• indoubt Podcast
  • ·
  • April 22, 2019

Ep. 171: Balancing Truth and Trends

With Paul Park, , , and Ryan McCurdy

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Paul Park joins the indoubt Podcast for a second time and this week, we focus on finding a balance between preaching Truth and preaching on trends. There are times when we look at the Bible and pull scripture that fits what we’re going through at that moment. The Bible sustains us and speaks into our daily struggles. But, we can’t pick and choose. If we do that, we miss the big picture. Paul and Ryan talk about how we can better engage with our pastor and their preaching. The comparison and definition of expository and topical preaching help you to recognize the different styles at your church and ask the right questions. By trusting daily in the One who loves and corrects us, we’ll find the right balance of Truth and trends, not just at the pulpit, but every day where we’re all called to preach the Word of God.

View Transcription

Kourtney Cromwell:
Welcome to the indoubt Podcast, where we explore the challenging topics that young adults often face. Each week we talk with guests who help answer questions of faith, life and culture, connecting them to our daily experiences and God’s Word. For more info on Indoubt, visit indoubt.ca or indoubt.com.

Ryan McCurdy:
Get ready for round two with Paul Park. This episode is awesome, I’m really excited about it because we finish our conversation that we started on our last episode where we talked about expositional preaching and what the difference is between expositional preaching and more topical or narrative preaching and so Paul and I get into this conversation about topical preaching and the importance of expositional preaching and Paul shares some of his views and what he thinks is a healthy diet for people in churches to hear and how they hear God’s Word preached and what some of the pros and cons are to that and how to make God’s Word accessible. So Paul gets into this on a great detail and he has a lot of experience on preaching and teaching and he is a gifted communicator himself and so he has lots to say about this and then we talk a little bit about our culture.
Why do we like certain messages? Why do we like hearing certain stories and certain pieces of scripture in certain ways and is that a generational thing? Does it matter how we hear God’s Word? Ultimately this is a really important conversation because the Bible is preached all over the world, every week. Millions of sermons are given and so this is really important for the people of God to learn of who God is and how to follow Him. So we get into this type of conversation with Paul on this episode to make sure you listen, this is our second episode with Paul Park.

Ryan McCurdy:
All right, and we’re back with Paul Park, who’s the lead pastor of South Delta Baptist Church in Tsawwassen in the Lower Mainland and we had Paul on not too long ago where we talked about expository preaching. Like I said, Paul is the lead pastor, he’s married. He has a son, two years old?

Paul Park:
Yeah.

Ryan McCurdy:
He’s two years old? Oh, so much fun. So we talked about expository teaching/preaching. What is that? What does that mean? How do we communicate the Gospel? So, we’re going to jump into another episode with Paul Park. So Paul, thanks for being back with us.

Paul Park:
No problem. Thanks for having me.

Ryan McCurdy:
It’s fun to have you back and I really enjoyed our conversation that we had previously about expository teaching and the importance of it and the goal of it. So my question is, as we dive into this conversation of more topical preaching, what is topical preaching?

