Why do we discuss the Sermon on Sunday nights?

For Review.

Anyone who has ever studied for a test understands the wisdom in revisiting information. As humans, we suffer from perpetual memory loss. I can hear the parent who is yelling, “understatement!” Agreed. We forget stuff. Sermon discussions help students review what was preached that morning so they don’t forget as easily. Our memory (especially when it comes to sermons) is not awesome so we need to be reminded…reminded…and oh yeah, we need someone to remind us. Ultimately, this responsibility falls in the laps of every parent (more about that in #5). Every Sunday morning, God shows up and delivers a gift to his people through the pulpit. It glorifies God when we take his preached word seriously enough to spend time thinking it over in the context of community. 

For Respect.

The fact that we spend Sunday evenings talking about what happened on Sunday morning sends a clear message to students, “Sunday morning is important!” It says, “Weekly attendance is important.” Specifically, sermon discussions highlight the importance of the Sunday morning pulpit. These 35-minute-long “talks” are so important that we are going to talk about them two more times formally through small group and family worship.

For Relevance.

There are millions of curriculum programs out there for teenagers. Yet nothing is going to be as contextualized to Spartanburg and to our church like the sermons that are preached here on Sunday mornings.

For Rhythm.

It’s too easy for youth ministry to “do it’s own thing” and end up off-beat with the direction of “big church.” Sermon discussions keep Broadcast on-beat with the whole body of believers. When we are all moving in the same direction, unity is promoted.

For Reinforcement.

Doing sermon discussions reinforces the parents’ responsibility to disciple their children. With this model, students will hear one sermon three times—through the preacher, then in small group and finally through mom and dad in family worship. Now when the family sits down for dinner to discuss the Sunday morning sermon, the student will hopefully be more familiar with the material. We know a song or movie better the third time we hear it, are much more eager to talk about it and may even have some of the lines memorized. The same is true with sermons, but on an infinitely more important scale.

For Repentance.

Our hearts are slow to change. Our sin nature is so deep that naturally we do not like sound doctrine (2 Timothy 4:3). We don’t want to do what the Bible says (James 1:22), and our hearts are hard. As we listen to a sermon we are constantly resisting instead of repenting. Naturally, we are proud and evasive (even while we listen to the sermons) rather than repentant. Although repentance is ultimately a work of the Holy Spirit, one sermon attacking the heart three times increases the likelihood that a heart will repent.[1]

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[1] Think of the unrepentant heart as a barricaded castle door and the preached word as a battering ram. It will probably take more than one strike from the battering ram to move the heart to repent.