In the movie Cider House Rules, there’s a powerful scene in which a group of black migrant workers encounter a list of rules they must follow when they stay in the Cider House of this apple farm. One of the rules is that they can’t sit up on the roof of this small house. And yet, it is a hot and sultry day, and the only hope of catching a cooling breeze would be to get up on the roof. That’s when one of the black workers speaks a provocative truth. “The people who made those rules don’t live here. They don’t breathe this air. They don’t spend their time here.”

One of the great problems of preaching is that it is so often done by people who don’t live here, who don’t breathe this air, who don’t spend their time here.

I was once asked to perform a funeral for a teenage boy who drowned. It was really my first experience with a family that had lost a child. I stood near the parents during the calling hours as family and friends came to pay their respects. And what I witnessed was so incredibly sad. Person after person came up to those parents, and tried to bring them comfort by assuring them that their son was in heaven, that this death was the will of God, even that God must have needed the boy more than they did. People, with all good intentions, were trying to preach the Gospel, I suppose, but it really was just adding more pain to the loss of these dear parents. You see, people were speaking in the language of those who’d never experienced what those parents were going through. And their inability to speak the deep, painful language of loss – the language of those who know what it’s like to lose a child – made their preaching hollow and ineffective.

You have to learn to speak the language of the people you’re ministering to. If you want to preach Christ to the poor, you have to learn speak the language of the poor. If you want to preach Christ to a doubter, you have to learn the language of doubt. If you want to preach Christ to Israelis and Palestinians, you have to learn to speak the language of each. And the only way you can learn the language is by coming close enough to understand the experience of how life is for those you’re bringing Christ to.

Preaching Christ begins with stepping into the world of the other, and becoming so much a part of it that you actually learn to speak the language!