How to Benefit from Boring Preaching

Well, the grace of God and the peace of Jesus be with each one this morning. It's a joy to be with you again.

When is the last time that you were bored? I'm talking about the "I'm 11 years old and the rest of the summer stretches ahead of me" kind of bored. When's the last time you experienced that?

Writer Regan Rose several years ago said, "I don't think I've been bored since around 2012." Incidentally, that was the year I got my first smartphone. And also, as it turns out, the year the smartphone became ubiquitous, exceeding 50% adoption in the United States. 2012 was the year that we killed boredom.

He goes on to say, "Killing boredom sounds good, but what if something else died with it?" What if, in an age of angst, overwhelm, and busyness, boredom is exactly the thing that we're missing? Whereas in the past, the boredom of waiting in line might have been relieved by a conversation with a stranger, now it's eased by scrolling Instagram. Before, we might have spent an empty Saturday pursuing a creative endeavor.

Now, instead of boredom turning into creativity, we consume instead of create.

He goes on to say, "We used to have hobbies, now we just have phones."

When I was around 11 years old, my family and I were living in Big Valley, which is just an hour and a half north of here, and there were special meetings going on at the Ferguson Valley Brethren in Christ Church. Luke Kiefer Sr., I believe, was the special evangelist. He was a well-known speaker and usually fairly interesting in the Brethren in Christ circles.

And so my parents decided our family would go over there that weekday evening. I don't know what was going through my 11-year-old mind, but for some reason I was a little bored that night. I was restless. I had heard many sermons in my life, of course, but I'm not sure what caused my angst that evening.

What would you advise an 11-year-old bored boy to do?

The title of the message this morning is, "How to Benefit from Boring Preaching."

How to benefit from boring preaching. I assure you right out of the gate that this is no reflection at all on our church here at Shippensburg Christian Fellowship. I have done some traveling in the conservative and Baptist world and heard a number of preachers and speakers out there, and I feel that we have a very good quality of preaching and teaching overall here.

What set me down this trek was a conversation I had several weeks ago with some of my coworkers, all of whom are church attenders and all of whom I enjoy working with. We got on the subject of sermons. I was asking them about the sermons that they had heard the previous day, and the matter of dull sermons came up. And I mentioned that I had thought for some time about preaching a message on boring sermons, and a couple of them instantly said, "Well, if you do, we would listen to it." I don't know if they'll listen to it or not, but it's something that's been rolling around in my mind, not just in the last several weeks, but for many years.

If we can benefit from boring sermons, I think we can probably benefit from all sermons. And so that's my interest today.

Now, I'm not trying to let off the hook those who are responsible to serve us through preaching. It is our responsibility to be as interesting as possible. I do think it's a tragedy to take the most interesting book in the world and turn it into something that is dull.

And so you're probably aware that I do try to train preacher boys in being more interesting and bringing a passion to the pulpit. It is the speaker's responsibility to bring the energy to the room. However, as preachers, as speakers, we also enjoy reciprocal energy from you.

And the reality is, even the best teachers and preachers end up with a few duds, we might say. I preached almost every Sunday for 10 years, and I assure you I had plenty of boring ones and plenty of boring spots in the messages that I inflicted upon my congregation.

And I'm confident that I have a number of boring ones left inside of me. And so this is going to offer you some inoculation or some help. In fact, you might be saying, "Brandon, this is going down a boring path. Can you just get to the application now so that I can get through the rest of this message?" I hope not.

I want you to learn how to benefit from boring sermons so that you can profit from all preaching and teaching. That's the main thrust. I want you to learn how to benefit from boring sermons so that you can benefit from all teaching and preaching.

At the outset, I'd like you to listen to the parable of the sower with which we are probably all quite familiar.

That parable is emphasizing hearing. And so it is offered in the synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, all three of those give their version of Jesus teaching this parable. But I'm not going to tell you which one I'm reading from because I want you to listen to it, okay?

To do what this parable is about.

