Conclusion

Why did you read this blog about community sermon-listening? What caught your interest? Were you already aware of your need to reconnect preaching with fellowship? Were you looking for ideas on how to do it? Were you a hesitant reader, knowing that you’d need to reevaluate your sermon-listening practices? Did someone else recommend this blog to you? Are you a preacher looking for ways to achieve community-wide impact in your sermons?

No matter who you are or why you read these blog posts, you’re now faced with a decision. You’ve come to a crossroad in your sermon-listening experience and you must decide which way you’re going to go. The two options are easily understood—either you compartmentalize your life by keeping your sermon-listening and fellowship experiences quite separate, or you commit to integrate the two so that they never take place one without the other. Which will it be? It’s a life-changing decision.

Don’t move on without answering that question. If you want to practice community sermon-listening, you need to make a plan. You need to involve others. The practice is by nature, communal. Maybe, you’ll need to do some work to convince others of this vital need. Take a long-term approach. We’re talking about changing church culture. You’ll need to lead by example.It’s very likely that you’ll meet some opposition. Modern Christians have developed a keen independence. We don’t like to open up. We share a little of our shallow selves, but seldom show real transparency. But real sanctification is a community project. It requires the challenges, trials, disciplines, support, encouragements, and changes that other people bring into your life. That’s what fellowship is.

Real sanctification occurs when our souls are laid bare to the living and abiding Word of God. It happens when God’s powerful Word is read, explained, and applied to the gathered church. That’s what preaching is.

Now, put the two together—preaching and fellowship—sermon-listening and community—sound doctrine and accountability—that’s the recipe for church-wide transformation. That’s what the church must recover. That’s what sanctification is.

Preaching is most effective when people listen together—people who are responsible to care for one another, pray for one another, counsel one another, encourage one another, confront one another, and generally look out for one another spiritually. It’s the community aspect of preaching that makes a sermon a sermon. If we overvalue and overuse the sermons available on the Internet, we risk becoming observers to the sermon event, watching from a distance, detached, and unimplicated by the sermon’s demands.

What you do now will set the spiritual trajectory for you and for your church. May God bless you.