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Preaching to People in Pain: How Suffering Can Shape Your Sermons and Connect with Your Congregation
Matthew D. Kim
Baker Academic (2021). 240 pp.
Matthew D. Kim opens his book with a hypothetical: imagine that you as a pastor had to choose between allowing the members of your congregation to hear only sermons on success in the Christian life, for the rest of their lives, or only to hear sermons on pain and suffering, again for the rest of their lives (xi). What would you choose? What do you think your congregation would want you to choose? What types of sermons would you prefer to preach? While this choice is obviously extreme, it immediately clarifies a tension and a temptation. The tension is between what so many church members seemingly want to hear when they come to church—sermons highlighting the triumphalism and victory of life in Christ—and what they need to hear more often than they do—sermons on how to live before God through pain and suffering. The temptation is for the pastor to preach more often on what they believe their congregants want to hear instead of on what they need to hear.
Preaching to People in Pain encourages pastors to preach more sermons on pain and suffering and equips them to do so. Kim divides the book into two parts. In the first part, he aims to convince pastors of the need to preach regularly on pain and suffering and provides a process for doing so in a consistent, systematic way. Throughout, Kim draws not only on his perspective as a professor of preaching and practical theology at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, but also on his nearly ten years of pastoral ministry experience. This is especially evident in the first part of the book as he equips pastors to think through their own experiences of pain and suffering, the pain and suffering of their listeners, and how they typically address (or do not address) that pain and suffering from the pulpit.
In the first two chapters, Kim talks through his personal experience of suffering and his experience of learning how much his people were suffering, and why it’s vital that these twin perspectives inform preaching. He proposes six universal types of pain and suffering among God’s people: painful decisions, painful finances, painful health issues, painful losses, painful relationships, and painful sins (24), and then walks through creating an inventory of a specific congregation’s specific pains. Building on this foundation, Kim then describes a formal preaching plan for addressing those pains in chapter three. He proposes nine preparatory questions to serve as a guide for intentionally preaching on pain and suffering.
In the second part of the book, Kim devotes a chapter to each of his universal types, talking through each unique pain biblically and pastorally. In each chapter he applies his nine questions to that specific type of pain, helping pastors move from theory to practice. To further facilitate this move, each chapter ends with discussion questions and is followed by one of Kim’s sermons on that pain. Kim is a proponent of the “Big-Idea” style of preaching, following scholars such as Haddon Robinson and Scott Gibson, and each sermon reflects this style. After a conclusion, the book ends with an appendix containing several worksheets that helps the pastor discern their own pain, the pain of their listeners, and how to work through the nine questions to preach on that pain.
Kim’s consistent pastoral tone and emphasis, flowing out of his experience, is a strength of the book and great example of ecclesial theology. Kim is careful to treat preaching as an essential part of pastoral ministry to those suffering, but also as just a part of how the pastor should minister to their congregation. Many homiletitians focus on preaching to the detriment of other pastoral ministries, but Kim is careful to present preaching about pain as necessary and significant, but not all the pastor is called to do. I appreciated his emphasis on formalizing follow-up with parishioners as part of sermon preparation and sermon application, as well as his consistent stress on communicating both God’s grace and God’s glory to those suffering. Kim is pastorally sensitive to churches in different contexts and carefully considers a church’s unique pains as understood and experienced in a variety of settings, ethnicities, and cultures. Any pastor seeking to improve in their understanding and practice of preaching on pain and suffering will benefit from this work, as will their listeners.
Gary L. Shultz, Jr. is the Senior Pastor of First Baptist Church of Tallahassee in Tallahassee, FL. He holds a PhD in Systematic Theology from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and is a member of the St. John Fellowship of the Center for Pastor Theologians.
