Rick Warren/Andy Stanley Plea for Life Application Preaching

Rick Warren and Andy Stanley are probably the most criticized yet popular preachers of the 21st century. They are criticized on the point of not being exegetical or “deep enough” and are popular because of the numbers of people that flock to hear their messages. Here are a handful of preaching points made by these Rock Star Chelebrities (church celebrities) Most are worth a double take.

Rick Warren's Philosophy of Preaching

-It isn’t the message that is boring, it has to do with the way we are delivering it.
-The basis for radical preaching is the great commission
-The goal of radical preaching is obedience
-It is not enough to know the word of God
-Teach them to obey
-2 Timothy 3: The purpose of the Bible is action
-The result of radical preaching is a serving disciple
-It is not enough to apply it personally, you also have to answer the question, “What does this mean to us as a church?”
-Preaching should lead to action, obedience, practice
-Jesus and every NT preacher preached for action
-You only believe the parts of the Bible you do
-Radical preaching is preaching for a response
-Preacher’s need to pray “Lord, who is coming and what do I need to say?”
-Preaching needs to answer the “why question” but also the “how question”
-All behavior is based on a belief
-What you believe affects how you behave
-If you want to change how people act, change what they believe
-Behind every sin is a lie I am believing
-When you sin, at that moment you are doing what you believe is the best thing you could do
-When you look at your congregation, you can see their behavior, preaching needs to figure out the lie beneath the behavior and then preach on that
-Change always starts in the mind
-Trying to change people’s behavior without changing their beliefs is wrong, backwards
-The auto pilot in your life is your belief system, it is why you are not able to change
-You cannot just change behavior, you must change the mindset
-It is not hard to obey when your mind is renewed
-If you want to see lives changed, you must get to the root of their sin
-Maturity is not always doing what you feel like doing
-The Bible term for “changing your mind” is repentance
-Repentance doesn’t mean stop doing bad things, it means, to change your mind
-Most preaching is about changing what you do, when it needs to be about changing how we think something
-repentance is a paradigm shift
-You don’t change people’s minds, the applied word of God does
-The goal of preaching is life application and obedience
-Changing the way I act is the fruit of repentance
-Deeds are the proof of repentance
-The deepest preaching is preaching for repentance
-Life application preaching is not shallow preaching
-Shallow is preaching doctrine without applying it to life change, the sins of your people and the things that need changing

-Repentance is our fundamental message, changing from this thought to that thought
-To produce lasting life change, you must enlighten the mind, engage the emotions and challenge the will
-There is an element of feeling, thinking and doing in radical preaching
-You have to encourage, challenge, build up and send them out in your sermons
-Hold up, build up, fire up
-Most preachers are afraid to stand up and call people out and challenge them
-Every sermon comes down to 2 words, “Will you?”


Andy Stanley’s Philosophy of Preaching

-If we are not careful, our approach to preaching will trump our goal in preaching
-People in our country abandon churches today because they went to one
-In marriage, approach is everything, it’s the same with preaching
-Having the right goal is not contingent on being right, it’s contingent on approach
-Andy Stanley’s goal for preaching is “for people to live their lives as if God is with them”
-My goal in preaching, must shape my approach
-What is your goal when you preach?
-I want to lure people into the Scripture and rub their noses in it, take one sticky statement and jam down into their heart and then send them out
-What is your approach?
-Preach in Pieces, not Points
-Preaching long is a sign of unpreparation, not preparation.

Five questions Andy Stanley asks each week when he preaches (in bold)

1. Who is this about…really?
-As long as the preaching is about me, I will fail in my approach to draw people in and give them something to do when they go out
-The pressure we feel is “What am I going to say” instead of “Who will be there and what do they need to hear”
-If someone I care about said to me, “I’m coming to your church one more time and if something doesn’t happen, I’m not coming back”
-The way you get over you, is you get so thoroughly prepared that you don’t even have to think hard about what you are doing

2. What’s my burden?
-This the one thing you have to say and you will die if you don’t get to say it
-Dig it til you find it
-Build everything around it
-Make it stick
I-f you only had 1 minute, what would you say?
-To understand why, submit and apply.
-What is the 1 thing that you have to say?
-Where’s the tension?
-If there is no tension, no one will pay attention

-What is the question this message answers?
-What is the tension this message resolves?
-What is the mystery this message solves?
-What is the issue this message addresses?


-For people to do something, they must be interested, they won’t be interested if there is no tension
-Do I own this? Have I internalized this message?
-If you don’t own it, it won’t flow
-The best way to internalize the talk is to memorize pieces, not points
-We don’t preach point, we only have 1 point
-If you can think through the pieces, you don’t need notes
-Our minds don’t work in points
-Am I allowing the text to speak?
-Bring your energy to the text
-You need to uncover the energy in the text
-Don’t spend all your energy on your cool stories
-If you are afraid of losing people’s interest in the Bible, you aren’t prepared