Preach Like You Have Four Audiences

Every time a pastor opens his mouth, he is speaking to more than the people he can see. There is the immediate congregation, the unintended listener nearby, the downstream listener who hears the message secondhand, and the broader public that may weaponize a sentence out of context. That reality should not make us timid or silent. It should make us careful, prayerful, and deliberate. Scripture calls us to speak the truth in love, to guard our tongues, and to proclaim the gospel with boldness. Faithful pastoral communication means holding both together: courageous clarity and wise restraint. The goal is not self-protection but Christ-honoring speech that builds up the church and keeps the gospel from being needlessly hindered.

As pastors, on any normal Sunday, we are focused on the people right in front of us as we preach our morning message. There is a hope to connect with our audience as we speak and attempt to communicate the message we believe God has given to us.

Coupled with this awareness of our audience are the various styles of communication that pastors employ from the pulpit. Some speak with a more intellectual style, a comedic style, or a more gritty, street-level style. The first group leans toward a very controlled message, and the second and third tend toward a more impromptu style, going with whatever hits them in the moment. Many styles can be effective depending upon the situation and audience.

Then there are the conversations we have in public that can be overheard. Suddenly, there is a much broader audience than we first believed. It can easily be missed that there is more than one audience we are speaking to most of the time. In the pulpit preaching, in a local café counseling, or just standing on the street talking, consider and remember these four different audiences:

1. The First-Level Audience

The first-level audience is the one you think of when you are preparing for the pulpit each Sunday. It is those people you think of when you are considering stories or illustrations that will help drive home the point. This audience is also the person you are focused on while you are sitting at that sidewalk café, counseling. There is eye contact; there is a relationship.

2. The Second-Level Audience

The second-level audience is those who are indirectly listening in to your conversation; it is the unintended audience that happens to be sitting close enough to us to hear the conversation, but we are not thinking of them while we are speaking. Perhaps you are speaking of private matters, but you may say something that offends an indirect listener (an off-color joke or a mock of some group). This is the danger of an unintended audience.

3. The Third-Level Audience

The third-level audience is the unintended audience that is impacted indirectly by our words. We did not directly say anything to them, but they heard the message recording later, or the person we spoke with passed the message on to them. Think about the wife who has received your counseling, who then went home and applied it to her husband in a way that you never intended. You made a statement that was intended for a specific situation, but a listener more broadly applied it than you would have imagined.

4. The Fourth-Level Audience

This final audience is one that, in the past, we would not have needed to consider as much as we do now, and this final level of audience is far more volatile and conditioned to resent the Christian message. Consider the statements made by the CEO of the Chick-Fil-A, corporation about family values. When asked a question, he answered, thinking of the immediate audience—the reporter and the Baptist magazine in which the article was going to appear. He was speaking to what he perceived to be a safe audience. But in a two-week afe conversation turned into a national conversation, and his words were being twisted and distorted. This last audience is looking for us to make a mistake with our words to use them against us.

Certainly, we have an obligation to the truth and to speak the truth. But Paul made it clear that we were not supposed to simply speak the truth. Ephesians 4:15 “…but speaking the truth in love…”

Speak the truth in love, he said, or perhaps more literally, “…truthing one another…” In our current culture of opposition, this resistance to the Christian message has a tremendous impact on our church communities. The younger generation has been heavily indoctrinated into the social standards of our day: same-sex marriage, environmental issues, and so on. Some subjects have become such hot buttons that it is becoming less and less possible to speak on some subjects without offending someone. Speaking the truth in love becomes more and more critical, as well as more and more difficult.

Dealing With the Four Audiences

Here are some quick suggestions on what you can do to deal with your four audiences.

• Realize and remain aware that any time you are speaking, there is always more than one audience.
• Encourage your congregation to pray for you on this matter.
• Give careful consideration to your choice of words, not at some paranoid level, but with careful consideration. Be smart; think your words through.
• Some pastors have begun using a team. The team works on the messages with the pastor ahead of the presentation. This enables pastors to have more than one heart and mind, considering their words and the implications of those words.
• Recognize that even if the audience is not in the immediate vicinity, there will be an impact from your words somewhere else.
• If you are the “gritty, shoot from the hip” type, recognize you are placing yourself at risk every time you speak. Taking the time to at least acknowledge the danger and think through your words ahead of time will help reduce the possible damage.

Knowing there is more than one audience should not cause us to become so cautious that we end up not saying anything. Like the apostle Paul, we must seek to make known the gospel with boldness and not fear.

“With all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints, and {pray} on my behalf, that utterance may be given to me in the opening of my mouth, to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains; that in {proclaiming} it I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak.” –Ephesians 6:18-20

We are called to speak the truth. Speak the truth, then, but be smart about what words come out of your mouth.