Preaching and the Externally-Focused Church: An Interview with Rick Rusaw...Continued from page 4

Rusaw: I think one of the keys is don’t get gimmicky. I’m sure there have been times where it comes off as a gimmick. We just try to provide some practical ways to reframe something for somebody. This weekend, we’re finishing a series on the Church. We’re doing a message about the living stones and Jesus said, “I’ll build my church” and He’s the foundation we are building on. It’s His church, not ours. He’s building off of Peter’s confession to Him right there. And then it’s Peter years and years later in his life who describes the church as living stones.

We are going to have a big pile of stones up there on the stage this weekend. They’ll be there through the whole service ? the message is near the end of the service this week. At the end, I will invite people to come and pick up a stone and take it home with them and say, “Use this as a reminder that God can use you. Use it as a reminder that you are a part of something bigger than yourself. Use this as a challenge for how God can write His story through you. And when you see this stone, put it on your desk or in your bathroom and pray and be challenged by the fact that God is building His Church with people like you and me.”

I find when we do that kind of thing, it just gives people another way to remember and reframe the message. We’ll take common items and do it that way. In this series, we have been doing a thing where one of our staff members is doing a thing called Myth Busters ? we’re playing off of the TV series ? but we’re taking some of the common myths about Christianity. While you can’t do an experiment to explode these, let’s talk about what they mean. Last week, it was a myth about how only hypocrites go to church. We did this whole thing about hypocrisy and what people really think about that and we give them a lot of practical head stuff like stats and other things. All it does is recast it in a way that people can grab it.

Jesus did that all the time. He took average, ordinary common things and put them in a way that people could get their arms around it. I think in preaching, it’s just being open to those. We will use some balance. I catch myself saying it’s not that creative, because I just know a lot of people who are doing kinds those things. But the challenge in preaching is ? if my goal is for me to get my message out, I might preach one way. But if my goal is for people to connect with that message, to do something with that message, for God to be at work in the middle of that message, I would probably present it in a little bit different way. I know that my preaching is much more of a “come alongside” than a “top-down.” It’s, “Hey I’m on a journey too. Let’s throw a little light on the path here.”

Preaching: How often do you use that kind of creative approach, such as with the stones?