Jesus, according to the writers, it seems that this was his first parable, at least the one that they put in writing. And so at the outset of his ministry, he's highlighting how important it is to think about how we hear, how we listen.

Is there anyone here that's between the ages of 10 and 14? Any 10 to 14-year-olds? Okay, I think there are a few. I have an assignment for you. And the rest of you can jump in too. But as I'm reading through these verses, I want you to listen, you 10 to 14-year-olds, for the number of times that the word "listen" and the word "hear" is used in our text.

So we're reading from somewhere in the gospels. And again, he, Jesus, began to teach by the sea. And a great multitude was gathered to him so that he got into a boat and sat in it on the sea. And the whole multitude was on the land facing the sea. Then he taught them many things by parables and said to them in his teaching, "Listen."

Behold, a sower went out to sow. And it happened as he sowed that some seed fell by the wayside, and the birds of the air came and devoured it. Some fell on stony ground where it did not have much earth, and immediately it sprang up because it had no depth of earth. But when the summer was up, it was scorched, and because it had no root, it withered away. And some seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no crop. But other seed fell on good ground and yielded a crop that sprang up, increased and produced some thirty-fold, some sixty, and some a hundred.

And he said to them, "He who has ears to hear, let him hear." But when he was alone, those around him with the twelve asked him about the parable. And he said to them, "To you it has been given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God, but to those who are outside, all things come in parables." So that, and he's quoting here, "So that seeing they may see and not perceive, and hearing they may hear and not understand, lest they should turn and their sins be forgiven them."

And he said to them, "Do you not understand this parable? How then will you understand all the parables? The sower sows the word, and these are the ones by the wayside where the word is sown. When they hear, Satan comes immediately and takes away the word that was sown in their hearts. These likewise are the ones sown on stony ground who, when they hear the word, immediately receive it with gladness, and they have no root in themselves and so endure only for a time.

Afterward, when tribulations or persecution arises for the word's sake, immediately they stumble. Now, these are the ones sown among thorns. They are the ones who hear the word, and the riches of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, I'm sorry, the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things entering in choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful. But these are the ones sown on good ground, those who hear the word." I'm purposefully stopping short there, but I'm trying to emphasize something about these four groups of people as illustrated by these four soils. Now, 10 to 15-year-olds, 10 to 14-year-olds, sorry, 10 to 14-year-olds, how many times was the word "listen" used in our text that you heard?

Anybody?

It might have been hard to pick out, but it was one time. One time, okay? How many times did you hear the word "hear"?

I think I heard six. I believe I counted seven. Again, it's kind of hard to follow unless you're making tally marks as I was reading. Interestingly, the word that Jesus uses for "listen" at the very outset is the same word in Greek that's used for the word "hear" that's used throughout this passage.

So these four people or groups of people all experienced the same thing.

Jesus said they all hear. They all hear the word.

But that fourth group of people, and I'm reading from the New King James, so it's a little different in the King James, but it's the same idea, same concept as far as what we have here with our acronym.

What did that fourth group do with what they heard that made them different? What's the word that starts with A in the New King James?

Okay, you can turn to Mark 4. That's where the text is.

Mark 4:20, "Those who hear the word," but these are the ones sown on good ground, "those who hear the word, accept it and bear fruit." Whoops.

So there you have it. Their habit is hearing, accepting, and bearing fruit. If you don't have it, you don't have it. I'm a father of five, so I feel like I'm entitled to at least one corny dad joke every now and then.

And the truth is, oftentimes the corny ones tend to stick for some reason. So if you don't care for it, just overlook it.

The King James gives a very similar word here. What does the King James say?

Receive. Receive, yeah. So those who benefit are those who hear and receive, which results then in the bearing of fruit.

The reality is that as listeners, none of us can control how interesting a speaker is going to be, can we? We can sit there and chafe under it. If we feel like it's not going the way we wish, we can just put our heads down and white-knuckle it and power through. Just wait for that clock to spin to where it needs to spin, and we'll be done.

