Writing For Five Generations

I've spent most of the morning working on a sermon for the weekend after Christmas. I've come to a realization that should be absolutely obvious, but presents a challenge for those of us in a multigenerational church.

Sermon writing and preaching is a fairly comfortable endeavor for me - I've had the opportunity preach more than 30 times this past year. I primarily preach at The Green Room - a worship service Schweitzer offers on the Missouri State campus. Worship on the college campus generally means a congregation that is mostly 18-24 years old. A handful of times a year I preach for all of the weekend services.

Here's the challenge: illustrations, stories, and strategies that work with a single generation audience generally fall flat when applied to a multigenerational group. One perfect example is that I'm really wanting to talk about a specific characteristic of popular culture, hip hop, that I'm very aware will not work for most people over the age of 40. I think this situation is most visible when it comes to humor. 

It's a difficulty the church has in every area of communication, not just preaching, and it's an ongoing challenge. How do you address the differences in communication preferences in your life?

Comments

[Andy Blacksher]

You raise several different questions when you open it up to every area of communication. My only suggestion (on the topic of preaching) would be that as your sermon becomes more narrative-based, and more abstract, it leaves more up interpretation on the part of the congregation. This allows people to feel more or less like they understand your message.

Of course, the difficulty becomes that you can't leave the sermon at the abstract level if you want people to take something away from it, so eventually you have to become more concrete again. Good luck on that!

I think you're good at answering your own questions- pop culture references are probably not very abstract... unless you make a story out of it. Hmmm...