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congregations will flock to hear the Scriptures preached, “even if it is offensive to their pride (as

much of His preaching was), when it bears the stamp of divine approval and has the ring of

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heavenly authority.”

Adaptation

Jesus identified his listeners and used different styles of preaching according to each

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group of people. According to the nature of the audience, Jesus adapted his message in

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language and form. Succinctly speaking, his preaching was “listener-based.” Bert Decker and

Hershael York delineate the listener-based message of Jesus, explaining the different styles taken

by Jesus in dealing with Nicodemus and Samaritan Woman:

These two scenes from the life of Christ demonstrate that though his message of
repentance and the new birth did not change, his method of telling someone this life-
changing word purposely change. What was the common denominator? His message
was listener-based. In other words, Jesus told his message in such a way that his
audience, even an audience of one, could relate and understand what he was saying. He
met his listeners where they were, not where he wanted them to be or where he thought

48 Douglas M. White, “He Expounded”: A Guide to Expository Preaching (Chicago IL:
Moody Press, 1952), 20.

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Samuel Shangchi Pan, “A Stylistic Analysis of Jesus’ Teaching As Presented in the
Canonical Gospels for Application to Contemporary Preaching,” Ph.D. diss., Pennsylvania State
University, 1990, 40. He concludes that the preachers’ adaptation of preaching style to each of
his group of people out of the study of Jesus and contemporary homileticians: “four basic
audiences for Christian preaching have been identified: the apathetic audience, the believing
audience, the hostile audience, and the doubtful audience. The stylistic principle of adaptation to
these four basic audience are: for the apathetic audience, use a narrative approach; for the
believing, a didactic approach; for the hostile audience, a confrontational approach; and for the
doubtful audience, a dialogical approach. If the audience is mixed, as in most cases of a
contemporary congregation, use a combination of the four.”

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Bert Decker & Hershael W. York, Speaking with Bold Assurance: How to Become a
Persuasive Communicator (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2001), 31.