In 2018 at The Main Event, a Lifeway Men’s Conference, Pastor Robby Gallaty spoke about one of the biggest issues facing the American Church today: spiritually shallow churches.
The entire video is above, and the complete transcript is below.
We live in a day and age, guys, where the Bible is a footnote to the sermon. Right?
The pastor will get up and read the text, if he reads the text at all, and then he kinda jumps off. And if a man is using a Bible, and even calls himself a pastor, that doesn’t mean he’s actually preaching the Bible.
What we’ve tried to do here is we want people to get into the Word, and so the Word gets into them. And the reason we get in the Word so the Word gets into us – and I think this is the reason we have so many spiritual cowards in the church today that won’t stand up for their faith – is because they have no conviction. See, you don’t know why you believe what you believe.
It’s not even really your fault because it’s the by-product of being under pastors, so to speak, who want to dumb down theology-light sermons. We want to make everybody feel good. We want to invite as many people as we can so they don’t feel pressured or convicted over sin. We live in a day and age where people like to tickle ears. We have people preaching sermonettes which are actually producing Christianettes.
This is the problem. This is why our college students are leaving high school and going to college and they’re falling away from the faith. The statistic is 60 to 80 percent of high school students, our kids, are going to go to college and they will never come back to church until maybe they’re later in life. Why? Because they don’t know why they believe what they believe. They’ve heard spiritually shallow messages.
And what Paul says is, “Don’t do that”. We need a day and age where we’re tired of hearing pirates of sermons and puppets and parrots trying to portray themselves as preachers. We need prophets of God who are going to proclaim the Word of God to the people of God and leave the results to God. Amen? That’s what we need today.
Here’s just a side note and I say this with a lot of respect. If you’re at a church – and I don’t know what church you’re at – and you’re not getting the regular feeding of your soul through a daily diet or weekly diet of the Word of God, brother, you need to find another church.
Listen. You wouldn’t keep eating food that isn’t nourishing for the body and paying for it. Why are you going to do that with your soul? Your soul is infinitely, eternally more important.
