HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, November 19, 2024 – We are blessed beyond measure to have Jesus as our example. Over the three years of his ministry, he showed us how to do everything we’ll have to do during our time on Earth. Still, many Christians ignore Jesus’ example when it comes to preaching the Word. I’m talking here mainly about megaphone street preaching and public transit preaching, the latter which unfortunately appears to be a growing trend. These preachers are like the proverbial bull in the China shop spiritually, causing destruction and chaos wherever they show up. The Word cannot be sown in such an environment.
Based on what I’ve seen, I’d say it’s mostly ego and frustration that drives these preachers to yell at strangers. The only other people I see yelling in public spaces are the sleep-deprived homeless, strung-out addicts, and the deranged, all of whom at least have a valid excuse for their outbursts. As you know if you’ve spent any time here at all on this blog, I am a fully committed born-again follower of Jesus, but whenever any of these preachers come at me screeching Jesus’ name and accusing everyone within earshot of being sinners, all I want is for them to shut up. They sound possessed with a devil rather than filled with God’s Holy Spirit.
You cannot force-feed the Word. If people aren’t hungry for the Truth, they won’t swallow it, not one bite. It doesn’t matter how eloquent (or loud) you are or how true your words: Only the hungry will want to feed, and so only the hungry should be fed. That is a spiritual fact of life that even God won’t override.
Some priests and ministers guilt their parishioners into “reaching out” to people who reject God. Based on the Gospels, we’re not meant to reach out – we’re meant to stand in God’s Truth: Those who want the Truth will eventually reach out to us, and we’ll be there for them. We need to let them know that we’re there for them, but we also need to let them come to God and Jesus in their own time and in their own way. If we force the matter – if we try to force-feed them God and Jesus – we may win some reluctant half-believers, but these will be weak in their faith and will fall away at the first test or trial.
The gospels give us numerous examples of how and where Jesus preached. Under no circumstance did he force himself on others; he always waited for people to come to him. Equally importantly, he ‘read the room’, whether indoors or outdoors, and adjusted his message accordingly. Everyone who came to him did so with a unique need, and Jesus tailored his message to satisfy it spiritually. For instance, the Pharisees came to him dismissively and arrogantly, needing to be warned about their pride and hypocrisy, whereas the adulteress came to him in tears, needing to be comforted but also warned not to sin again. These two very different messages were delivered entirely differently, as they were meant to satisfy two very different needs.
Along with waiting for people to come to him and tailoring his message to the listener, Jesus was careful to leave people with a sense of hope. The Good News is, after all, the most joyful of all messages, so any preachers of the Word who leave their listeners with a feeling of shame or despair rather than an upwelling of hope are doing the Gospel a disservice. Even if you believe that someone who came to you is about as close to being beyond hope as any person can be, you still feed that person hope. No-one who comes to us in earnest is fully beyond hope, no matter how hopeless it may appear to us on the surface. Again, no-one who comes to us in earnest – not in anger or abusively, not feignedly or with evil intent – no-one who comes to us earnestly seeking to be fed God’s Word is beyond hope, or God’s Spirit wouldn’t have sent them to us.
You can see from the above that megaphone and public transit preaching doesn’t align with the preaching examples given to us by Jesus, which means the people who do this type of preaching are following a wayward spirit rather than God’s Holy Spirit. Certainly, fashions change and with them circumstances and technologies, but if Jesus consistently modeled one way of preaching and people today choose an entirely different way, they can’t expect their efforts to be successful. To me, megaphone street preachers and public transit preachers are less like Jesus and more like the demon-possessed woman who followed Peter and Silas around, constantly shouting that they were from God and were showing the way of salvation. Certainly, she spoke the Truth (devils often do), but she was an irritant and did not help anyone by her constant interruptions. The last thing we want to be when we’re delivering God’s Word is an irritating, unhelpful, interruption.
Preach as Jesus preached; don’t be ego- or devil-driven. Let the hungry know you’re there, but let them come to you; and when they do come, feed each of them according to their expressed and unexpressed needs.
Read the room.
Tailor your message.
And always end with hope.
A BORN-AGAIN BELIEVER 
I’m sorry, but I have to disagree. The Bible disagrees.
1. Jesus sent His disciples into different cities to PREACH.
2. Paul was arrested numerous times for publicly Preaching.
3. Stephen was stoned for-again, publicly preaching.
I agree that there are many people out there with the wrong motivation, and some people don’t need to go because, they can’t do it without getting angry at the people they’re preaching to.
But Jesus gave us the Great Commision, go into all the world and PREACH the Gospel.
The Apostles didn’t wait for people to knock on their door and say, “Can you preach to me?”
No. They went out and PREACHED. Because that was what they were called to do.
Now, I don’t think everybody has to do street-preaching/ministry, but we better not be sitting at home waiting for the lost to come to US. Guess what? Some people know next to Nothing about Jesus, and need preachers to tell them.
“How shall they hear without a preacher?”-ROMANS 10:14
“God chose the foolishness of Preaching save them that believe.” 1 CORINTHIANS 1:21
Maybe you’ve had bad experiences with Street Preachers or something-there are a lot out there with The Wrong Motivation, and some have the right motivation but don’t go about it in a right manner.
But I hope one day, you can meet a good preacher, and change your mind about this.
But Amen. ALWAYS end with hope.
LikeLike
Thank you for your comment. Yes, Jesus sent his disciples to preach the Good News, but he first anointed them and gave them the power of God’s Holy Spirit to heal sicknesses and cast out demons, and he specifically instructed them not to go to the gentiles but only to those people who already knew about God but had backslidden. He did not give his disciples instructions to preach to the general public, that is, to people who didn’t already know about God. He also directed them to go house to house and to remain only in those houses that accepted their message.
I base my preaching directives on what Jesus did, not on what Paul did or anyone else did (or does), unless what those people did (or do) reflect Jesus’ example and directives. The megaphone and public transit preachers whose sole purpose is to get into people’s faces are not healing anyone’s sicknesses or casting out demons; on the contrary, they’re riling up the demons that attend on people, triggering people’s anxiety and anger. This is not what Jesus meant by preaching the Good News.
If you’re anointed to share the Good News, you make your presence known, and people will come to you as they came to Jesus. God will bring them to you one way or another supernaturally. Otherwise, the kind of preaching you reference that Jesus instructed his disciples to do is the kind of preaching going on in denominational churches, whether mainstream or alternative. That’s where the people are who know about God but are likely backslidden.
As for Paul, his preaching methods expanded the number of alleged Christians quantitatively rather than qualitatively, as I’ve mentioned in other articles. Paul’s efforts essentially laid the groundwork for what has become the worldly church, which, while it has a purpose in materially supporting God’s Kingdom and God’s children, is not an end in itself. It’s more like an incubator for reborn souls, and those who are genuinely reborn ultimately leave the worldly church
How you choose to share the Good News is up to you. You have free will. Again, I base my preaching on Jesus’ directives and example, not Paul’s or Stephen’s. I also base it on my own lived experience as a former atheist. I was not preached into my rebirth. Nothing anyone said to me in the first 36 years of my life made me want to know about God or Jesus or care that they loved me. Preachers and preaching were a joke to me and I know for a fact (from my own personal experience) that they did more harm than good.
Jesus warned us not to throw pearls before swine and of the consequences that would ensue if we do. Nothing is more precious than the Good News. We need to share the pearls of the Gospel, but we need to do so anointed by God and in a time and manner appointed by God and under God’s direction. This is what Jesus taught us and this is what my article explains.
LikeLike