 21st Century people can understand.
Leveraging cultural language — there’s an app for that — to teach counter-cultural truths — the wisdom of Proverbs.
That’s where sermons come from.