We can analyze it. We can close our eyes and go to sleep. We can daydream. But as a listener, I can't make the speaker more interesting. I just can't.

I can't change what it is.

The only person that we can change, of course, is ourselves. Ourselves. And so the question to ask during a message or a teaching is not how long will it take, but how much can I receive? How much can I accept? How much can I take in?

Instead of asking, "How well is he preaching?" ask, "How well am I listening?" Again, I'm not taking responsibility away from the preacher, but you can't control me, okay?

Jesus mentions at least two other very important thoughts about hearing. The first is further on in our text here in Mark 4:21. He goes on to say to his disciples and those gathered around him, "Is a lamp brought to be put under a basket or under a bed? Is it not to be set up on a lampstand? For there is nothing hidden which will not be revealed, nor has anything been kept secret but that it should come to light. If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear." There he says it again, this whole thing of hearing. Then he said to them, "Take heed what you hear.

With the same measure you use, it will be measured to you. And to you who hear, more will be given. For whoever has, to him more will be given. But whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him." This ties into our Sunday school lesson. This is a kingdom principle.

It illustrates how important it is that we hear well. Because if I don't hear well, I'm in danger of losing even what I thought I had.

Take heed what you hear.

If you flip to Luke 8, which is where Luke gives the account of the parable of the sower, after giving that parable and saying many of the same things that he says here in Mark, it's interesting that Jesus says there in Luke 8:18, now in Mark, he said, "Take heed what you hear." But there in Luke 8:18, he says, "Therefore take heed how you hear." Take heed how you hear.

We live in a world that's full of information. So yes, we need to be careful what we're listening to, but we also need to be mindful of how we're listening.

And there again, he says in Luke 8:18, "For whoever has, to him more will be given. And whoever does not have, even what he seems to have, will be taken from him." There again, whether we have a gain or a loss in the spiritual realm is directly tied to what we're doing with our physical, spiritual ears and engaging with or not what is being presented to us.

What we hear and how we hear are very serious matters in the kingdom. So I want you to learn how to benefit from boring sermons so that you can profit from all preaching and teaching. In order to hear more profitably, I have three thoughts I'd like to share with you. The first is that it is valuable and important to prepare ahead. Prepare ahead.

And this, of course, has to do with before the teaching, before the sermon, before the Sunday school lesson, preparing ahead. There's value in praying for the preacher. Thank you. Those of you who prayed for me in the prayer time today, I appreciate that. Brother Anthony has been faithful over the years to text me and say, "Hey, I've been praying for you." And thank you. Thank you, brother. Several months ago, Brother Elim and I crossed paths, and he said to me, he said, "Marth and I weren't in church this past Sunday.

Who did they announce is supposed to be preaching this coming Sunday?" He said, "I always like to be praying for that person during the week." And I appreciate that. That's a beautiful thing. I appreciate that the brotherhood is engaged in supporting the person to be preaching in the week to come. That is a blessing. That's one way to be preparing ahead.

What I think this does is it helps to get us invested in the service that we're going to be part of. Oh, I prayed for that brother. I think maybe I'll be a little more purposeful in clicking in and engaging.

I like to think of it as if I come prepared, then I come prepared. Our family on our way to church, and this was Heather's brainchild, but some time ago, she started saying, "You know what? We should sing on our way to church." Probably a lot of you do that with your families. But sing a song, a couple of songs on the way to church, get our voices warmed up. And it's not really a good idea to be singing the first note in church from the first song for the first time today.

Just warm up the voice a little bit, get it ready, prepared. But another thing that I really appreciate is often we'll ask one of the children to pray for the service as well. And that just has a way of preparing our family, preparing our hearts, getting us ready for what we're coming to be involved in, to cultivate that receptivity, that responsiveness that we need and that we want our children to have as well.

Preparing ahead might be as boring as making sure that your Saturday evening activities do not compromise your Sunday morning alertness. I know that can be hard. It might be as boring as making sure that you and your children have some protein before you go to church.

