Where do I aim?

This past weekend I taught as a part of a teacher training seminar for some of the guys who are teaching our Adult Bible Fellowships and wanted some extra sharpening. It was a fun time to be with extremely sharp guys who are doing some great things. After my portion of the seminar, one of them pulled me aside and asked me a really great question that I don't feel like I answered very well. Now that I've had a couple of days to think about it, I think I can do better.

Here was his question: "When you preach, there are 1500 to 2000 people in the auditorium at any given time. Some are seminary profs, some just walked in off the street. With such a broad audience, where do you aim?"

It's true in an auditorium of 1500 people, and it's true in an Adult Bible Fellowship/Sunday School class of twenty people. People are all over the map of maturity, knowledge, and experience. Where do you aim when you know you can't speak to everyone?

Here's the easiest way I know how to say it: Aim High, but Communicate Low.

I want to communicate Truth such that the most spiritually mature person in the auditorium is encouraged and challenged, but I want to communicate that Truth in such a way that the guy off the street can understand it. If I speak over the head of the guy one the lower end of the knowledge spectrum, it's motivating. If I speak under the spiritual guy's head it's demotivating. But if I speak in such a way that the spiritual guy is motivated by the Truth, and the un-spiritual guy is motivated by the simplicity, I've hit a home run.

You can talk about propitiation without ever using the word. You can talk about the hypostatic union, or infralapsarianism without using words people don't know. You can talk about the meaning of words in the original language without parsing Greek verbs on stage. There's no need to talk in language your audience doesn't understand... even if it's precise. But it is an equally great error for your audience to leave a lesson exactly the way they came in.

Aim high, communicate low. I'm not always the best at it, but it's always my goal.