Preaching to the Choir
Mike Anderson
It's very sad that the term "preaching to the choir" is a text book cliche, yet many churches and Christians are still only preaching to the converted. Too many Christians are the cliche, they are only preaching to the choir. These people only talk about Jesus with Jesus people, they only pray when they're at the dinner table, they are only friends with people from church, they never take part in secular events, and always say they'll pray for some one—but almost never do.
Do you only 'preach to the choir'?
Saul Williams is an activist, poet, and musician. He's known for being anti-authoritarian and against "the man" (I don't know if he's a Christian, so don't sign up for his theology class). But his music was recently featured in a Nike commercial—his fans were flabbergasted that he could possibly do work for a corporation.
Watch the Commercial
Williams wrote an open letter explaining his reasoning for selling the rights to the song (there are a couple cuss words—but if you're going to be a missionary to our culture you'll have to deal with a few of those). I found this quote from a 37signals blog post.
William's quote about preaching to the choir.
- "I received a lot of questions from some about why I would allow my song ‘List of Demands’ to be used in a Nike campaign. Ironically, half of the people now reading this post never heard of me until that commercial aired. That, indeed, was one of my reasons for allowing it. A small circle of poets and conscious do-gooders are not enough to effect the change necessary to shift our planet in peril. We must enlist people from all walks of life, people not accustomed to questioning the norm, people who may simply want to dance uninterrupted without message or slogan. I see no glory in ‘preaching to the converted’."
The quote that stuck out to me was "I see no glory in ‘preaching to the converted’." and while I certainly see a big point in preaching to Christians still because we're all sinners who need to be convicted by the Word daily... He has a HUGE point. We need to preach the Gospel everywhere—at big corporations and beat poetry clubs, to sports teams and video game nerds, to rock stars and soccer moms, to condo dwelling city people and the homeless guy at the freeway off ramp. Everyone needs to know about Jesus, and that is what the Resurgence is about. It's a movement to equip people to love Jesus and tell the whole world about Him.