Paul Park:
Yeah, I mean, I think people have different views on it again, right? It’s not like one answer fits everyone’s situation, but I think there is truth to the notion of teaching. We talked about it last time where we talked about preaching and teaching where we do need to teach because there are people who have questions about life, whether it’s you’re going through, significant other who’s going through cancer and you’re wanting to figure out, “Okay, there’s a good God and He loves me and He’s powerful, but what’s going on here? Why is He not healing my husband or whatever,” right? So it ends up addressing with the Bible, the real situation in life and I do think God desires us to do that. So I know some people say only expository and that’s the only way you should ever preach.
I actually agree with Tim Keller when he says, “I think that’s actually maybe too extreme, because it may be that you’re not preaching the whole counsel of God if you’re only preaching through the Book of, I don’t know, 1 Samuel for four years in a row and then taking it verse by verse.” We did that at our church where we did a whole year of 1 Samuel and that’s great and yet, I think it is important for us to address some of the questions that they have. I think ideally the best way to do it is as you go through the Bible expositionally, that you would be able to address the topics that come up the questions.
So I think topical preaching sometimes is very helpful. Tim Keller would also say that if you have a steady diet of only topical, it may not be healthy and I do tend to agree with that, that your regular diet should be of expository being deeply involved with the Word. But I think there is a time and a place and a very, very good reason for you to engage in topical sermons. In my case, I remember my mother in-law passed away last March. So my wife and I clearly have gone through a very difficult journey and when people ask, “How are you doing, how are you coping?” We say, “You know, our faith has really helped. Our faith in Jesus has really helped”. So my non-Christian friends would ask, and this is how I would respond. 90% of the time they won’t take me up on it, they’ll just kind of, “Okay, cool. We know he’s religious.”
But, sometimes they will say, “Okay, so how does that help?” If you don’t actually have an answer for that, then you’re phony. You’re not authentic and that’s what young people really want to see in my view, that’s why we keep using the word authenticity, authenticity, it matters for us. That you actually mean what you say and when you say, “Oh, my faith has helped me a lot”. “Okay, how so?” “I don’t know”. If you can’t actually express and articulate what that looks like and then maybe you do need to prepare in your hearts, how are you going to preach. In the Book of Acts, one of my favorite verses is chapter eight verse four. It’s actually not like one of those famous verses, but chapter eight verse four says, “Now those who were scattered went about and preached the Word.” Those who were scattered, they are the people who were scattered after Stephen’s Martyrdom. So people who were persecuted and actually specifically says in the Book of Acts that they weren’t apostles because the apostles remained in Jerusalem.

Ryan McCurdy:
Right.

Paul Park:
So here are the regular Jews, one of which was Phillip and they go about and preach the Word, but the word preach makes it sound like they had a pulpit or they were at synagogues and they were doing like oratory stuff. But the Greek word you use there is I think euangelism anyway, which actually says if you I think transliterate it would be gospeling. They went around gospeling the Word, you went around sharing the gospel in every different context as you went, which was I do think what God intended us to do, not just preachers vocationally, everyone should be able to preach the Word of God. In that context, I do think you need to be able to be a topical preacher. If your friend is going through drug abuse, if your friend is going through addiction, if your friend is going through a loss, if your friend is going through and getting fired, how do you speak gospel of Jesus into that particular situation and are you equipped and trained to do that?
That’s why I think yes, expository preaching is great, but you also need to be able to have that accessibility of people who are asking those questions. Do you have an answer? Are you prepared like in First Peter? So I think it is very important.

Ryan McCurdy:
It almost sounds like topical would be the element of starting with an experience or a shared experience or starting with a culturally relevant topic and then, okay, how do we understand this in light of scripture rather than saying, “Hey, here’s our passage of scripture and it actually touches on this”. What can we take from scripture and apply to? Would that be a healthy way of even just understanding?-

Paul Park:
Absolutely. Right, there’s apologetics, systematic theology, all of those different approaches which are very, very important things for us to study and equip ourselves with. I actually do think it’s unhealthy if the only way you can share Jesus is, “Okay, let’s open our Bibles to John 3:16.

Ryan McCurdy:
Right.

Paul Park:
If that’s the literally only because we see examples of it and I know more conservative people tend to think that way. But the way I would challenge them is, “Okay, well here’s the thing. If you’re conservative, I hope the reason you’re conservative is cause you’re extremely biblical and you want to be faithful to the Bible,” and I will say, “I can point you to the Bible where people do this differently”. Like say, Peter when he preaches in Acts 2 versus when he preaches in Acts 10 to Cornelius’s family. Acts 2, expository acts. Chapter 10, topical, right? Paul, right? Paul and parts of Acts where he’s addressing Jewish people who are aware, expository, historical, canonical, everything. Yet Acts 17, when he’s at Marcel, he’s topical.

Ryan McCurdy:
Yup.

Paul Park:
He sees poet, he sees inscription and he goes off and he says, “Hey, here’s where the gospel comes into you”. In my mind, a healthy preacher knows and trains himself to do both and not just preacher as in pastor, but preacher is in every single Christian because that’s what we’re called to do. We are preachers of the Gospel. That’s what we do. We are those people who are scattered all over the place wherever you’re in A&W working or you’re an executive at a high degree and you’re a teacher, it doesn’t matter where you are, you’re a preacher, you’re that group that’s scattered and went about preaching the Word of God. That’s to me, we need to be able to equip our people to be doing this everywhere and in life and I think that sometimes we fail to do that because we say the burden is on me as a pastor and you can just go and bring people in and put them in the pews and your job is done. I actually think that’s very misleading. I don’t think that’s the mission.