Nobody's able to focus very well when they're feeling hungry, hungry and angry.

Prepare ahead. Secondly, I believe that it's good for us to prepare for attention. Prepare for attention. Preparing ahead has to do with preparing ahead of time before the sermon. Preparing for attention is what we can do during that teaching, during that sermon or that preaching.

We realize that teaching and preaching are not supposed to be simply a monologue, just one person doing all the talking, although that usually happens, especially with preaching. I'm not asking any of you to stand up and ask for clarification as I'm preaching necessarily.

But what I'm saying is that in teaching and preaching, it's a two-way or should be a two-way communication. Even though as listeners, you are largely silent, that doesn't mean that communication is not important and shouldn't be happening. There's other ways to communicate besides the verbal, right?

Am I right on that? There's lots of other ways to communicate. Body language, eyes, the look of the face, all of that.

And so as listeners, I want to encourage you that your job is not just to sit there passively and take it in. Now, I understand after a hard day at work, you can feel that way sometimes. When I worked on Maestro in the career as a young man, I'd go to Wednesday evening prayer meeting and I'd just sort of sit back and feed me, Pastor, feed me. I'm just like, I need something, but I don't have much to give. I'm shot.

But typically on a Sunday morning, this is not just a passive taking in, but it's an interactive thing where you're communicating to me, I'm communicating with you, and there's a two-way street going on.

The rules of etiquette say that if someone is speaking to a group, it's actually rude for the listener to not look at the person who's speaking. Now, I think there are some exceptions to that. I think if you're taking notes, that's a very good reason for you to not have your eyes on the speaker.

Squirmy children are very difficult to deal with, and you got to keep an eye on them, make sure they're not doing something they shouldn't. So there's ways that, yeah, our attention gets diverted here and there.

So what to do for a young boy who's 11 years old, he's listening to Luke Kiefer Senior and he's bored. I don't know quite how it happened. I don't know if my parents gave me a piece of paper or I just found one somewhere. Somehow I got a piece of paper and I got a pen and I started taking notes as Brother Luke Kiefer was preaching.

And I was hooked. I felt like it made the message come alive for me. And I became an avid note taker. And I've been taking notes for 35-plus years now. Now, it's waxed and waned a bit with having children on the lap, and I mentioned the squirminess. It makes note taking difficult or almost impossible. But I found that to be a very, very helpful way for me to get something from the message, whether it was a great message or a mediocre one, and feel like I was able to stay engaged.

Incidentally, how many of you are regular note takers? Okay, I'm going to say about 5%. So that's great. It's not for everybody, okay? Some people find it distracting. It can actually serve as a distraction from engaging in the message. So be aware of that as you do that.

John Dee was telling me a story of how his mother attended a conservative Baptist church where the preaching was very poor. And the minister, whom we'll call Joe, not his name, was ordained there as a minister and just about as dull in his preaching as they come.

And John did not attend the church, but he would call his mother. Occasionally, he would attend with her, of course, but that was not his church. Later on, the church ordained another man, we'll name Luke. Again, not his name.

And so Joe was the original one. Luke was coming alongside now as another minister. And John talked to his brother Daniel the one day and he said, "So how's Luke doing?" "Oh," Daniel said, "compared to Luke, Joe preaches like Billy Graham."

It went from bad to worse.

But you know, whenever John would call his mother and talk to her, every single time he would ask her about the sermon, about the message she heard, oh, she was enthusiastic about it. She would say, "Oh, Joe preached a wonderful message." Or, "Luke just preached a wonderful message."

And she was sincere about it. She wasn't putting anything on.

Now, there's one thing that John's mother did, and that was she was a note taker. She would write notes and she would take down the main points and what the preacher said. And when she passed away, there were dozens of notebooks of her sermon notes that she had taken that they divvied out among the family. So I'm offering that to you as one way that you can prepare your attention. If you're struggling to pay attention, think about that as an option. Again, it's not for everybody. Another thing you could do is to draw pictures. Now, I offer this with some reservations.

