I once served as youth pastor under a senior pastor who was a sweet-natured, earnest, and godly man – which put him head and shoulders above a few other pastors I worked under.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
But he wasn’t the greatest preacher.<\/p>\n\n\n
He once told me, “You know, I only really have three different sermons that I deliver. I just rotate between those three.”<\/p>\n\n\n
And honestly, that was two more than I had noticed!<\/p>\n\n\n
It seemed to me that week after week he offered slight variations on one particular exhortation: “If we are going to be authentic disciples of Jesus, we must get out beyond the walls of the church and love our neighbors in tangible ways.”<\/p>\n\n\n
Obviously, this is true. I had no problem with the message – I just didn’t want to hear it every Sunday.<\/p>\n\n\n
(Especially when there was an entire book full of God’s words to explore.)<\/p>\n\n\n
Repetition is necessary and serves an important role in effective teaching, but it can’t be the only arrow in your quiver.<\/p>\n\n\n
If repetition isn’t resulting in changed behavior after a few weeks – let alone a few years – then it’s time to step back and see if there is a deeper issue causing a roadblock.<\/p>\n\n\n
To be effective, a teacher needs to search out those gaps in knowledge and fill them.<\/p>\n\n\n
THEN the congregation might be able to move forward.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
Without excessive repetition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I once served as youth pastor under a senior pastor who was a sweet-natured, earnest, and godly man – which put him head and shoulders above a few other pastors I worked under.\u00a0 But he wasn’t the greatest preacher. He once told me, “You know, I only really have three different sermons that I deliver. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,15,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-good-teaching","category-preaching","category-repetition"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2261"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2261\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2262,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2261\/revisions\/2262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}