Ryan McCurdy:
Yeah. I’m curious, when we think of why do preachers preach topically, what do you think? Like why do people preach topically? What’s the chief aim? What’s the goal?

Paul Park:
I think a lot of people, for a lot of people its relevance, right? They want to remain relevant and I think that’s a fair thing. I think we need to strive for relevance. I don’t think… I don’t agree when some people say there is no need, absolutely no need for relevance. I think that’s wrong because again, we see it in the Bible. Jesus was very relevant. When he used parables, it was a lot of them was agricultural because he knew that his audience would understand. So I do think that’s something that we need to strive for and yet I actually think the best form of topical preaching comes when you are doing expository preaching with topical in mind. I do think it’s hard and difficult. It requires a lot of work and the Holy Spirit’s blessing of course.
But I do think it’s possible and I have seen it. I have done it, I think with the help of God, where you are engaging in expository preaching when you’re foundationally exposing the Word of God and letting it speak and yet understanding that you can link what God is saying to a different time, a different culture, different language group and yet address the questions, always keeping in mind what the questions and concerns are and being able to not twist the original texts even though they’re not saying this. It’s not really, this text is not even about marriage but I’m going to bring it in not that way, but to be faithful as a messenger of God’s Word and yet still be able to address some of the questions because we believe God’s Word is universally relevant.
If we miss it, it’s our fault actually. I think how we misapply or mis-deliver the message. So I actually think the best way you could do topical is through expository and I actually do feel confident that a lot of people who want to do topical because it’s relevant, that you can do expository in a relevant way. It just takes a lot of work and I actually think it’s in my view, the healthiest regular rhythm of preaching. When you start to dialogue with others and study in the Word of God and study the culture, then it becomes, I think the most valuable experience for people and studying the Word of God. You brought up a great point earlier, right? Like Paul addresses this. He talks about how you shouldn’t always be eating – drinking milk, you’re supposed to eating solid food and he gets disappointed.
Jeff Vanderstelt actually says, “You know, when I’m preaching and people go, ‘you gave us solid meat today”. He says, “No, because I chewed it up and gave it to you. This is milk. If it was solid food, you would delve into the Word of God and you would’ve actually found these truth for yourself and applied it to your life”. That’s what meat will look like. So Sunday morning is usually milk.

Ryan McCurdy:
Yes, pureed meat.

Paul Park:
Yeah. So it’s already pre-chewed by the pastor.

Ryan McCurdy:
Yeah.

Paul Park:
So one of the great things about expository preaching is that we model for the people how we can actually expound the Word of God, study the Word of God, engage with the Word of God and then that way it also models for the people, how they do their own devotional times, their own study of the Word of God, how they apply the Bible and allow that to speak into their own lives. I think it’s a great way to model it and again, it goes back to that authenticity. As we ourselves do it, people will be able to say, “Yeah, of course that’s how we should study the Bible”.

Ryan McCurdy:
Yeah, and that’s the long game, right? It’s so much easier to say, “Hey, do this. Hey, know this, believe this, understand this”. But then the long game is, “Hey, let me show you how I got here. Let me show you how I understand this text. Let me show you all the work that it took me to get to this place”. That takes years. That takes a long time in terms of discipleship and if the goal is to help others see Jesus clearly and to see God at work throughout His Word, it takes work.

Paul Park:
But, I mean… Again, if we demonstrate it from the front leadership and everyone, then we can expect that from our people. But if we are lazy in our own exegesis or in our own study of the word of God, of course people are going to learn from that, right? So this is why I think the Ethiopian Eunuch story in the Book of Acts helps me understand the times that we’re living in. The guy was reading the Isaiah Scroll and he had no idea, he needed someone to come alongside and guide him through the Word of God and here God sends Philip.
I wonder if God is sending all of us, not just preachers, but all of us who are Christians out into the world for people who are trying to discover truth and yet they don’t know how and for us to be able to be that guide, to be the Messenger of Christ. This is where I think people, young people especially, they feel generosity when people open up their homes, when they open up their free space. In a very privacy driven culture in Canada, when you expose yourself and be vulnerable and say, “Hey, I would like you to come over and we can talk about this if you…” and actually allow them into your life and you into theirs, that’s where I think the most effective preaching actually can happen. So for me, my goal is to actually equip every single person who come on Sundays to be able to do that, to live that out. Because that would be more powerful because I would never have access to the people who don’t come to church, but they will.

