Expository Preaching Blog #42 – “Environment for Preaching”

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Over the past year I have written much about expository preaching from how to do it to why to do it. I believe in every word I have written. Today I want to explore and area that we rarely talk about. That is the physical environment in which we preach.

Environment does not make the preaching or the sermon but it certainly can take away from it. Preachers need to take into consideration the hearers. Who is in the congregation? What physical things do they bring with them that they cannot control?

I have always been very conscience of the temperature of the room and building I was preaching and teaching in. In my one church I had two ladies. Mrs. J was always cold. You could have the room 80 degrees and she could still be cold. Mrs. P was usually always too warm. So when we moved into a new auditorium I experimented with the temperature for a few weeks. I finally found the spot where Mrs. J was a little cold and Mrs. P was a little warm. The rest of the congregation was just right. You will never please everyone but you aim for the best overall.

As I get older my hearing has also become more difficult. I was in an auditorium recently that the sound was just atrocious. It was in a modern building probably less than 20 years old. But it sounded like you were in a large warehouse and the “noise” was coming from somewhere unknown. It didn’t sound like you were listening to the speaker at all. It was because the audio speakers were located in the worst possible place. They were off to the far side of a fairly large auditorium. They should have been centered above the audience in the front. This is a well-known practice in church sound systems for over 50 years. It was extremely distracting for me and made me with my hearing issues very uncomfortable.

I was in another meeting place lately where there was a large fan blowing continually. It was a rented space so the owners controlled it and the renters could not do anything about it. BUT then during the conclusion of the service they had musicians playing in the background while the speaker made his concluding thoughts. There were three different sounds which greatly frustrated me. It is hard for me to handle 3 different noises at one time. Many people have that issue. They didn’t need the background music. It totally distracted from anything the speaker was trying to say. I just wanted to leave and get out of there. I had no interest in listening to anything they had to say. I never went back to that church partly because of that.

I see dark auditoriums in churches during the service which I don’t understand. It is not a show or a concert. It a worship service to the king of kings and Lord of Lords. The focus is not on the people on stage but it should be on the triune God. Preachers think about your audience. Think about the environment you are preaching in. Help people focus on God without distractions!

 

 

Rev. David Johnson

Former Pastor

First Baptist Church of Austin, MN

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