I'm proud to say that I often observe and sometimes admire ministers from many different denominations. I try to learn lessons of preaching, leadership and church growth from them and seek to apply what I can to my specific context. I realize that many of my colleagues do the same and while I applaud the open mindedness of those who observe and learn from the practices of ministers of other faiths, I have been led to wonder, from time to time, if we have lost our relevancy as Adventists.
At the risk of sounding "old school" I'm going to share my opinion. In our rush to copy other denomination's popular methods, many Adventist ministers have copied a popular message as well. We've adopted so called "psychological preaching" or "inspirational preaching" for Sabbath mornings and, as a result, have begun to sound like everyone else, and dangerously so. This begs the question: if Seventh-day Adventists are saying the same thing that everyone else is saying, does the world need Seventh-day Adventists anymore?
Let we go too far off into left field please allow me to clarify. I am not saying that all Adventist ought to preach is prophesy, nor am I saying that we are to spend all our time magnifying our doctrinal differences. Quite the contrary. Ellen White says that ADVENTIST are to be first and foremost in lifting up Jesus to the world. We ought to be the experts in preaching the truth about Jesus. While the rest of the world preaches sermons and writes songs about "encouraging yourself" and "believing in your dreams", we ought to be pointing the world to a risen Savior who died, rose again, mediates for us and will come back to save us one day. Does the world need Adventists? The answer is YES! As long as the world needs to hear about Jesus, the world needs a group of people devoted to uplifting Him. That's the purpose Adventist ought to serve. That's what Adventists preachers ought to do.