Ryan McCurdy:
So yeah, even as you were saying that story of generosity being experienced, there’s a passage in the Book of First Thessalonians, 2:8 where Paul says, “But we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children” that’s verse seven. “So being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the Gospel of God, but also our own selves because you had become very dear to us”, and there’s this element of people wanting to see how life is lived out, right? We could talk till we’re blue in the face about what to believe, how to believe, how to learn. But a lot of the topical stuff, the application stuff, how does this get lived out into real life. Paul says, “Come follow me, like live like I live as I follow Christ” and that model is huge and that’s why being on a platform, on a pulpit and being off the platform, off the pulpit is when there’s congruence there.
When the same message is being preached onstage and offstage, that’s where it really hits home. That’s really where community is shaped and there’s the Francis of Assisi, a quote about preaching the Gospel. It was like, “Preach the Gospel and when necessary use words” and I think that quote has been debated a lot of times and like what is he talking about? That’s maybe not helpful, but we need to use the spoken words. But I think what he’s getting at is speak God’s Word, speak the gospel, but live it. Like show that it’s being applied in your own life and that will preach the gospel in its own way.

Paul Park:
Yeah, yeah. I think, yeah, like you said, it has to be both and so one of the books that actually brought here, Meet Generation Z from James Emery White. I know our church people always want me to say Meet Generation zed. I know we’re in Canada, but it’s an American book.

Ryan McCurdy:
Yeah.

Paul Park:
Meet Generation Z. This book was really interesting. Our church went through it and studied it, our staff studied it. I preached a series using a lot of the concepts from it and it was quite interesting because here he talks about like how the young people, Generation Z, they love dystopian novels and books. So you think about hunger games, divergent, like all of them, right? The two trends and literature right now is strong female leads and dystopian, just dark. That’s how they see the world, dark, broken. Millennials think we can fix it, Generation Z thinks no, it’s hopeless, we need to found a new world, which is actually a theologically more correct. New Jerusalem – this is hopeless, we need something completely different, completely new. But the whole premise is that Generation Z is basically crying out for the Gospel. They want answers, they want something because the postmodernism has gone so far and relativism has been so prominent in our culture that everyone thinks that there is no truth.
It’s like you’re in a desert and saying, “Hey, here are all these roads. None of them lead to water”.

Ryan McCurdy:
Right.

Paul Park:
It’s very depressing. It’s sad, it’s broken. It’s broken thought, and so when you preach the Gospel and you do an expository and you do this, there is solid ground like Matthew 7, there is solid rock that you can build on. You don’t have to build on sand. It’s powerful and it’s actually engaging and it is authentic because we don’t have to shy away from that. This is ultimate truth. You know what, the world may have taught you that there is nothing that you can stand on, that everything is shaky. We want to tell you that God has provided unshakable truth, that you can build your life upon that rock and that’s a powerful message, especially for the young people. Studies have shown that these young people are crying out, desperately wanting solid truth, unshakeable, ultimate and I think we have the answer. God has revealed it to us. So I think it is our job to preach the Word as we are scattered.

Ryan McCurdy:
Yeah, and to communicate it. There’s so many pieces of how do you do this and what are some of the challenges, and I think you’re totally right, some of the millennial challenges is that they genuinely believe they can fix the problem. This is… The philosophy of this is humanism. Humans can make good happen and humans can solve human problems and if they don’t believe that there’s a God, well then we can solve. We can become our own gods essentially and I was sharing that at a school recently and I said one of the things about sharing our faith is that a lot of people don’t even believe they need God. So part of sharing the Gospel is actually sharing to people that there’s sin and there’s a need for repentance and need for forgiveness. The pardon that we need from God is something only God can give.
We need a God solution to a human God relationship problem and oftentimes, and I’m curious what your thoughts on this, and maybe we can kind of end with some of this is, why do you think preachers have gone this way? The way that I’m referring to is gone the way of almost like self help. Like we can do it, like you can-

Paul Park:
Chicken noodle.

