THE NEXT ADVENTISM
The Stewardship of Attention AN OPEN LETTER TO ADVENTIST PASTORS BY TIMOTHY GILLE SPIE
The Call to Move the Dial If preaching is the stewardship of attention, then the true calling of the preacher is this: to move the dial of the congregation, one degree at a time. Change comes in millimeters, but it takes us miles. Every community lives at a particular “setting” in its spiritual
life. Some are fear-driven. Some guilt-driven. Some anxious or exhausted. Some are hopeful, curious, generous, or yearning. No congregation arrives at church neutral. Each arrives with
Preaching has been analyzed, diagrammed, broken down, reassembled, evaluated, measured, critiqued, and taught for centuries. We talk about clarity, structure, exegesis, hermeneutics, narrative, delivery, presence, ethos, creativity, voice, illustration, tension, application, and countless other dimensions. All of these matter. All of these are important and worth spending our time learning, craſting, and creating mastery. But none of them are the heart of preaching. Something else is more fundamental, more human, more
theological, and more sacred. Something so obvious that we oſten overlook it. Something that may, in fact, be the future of preaching in an age of distraction, fragmentation, and spiritual fatigue: Preaching is the stewardship of human attention. And attention is one of the purest forms of love—or at least
of trust. Every Sabbath, a preacher stands before a congregation and is
entrusted with something astonishing: the sustained, voluntary attention of human beings created in the image of God. We rarely stop to think about what this means. But if you do
the math, the implications are staggering. A 30-minute message delivered to 500 people equals 250 cumulative hours of listening. Two hundred and fiſty hours. In one sermon. Tis is not “a talk.” Tis is not “a speech.” Tis is not “filling
time between singing and benediction.” Tis is the stewardship of 250 hours of human attention—250 hours of love and trust. Because attention is love. And love is trust. People give their attention only to what they value, what they
trust, what they hope might nourish them. Churches with great preachers grow, because they build trust and love with those who are listening. Tis means that every time you stand to preach, your
congregation hands you a giſt that cannot be purchased or replaced: the giſt of their focused presence. Te question is not: “Was the sermon good?” Te deeper question—the pastoral, missional, and theological question—is: What did you do with the love and trust they gave you?
momentum—in one direction or another. Better preaching asks: • Where are these people? • Where are they heading? • What direction does Jesus want them to move? • How can this sermon shiſt them one degree toward Him? Tis is what makes preaching pastoral—not just rhetorical. You are not preparing content; you are doing spiritual
formation. You are not writing speeches; you are building a shared imagination. You are not “delivering sermons;” you are shaping a people. A sermon is not simply a one-time event. It is a small act in a
long arc of transformation. You preach not for the moment but for the trajectory. And trajectories are changed not through shock or
spectacle, but through faithful, consistent, cumulative degrees of movement. Over time, those degrees add up to spiritual reorientation. It is the “long obedience in the same direction,” as Eugene H. Peterson reminds us. Every sermon is a nudge. Every sermon is a calibration.
Every sermon is a gentle turn of the dial. Tis means that better preaching is not about being clever or impressive; it’s about being responsible. It means asking: • What does my congregation need to learn to love? • What fears need to be soſtened? • What shame needs to be dissolved? • What burdens need to be liſted? • What wounds need to be acknowledged? • What false gods need to be displaced? • What injustices need to be confronted? • What hopes need to be rekindled? Good preaching knows the text. It knows the text better than
anyone else in the room. It has spent time with it, it has investigated and inspected it, and it knows the text as a piece of itself. But more importantly, better preaching knows the people to
whom it is speaking. Great preaching loves the people, and love always seeks their transformation.
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