But when I think about somebody like Lena Koons, who was part of this congregation, there are many times I think to myself, now, if Lena Koons was sitting in the congregation and she was going to illustrate what I was preaching, I wonder what her illustration would look like.

How would she define it? How would she pictorilize it? I think there's some real value in being able to put some art to the truth that we are attempting to communicate. And so if you have a gift for that, again, not to distract from the preaching, not distract your mind from it, but to engage in it and to somehow get that truth into your heart.

Something that all of us can do and should do, and I should do more as far as this matter of attention, is to pray. If the preacher goes down a rabbit trail and gets lost in the bushes and is spitting cotton, it's really good just to sit back and pray for him.

He's struggling, okay? Every one of us that have spoken, we know what it's like to struggle. And so you just sit there and you pray. Now, don't do it out loud and fervently, please, but pray.

Sometimes it feels like praying isn't doing anything, but it's actually a very vital aspect of life. Al Gordon, who wrote a book just came out lately, Spark, notes that in an attempt to unlock how our brains work, scientists have studied the brain's electromagnetic patterns across a wide range of human experiences. Different areas of the brain activate depending on the task. Sleep triggers one region, logic and reason another, memory retention another, and emotions like love and attraction yet another. But what they discovered was fascinating and unexpected. The same parts of your brain that power imagination and your creative flow also fire up your moments of spiritual connection.

Studies have uncovered that the prefrontal cortex and the posterior cingulate cortex, key components of the brain's default mode network, which become active when we're daydreaming, reflecting, and allowing our imaginations to roam free, also mysteriously light up during moments of prayer, worship, and deep spiritual engagement.

In their book, How God Changes the Brain, neuroscientists Andrew Newberg and Mark Robert Waldman described the surprising discovery that the very regions of the brain, quote, "responsible for the greater imagination, creativity, and originality, are also activated when we think about the immaterial qualities of God."

When we think about God. In other words, the very part of your brain responsible for creative insight is the same part that activates when you connect with God. The creative act is at its core a spiritual one. Creativity is prayer and prayer is creativity.

Further in his book, Gordon says, "In the presence of God, our deepest dreams come to life." But to enable this, we must slow down and give God our fullest attention. Attention. We're talking about attention here.

Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity, wrote 20th-century French philosopher Simone Weil, describing prayer as a kind of attention. She said, "The soul empties itself of all its own contents in order to receive in itself the being it is looking at, just as he is in all his truth. Only he who is capable of attention can do this."

Gordon then says prayer is about slowing down and creating space and has been shown to enhance divergent thinking, cultivate peace, and reduce stress. It activates neuroplasticity, which means reorganizing the mind in good ways.

The brain's ability to adapt and to reprioritize itself. Beyond that, prayer fosters emotional connection and empathy, shaping us into a people of greater understanding and compassion, even when our minds feel unfruitful, even when we find ourselves drifting, because in those quiet spaces, something deeper is always at work. What I'm trying to say is I really believe that even in the midst of boring times in life, something deeper is going on if we just lean into the boredom.

If we just allow the boredom to happen. We have so much diversion and distraction today. People are afraid of boredom. When in fact, I think it would do us a lot of good to have more. And we might find ourselves becoming even more alive and creative.

I maybe shouldn't confess this, but there are times when I'm sitting here listening to the Sunday school discussion or the preaching that I will have a thought that sparks something in me that I write down. There's an insight. Maybe I was feeling a little bit bored, but there's some value in boredom and allowing our minds to have some space. And what I really appreciate is when he talks about the fact that prayer lights up those same parts of our brain. That's just like our God to design us that way. We only think of prayer as boring, but prayer is actually a gateway to creativity and to a fresh excitement in life.

A fourth way to show attention in the midst of a teaching or a preaching, well, I won't say it. First of all, let me say this. I feel that in some ways we are structured here in our church, physically speaking, with our pews and our chairs, we're structured to make it just a little bit harder for the person who is preaching or teaching.