Ryan McCurdy:
Yeah, the chicken noodle for your soul and why have we gone that way? Why is the communication of the gospel just like, “Hey, just try harder” almost kind of? What do we… How do we get out of this?

Paul Park:
Yeah. I think it’s not free, right? Do better, do more, is not free and that’s to me you misunderstood the gospel. I just preached on this last Sunday. We talked about how, it’s like a banquet, right? Like the prodigal son story in Luke 15, it’s like the banquet the father invites you too and you know what? You know what God requires of you? Nothing. Nothing. He brings the rope, He brings the ring, He brings the sandals on your feet. He prepares the food that is prepared, He sacrifices that animal. That’s all Him. You just come. But we as Christians have taught, especially here in the west, no, no, no. As long as… as you’re progressing your faith, you start to buy into that lie that you need to bring something to the table and what it becomes, is it becomes a potluck. It’s supposed to be a banquet that’s prepared by the Father through the sacrifice, the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Yet here we are, we think it’s potluck. We thought we brought our righteousness to the table.
I think that’s dangerous. It’s not freeing, it’s not liberating, it’s not life giving. I do think preachers fall into that because they believe that you see results and it’s more practical, it’s more relevant. I actually think it’s a trap to preach that way and I think there is elements of, yes, there are helpful things, practical things, and that we do need to teach as a part of our preaching because it is in the Word of God. But again, I might sound like a broken record, but I’m like, I’ll point you back. This book we handed out to our church, it’s called Gospel Fluency by Jeff Vanderstelt. The reason we did that was we’re recognizing that people are actually not as fluent in the Gospel as they may think.
So as they continue to read the primary textbook, which is the Bible, we also gave them something supplementary and we said, “Hey, would you be able to humble yourself enough to really consider what the Gospel means to you and really deep dive into what that actually means in your life and how it transforms you, how it affects you”. Because without a solid understanding of the Gospel, we end up preaching in a way that’s broken and I think we’re seeing some manifestations of our misunderstanding of the Gospel being, I guess fleshed out in our preaching and I think if that endures, I think is dangerous because it doesn’t offer the hope of Christ.

Ryan McCurdy:
What would you say to someone who’s listening to this conversation and they’re being stretched and challenged and they’re opening their ears a little bit and they’re saying, “Okay, okay, this is interesting. I hear this encouragement to expository, but obviously balanced and healthy diet of application and study and understanding”. What would you say to someone who’s feeling stuck and who feels like, “I’ve just had topical preaching my whole life and I feel myself wanting more depth”. Maybe there’s millennials who are listening who are saying, “What, there’s something wrong with me?” Like, “I got to do it on my own” and maybe there’s Gen Z’s listening and Gen Zed’s, whatever, Gen Z. There’s Gen Z’s listening and they’re saying, “Yeah, we need to return to this understanding that we are broken”.
So knowing that those are the kind of probably the two main listeners of our time together, what word of encouragement would you give to, yeah, like you referred to in the Book of Acts, everyday Jew that’s scattered and what can we do to preach the Gospel in everyday life? What’s something that even if you’re not a pastor, you’re not involved in a church all the time. Like how can we equip ourselves to do this?

