What’s the preaching like in America’s biggest churches? That’s the question I set out to answer.
We listened to four sermons each from the country’s nine biggest evangelical churches: Church of the Highlands (Birmingham, AL), North Point Ministries (Alpharetta, GA), Gateway Church (Southlake, TX), Crossroads Church (Cincinnati, OH), Christ’s Church of the Valley (Peoria, AZ), Saddleback Church (Lake Forest, CA), Christ Fellowship Church (Palm Beach Gardens, FL), Elevation Church (Mathews, NC), and Southeast Christian Church (Louisville, KY). With an average sermon length of about 30 minutes, these reflections are based on approximately 18 total hours of material. As we listened, we found several common threads. Those threads will make up most this article—a state of American preaching, if you will.
1. The gospel at best assumed; most of the time, it’s entirely absent.
Let me begin with the most important observation: in 36 sermons, the good news of Jesus Christ’s life, death, and resurrection was unclear 36 times. Often, some or all of these facets of the Christian gospel were left out. “No gospel” became a common note.
I don’t mean to say various elements of the gospel weren’t occasionally mentioned; they were. Todd Mullins (Christ Fellowship Church) mentions in
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