And why do I say that? But we have these cushioned pews here and they lean back just a little bit. So I want to try I want you to try a little experiment here. Those of you who are able to, I want you to lean forward just a few inches, just a few inches, and just for about 10 seconds or so. So just lean forward, okay? A few inches. Now, the pews and these soft chairs. Lean back.

Okay, you can be at ease. Return unless you wish to remain.

Something we can do if we're feeling a little bit bored is lean in. Lean in.

Behavioral researcher Vanessa Van Edwards says,

"When you've done that exercise of leaning in," she says, "the simple movement activates a specific part of your brain that makes you feel more motivated." In a fascinating experiment, researchers found that when they asked participants to lean forward, they had increased neural activation in the left frontal cortex. This is the part of our brain associated with desire and motivation. It creates an eagerness to move towards something.

So an application could be that we get rid of all of our chairs and pews and get wooden backless benches, just like the Amish.

Okay, I don't see any hands for that one. So I guess we'll keep what we have, Brother Harvey.

But there's something that happens in us when we choose, even physically, to lean forward that affects us something outward that affects us inwardly. She said that the control group who was asked to lean back didn't exhibit any increased activation at all in that brain area. When we lean in, we literally feel more motivation. When we lean back, we lose motivation.

So if you're looking very comfortable, I get the feeling that I'm losing you.

Doesn't mean that's true, of course. She says, "We like it when people lean toward us and leaning in is the ultimate compliment because it makes us feel interesting and wanted. It doesn't take much. Just a few inches will do the trick." What I'm saying is even something as small as leaning in can change your perception and even your expectation of what you might receive from the teaching or preaching.

So we talked about taking notes, drawing pictures, praying, leaning in. And fifthly, and finally, a way to prepare for attention is to engage facially. And you're doing very well at that this morning. Engage facially. My request is please be a window and not a wall.

I'm constantly scanning the congregation for the windows. I want to see into what you're thinking about.

I've said quite a few times that I would love to put giant mirrors at the front of our auditorium so that everyone could see what they look like.

Because the reality is we tend to be unaware of how we come across without some sort of reflection or help from someone else. Self-awareness, incidentally, does not happen without someone else telling us what it's like to be on the other side of us.

And especially when we are comfortable or at rest, we might not know how we appear to others. Again, from Van Edwards, she talks about something that is called resting bothered face. Resting bothered face. Do you have a resting bothered face? Well, you probably won't know unless you ask somebody.

A resting bothered face is looking a little irritated, down, or sad, or mad, even when you're completely fine.

So the question is, what does your face look like when you're thinking, when you're listening, when you're working? This matters quite a bit, more than we might think, because she says, as human beings, we are very attuned to others' faces, constantly reading those facial cues that you are purposefully or accidentally giving off.

She says faces give us a wealth of information. Not only does someone's facial expression tell us what they're thinking, it can also tell us what to think. If you don't like something, maybe we won't like it either. If you're afraid, maybe we should be afraid too.

We constantly scan the faces of people around us to look for hidden clues for what to think and feel. And she says this behavior starts at a very early age. One researcher had parents hold their one-year-old baby on their laps. He then put two boxes on the table in front of them so the baby could see both him and the boxes. First, the researcher opened one of the boxes and reacted with an expression of happiness.

He made sure the baby saw his reaction, but not what was in the box. Then he opened the second box and showed a negative expression.

Again, the baby could see the researcher's face, but not what was in the box. Then the researcher put both boxes in front of the baby, and he found that all the babies immediately reached for the happiness-provoking box, but avoided the disgust-provoking box.

We learn what we want to engage with by observing people's facial expressions. And I want to encourage you. This is huge because you have children and youth and young people who are watching your expression as you are listening to the Sunday school lessons and the devotionals and the sermons, and they're reading your face to see, "I wonder if so-and-so is enjoying this. I wonder if so-and-so is getting anything out of this."

