Consequences Of Non-Expositional Preaching (11)

It robs people of their only true source of help.

People who sit under superficial preaching become dependent on the cleverness and the creativity of the speaker. When preachers punctuate their sermons with laser lights and smoke, video clips and live drama, the message they send is that there isn’t a prayer the people in the pew could ever extract such profound material on their own. Such gimmicks create a kind of dispensing mechanism that people can’t use to serve themselves. So they become spiritual couch potatoes, who just come in to be entertained, and whatever superficial spiritual content they get from the preacher’s weekly performance is all they will get. They have no particular interest in the Bible, because the sermons they hear don’t cultivate that. They are wowed by the preacher’s creativity, manipulated by the music, and that becomes their whole perspective on spirituality.