It has changed everything.” September 24, 2018, verbatim transcript of a Whatsapp audio message It has helped me so much to stop scolding and insulting people, beating them up, but talking with love. The mother and the daughters all gave their lives to the Lord after I told them a story of what God had done in my life. All the family was there except the husband. To cap it off, my wife and I went to visit a family at their home, to talk to them about the love of Christ. Now I use a lot of illustrations, even personal ones, which help a lot for people to come to Christ. I had always been taught, and was used to, preaching that was hard on people so they would come to Christ. First of all, I am so thankful, because I never thought I would go to the class and learn so much. Three months after the class Luis sent me a voice message with permission to share: What does this biblical principle mean to you personally? What real-life problem does it solve? How can we help people live a life that pleases God without scolding? We helped students take each main point and make sure they explained, illustrated, and applied it to daily life.īy the end of the course Luis and I had talked many times, and he confessed, “I have never shared a personal story in a message, but I am going to try, and I will let you know how it goes.”Ī few weeks later I got a short message from Luis that said “I want to tell you that 12 souls came to Christ at an activity where I was invited to preach.” He was making a real effort to use what he had learned. To his credit, during our class Luis set aside a lifetime of assumptions and followed along as we challenged students to interpret their biblical passage in its context, then think through how the spiritual truths in the text can make a difference in the daily lives of the listeners. The scolding was how people came to Christ. Pastors must never reveal any personal doubt or temptation, which would erode their untouchable image. Many young Latin American leaders grew up in church cultures where the pastor was considered the unquestioned spiritual authority, where holiness had been codified into clear rules, and, by definition, biblically faithful preaching included condemnation of sin, weakness and failure, for outsiders as well as those in the pew.
You know, when we scold the people so they repent.” “Help me understand what you mean by exhortation.” “When do we give the exhortation?” he asked. Partway through the opening session of an Advanced Homiletics (preaching) class for an international group of pastors in Costa Rica, I was giving the students a road map of how we were going to organize our sermons when a young Guatemalan pastor named Luis raised his hand.