Paul Park:
I would say if you’re not, well, if you’re wanting to do this, if you want to go deeper into the Bible and stuff. I think vulnerability has been a buzzword recently and you know what, let’s own that. Young people are more embracing of that. So let’s own the fact that we can be humble enough to ask someone to help. I think that’s how God designed it that we would have a community of people around us, whether it’s by you joining a community group at your church or finding one or two people around you who can actually help you study the Word of God really well and deeply, I would encourage you to take that step. When you ask a more mature Christian to do that for you, they’re delighted. Most of the time they will be delighted for you.
They’re never sad or they won’t really be like, “Ah, you know, I don’t know if it’s worth my time”. I mean, come on. I would love a young person come to me and say that. So that’s one thing, but if you want to be good at this being missional, being that scattered church, I would say work on two things and this is what I want to work on personally as well. Deeply dive into the Word of God so that you know the truth and that you’re standing on fact of truth and then deeply study the world. Know what you’re dealing with. If you don’t have any non-Christian friends, actually look around and say, “Okay, I should probably make some non-Christian friends”.
Hear their stories, don’t just talk, talk, talk – hear their stories. Understand what are some of the concerns, some of the insecurities, some of the questions that they have about life and then you yourself have to be able to be like, “Okay, can I answer that?” If my mom is going through cancer right now and I think it’s unfair, I still believe that there’s a loving God. I still believe that God is powerful enough to actually heal if you want it to. So the only answer is that, He’s intentionally not healing. How do I recon – if you cannot reconcile that within yourself, you cannot go and actually preach that to others. So that will actually challenge you hearing the questions of the world and going deep into the Word of God. It will challenge your own theology and your own faith and as you continue to grow in your own faith, it will naturally overflow. It will naturally overflow into you sharing it and of course with the help of the community around you, don’t do it alone. Doing it alone is just a disaster. I never meant us to do it alone.

Ryan McCurdy:
Yeah, I think that’s awesome. That’s great encouragement. That’s so good, because again, there’s the draw to a potential pitfall. The ditch on either side of the road, which is you’re so heavenly minded, you’re so biblically minded, you’re no earthly good and you’re so earthly minded. You’re so far from scripture and you’re so far from God. What I’m hearing you say is like, “No, no, no. I have one foot in both. We’re on this planet. We’re on this world for a time and so know God’s Word, but also learn how to share it”.

Paul Park:
Absolutely.

Ryan McCurdy:
That’s one of the challenges is, how do you share your faith, not just how do you share your faith, how do you share your faith in a way that the world will hear you? Because to a boomer, so somebody who’s over 60 or a Gen X who’s kind of like the 40, the 50 or whatever, come back to Gen Y, come back to Gen Z, they hear things differently. They hear the same thing differently and so knowing your culture I think that’s a great piece of advice, but being rooted in the Word is of utmost importance and so Paul, thanks so much. I feel like we could keep talking for hours and hours, but we won’t. We’ll end it here. Really have appreciated your wisdom on this and I pray for you as you lead in your church that God will continue to use you as you communicate the Gospel. So thanks so much for being on, I’m sure we’ll have you on again in the future.

Paul Park:
Thanks so much. It’s a pleasure.

Ryan McCurdy:
Thanks for joining us on this episode of indoubt with Paul Park. As we had our second conversation on preaching this time looking more at topical preaching and some of the effects of topical preaching on church life and church culture and how actually preaching and the style that churches tend to go in terms of preaching could actually shape the broader sense of community in church culture.
indoubt exists to bring the good news of Jesus into everyday issues of life, faith and culture. We want to encourage you and equip you to engage with the tough questions of our time in a way that honors God. Download our APP and follow us for updates on Instagram @indoubtca. We would love to hear from you on topics that you’d like for us to discuss and how indoubt has impacted you. Email us at info@indoubt.ca and stay connected with us for next week’s episode as we talk with Autumn Miles for part two of our discussion with her.

Kourtney Cromwell:
Thanks so much for listening. If you want to hear more, subscribe on iTunes and Spotify or visit us online at indoubt.ca or indoubt.com. We’re also on social media, so make sure to follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

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Paul Park joins the indoubt Podcast to discuss the balance of preaching trends and the truth.

Who's Our Guest?

Paul Park

Paul loves sharing the Good News of Jesus in whatever context God allows, and considers it a privilege to participate in God’s mission. With his experience of growing up in a highly secular culture and serving the Tsawwassen First Nation community, Paul has learned to share God’s word in various settings.
Paul Park joins the indoubt Podcast to discuss the balance of preaching trends and the truth.

Who's Our Guest?

Paul Park

Paul loves sharing the Good News of Jesus in whatever context God allows, and considers it a privilege to participate in God’s mission. With his experience of growing up in a highly secular culture and serving the Tsawwassen First Nation community, Paul has learned to share God’s word in various settings.