Thanks, Peter, for yet another thought provoking article. While your discourse focuses upon the message to be proclaimed by the preacher, the missing elements are the attitudes and behaviour of the preacher in their interactions with members of their flock. Too often today preachers fail to recognise they are talking to intelligent, and mostly, fairly well educated people. People who can generally spot a hypocrite fairly quickly.

Therefore, for a preacher to be effective today those listening need to see in his/her demeanour some evidence that they take the gospel message they are proclaiming seriously, to the point of adopting a servant leadership model and demonstrating at least some modesty and humility. Pomposity and overt hypocrisy are big turnoffs to people today, especially the young, no matter how sound the message might be.

Excellent article Peter. I will say though I believe many young people today are responding to the reality of the power of the gospel message. The liberals seem to have only the old traditionals hanging on as well as the lefties in the media and the flakes seem to have the gullible. I am encouraged by the number of young people sold out to the gospel of Christ. I know one girl who topped her year 12 in her town and yet still decided to take the gospel to China. There are still many paying the price to take the gospel out. God has used her in an amazing way. I recently spent some time with a group of young people who simply desire the reality of the life changing message of Jesus. The best preachers are those who know that they have a great responsibility in giving out the only message that can change and challenge hearts and save souls.

I felt the article related mainly to the traditional churches who seem to have lost what they were Given.

Im connected the charismatics and I find our preaching is still on-fire for Jesus and we still make congregationalists aware of satan and his spirits...quite a lot actually.
Our three churches, the three the family goes to, are mostly non-political and that helps.
We didnt get distracted:)
We see miracle healings and we hear prophetic words from The Holy Spirit.
Christ is preached in every meeting and theres always an alter call for people to give their lives to The Lord. The churches we go to are full of joy and we really dance around in praise and worship.

Sadly, I dont see much hope for the "trads" unless they are going to open up to The Holy Spirit and invite Him to take charge of their churches.

When someone can prove to me that God exits, I will then listen to any preacher, either Traditionalist or Modern, what a delusion preachers convey to the gullible.

There is one other failure of nerve that you have not quite touched upon. That is the failure which comes from those who do see life is fraught with difficulty, but who retreat to old models of preaching. So they preach about the dangers and shortcomings of life in the language of those C16 preachers you mention. Social justice that relates to C21, social comment beyond safe antiabortion statements and anti drink statements etc, does not happen. So the preaching sounds relevant and not full of platitudes, indeed it is often strident and andgry, but it is still afraid.

Preachers are too often scared to criticise the immigration detention centres or the racism in our own congregations etc. I can't blame us, I might add. When I commented, a couple of years ago, that if Jesus family had fled to Australia and not Egypt they would have been put into Woomera, I was heckled from the pews, three people pointedly walked out and I was physically intimidated by another after church.

Andrew Prior http://www.churchrewired.org

Ojnab, Expecting someone to prove that God exists is as inane as someone expecting you to prove that S/He doesn't. The existence or non-existence of God is a 'mystery' to mankind, which makes it all that more interesting and exciting in this world where so many people demand proof prior to being able to believe in a phenomenonal view of the world and our place in it. A mystical framework of understanding that has stood the test of time, for 2000 to 5000 years now, despite the attempts of men and women to bring it down, is something I give thanks for having been given.