Last year, I had the privilege of participating in a preaching conference at Beeson Divinity School with the British theologian Alister McGrath, who gave three lectures on preaching. These were followed by responses from me and other scholars.
In building on one of McGrath’s lectures, I offered several takeaways, including this one: Know your people well enough to anticipate their objections.
Apologetics and Anticipating Objections
McGrath reminded us that faithful preaching begins not only with a deep grasp of the gospel but also with attentiveness to our listeners. “Identify the connections that resonate with this group,” he said, noting that the connections may differ from one audience to another.
Knowing your people means anticipating how your words will land. What questions might arise? What points of resistance might you encounter? What assumptions will your people bring to the text?
Tim Keller excelled at this. He made space in his sermons for what he called “apologetic sidebars”—a moment when you recognize something might need more explanation, or something someone in the room might find hard to believe. It was never the whole sermon, but it was a signal: I know you’re here, and I’m speaking to you too.
I’ve sought to do the same in my preaching over the years, for two reasons. First, you speak directly to the skeptic or seeker who may be attending out of curiosity or courtesy. You tell them they’re seen and welcome. Second, you model for believers how to engage the questions their friends and coworkers raise. The preacher becomes not just a herald of truth but a guide for navigating real conversations in the real world.
Abdication and Avoiding Objections
Doug Webster, another preaching professor at Beeson, added a wrinkle to my suggestions. He said that knowing your people well can lead you to anticipate your hearers’ objections and then go in the opposite direction. Instead of anticipating and answering, we anticipate and abdicate.
“We know our congregations so well there are topics we won’t bring up,” he said. “We know our people too well. We know the danger of speaking to certain issues which we know are biblical.”
Knowing your congregation well enough can lead to stronger preaching—responding to potential objections—or it can lead to softening and evading truths, tiptoeing around the sacred cows your church doesn’t want you to touch. It can produce not sensitivity in service of persuasion but sensitivity in service of silence.
Charles Spurgeon remarked on this tendency: “Cautious reticence is, in nine cases out of ten, cowardly betrayal,” he told his students. “The best policy is never to be politic, but to proclaim every atom of the truth so far as God has taught it to you.”
With that old word “politic,” Spurgeon means strategically calculating, governed by shrewdness rather than faithfulness, weighing what’s safe to say more than what’s true to say. It carries the connotation of managed impression, tactical omission, telling people what we think they can handle rather than what we know they need. The best policy is never to be politic. True pastoral wisdom counters worldly calculation.
Subtler Temptation
But Webster’s and Spurgeon’s warnings go further than we think. The cowardly preacher isn’t always the one who goes quiet. Sometimes he’s the one who goes loud, but only in a particular direction.
Consider what Paul tells Timothy about itching ears (2 Tim. 4:3). We tend to read that passage as a warning against churches that accumulate teachers who go soft on sin. But what itching ears often crave is not soft but selective preaching—whatever will affirm them in self-righteousness.
A congregation can be thoroughly coddled by a pastor who thunders every week, so long as he’s bombing the right targets—the people outside. The teetotaling congregation wants a pastor who condemns alcohol. The politically conservative congregation wants one who rails against progressive ideology. The socially progressive congregation wants one always quick to indict systemic injustice.
The preaching may be loud, even courageous-sounding—but if it only ever steps on the toes of people who aren’t in the room, it’s still, in Spurgeon’s sense, politic.
This is why knowing your congregation well isn’t enough. You must also know yourself well enough to be aware of where you’re most prone toward cowardice. The faithful preacher will be alert to the needs of his people, yes, but also to the fear of man in his heart.
Good preaching requires us to be not just contextually aware but contextually courageous. Context doesn’t change the truth, but it does change what it costs to proclaim it.
Proclaiming Every Atom
Spurgeon was right that the best policy is never to be politic. But the politic preacher isn’t always easy to spot, and we all fall prey to this tendency, often without realizing it. We may preach hard and long, fill our sermons with uncomfortable truths, and still be giving our people exactly what they want, while avoiding what they need.
What we need are preachers with the kind of self-awareness and congregational knowledge that lead to proclaiming “every atom of the truth.” To be so gripped by love for God’s Word and love for God’s people that we pay whatever it costs to say what they need to hear.
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