And if I unknowingly have a face that looks a little irritated or a little depressed or bored even, maybe, I'm sending cues unintentionally to other people around me. This doesn't really matter. Do you sense some of the responsibility you carry with this? Okay, I'm not putting it all on you, but we all carry a large measure of responsibility in how we come across in our facials.

Van Edwards cautions, "Be aware of what cues your face is sending at rest. Avoid accidental signs of anger, contempt, and sadness." One of the things you can do is you can just stand in front of a mirror and see what your face looks like at rest. That might take a few minutes. You might feel funny about it. You might even smile at yourself.

But what I have tended to find is that we think that we look probably two or three times more pleasant than we actually do.

And so I want to encourage you, try to look pleasant and then amp it up a little bit, and you'll probably be about right.

And I realize if that's a little too much, at least try to look intelligent. Just a spark of intelligence. That'll help with our two-way communication.

I think we usually overestimate how pleasant and engaged we appear to those around us, especially in a preaching, listening, teaching, listening situation. So these are things that we can do to glean from sermons, devotionals, Sunday school lessons. We talked about how to prepare head, prepare for attention, and finally, prepare for action. This has to do with after the message. What do we do now that the message was preached? Do we call it good and go home? The old-time evangelist Vance Havner supposedly said, "I've never heard a sermon where God didn't speak to me, but I've had some very close calls."

He always took something with him somehow.

To hear the word is a call to receive it. There's a very accessible, readable little book called Listen Up by Christopher Ashe. Subtitle is A Practical Guide to Listening to Sermons. He says, "To hear a sermon and not respond is worse than not hearing it at all. It makes us more guilty than we were before. As Jesus said about the unbelieving Jews, 'If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not be guilty of sin.

Now, however, they have no excuse for their sin.'" John 15:22. As Charles Simeon puts it, "Every sermon increases either our salvation or condemnation." I don't know if I entirely agree with that, but that is a serious thing to think about. Every devotional, Sunday school lesson, sermon that I receive, depending on how I receive it, will be for my betterment or for the worse.

And so instead of forgetting what we've heard as soon as the last song is sung, I think it'd be good for us to think about how could I raise a question related to the message with a fellow brother or sister or an insight that stuck out to me as soon as we begin to interact after that last song. And I'm not sure that we need to feel like we have to do it every time, every Sunday, but it's one way to take the sermon along, so to speak, or a truth from that sermon.

Another thing you can do if you're working with believers is to ask them, "Well, what did the preacher preach at your church yesterday?" I work with all church-going men, and several years ago, I remember I asked that question of one of my coworkers, and he stopped and he said, "Well, I haven't really been asked that question before."

And that's not a common question to ask, is it? But as I made it more common, it became more natural. And it is good to hear what other brothers and sisters are hearing in their churches. I feel like even asking that question a day after helps to keep the sermon from being relegated to that forever forgotten file.

Perhaps at the lunch table, if you have children, you can ask them, "What did the Sunday school teacher say today?" And we do that sometimes. We'll ask, "What did the teacher teach today?" It's hard to dig it out of them sometimes, but after a while, it comes out. "Yeah, this is what we heard today."

What we're trying to do is we're modeling and cultivating receptivity and trying to cultivate that in our children as well.

Prepare ahead, prepare for attention, prepare for action. I want you to learn how to benefit from boring sermons so that you can profit from all preaching and teaching. In closing, we have a tremendous opportunity to sit under the regular preaching of the Word and the teaching that we have in Sunday school. And thank you, Sunday school teachers, for all the work that you put into teaching Sunday after Sunday, the devotionals that are given.

It's such a great opportunity that we have. And if it's presented poorly or dully, it can be easy for us to take that blessing for granted and discount it, but it's still a blessing. And so my desire is that you would consider your ability to respond and your responsibility to glean something from each lesson and sermon that you receive.

I would be curious if any of you have something that you do to glean - it doesn't have to be a boring sermon, but from sermons in general - that you have found helpful over the years or any other word of critique or insight.