Preach the Sermons That Algorithms Don’t Reward
I’m embarrassed to say that a few years ago, when cooler fall weather arrived in central Pennsylvania, the mice that lived outside my house decided to move inside. They didn’t knock or ask permission. The rodents announced their arrival by eating my Oreos. Someone needed to act fast.
One very important family member in our household believes that in such a dire situation, the entirely logical next step is to flee our home, burn it down, and permanently move into a hotel. I love the person who feels this way about mice, and we have less than ten years left on our thirty-year mortgage, so I quickly called a professional exterminator. I thank God for how quickly he came, he saw, and he conquered.
But before he achieved victory, the exterminator explained the situation and how he would prosecute his war. What he said was both funny and profound—and perfectly fits with lines from Paul in 2 Corinthians about Christian ministry.
My exterminator told me the mice would eat the poison and then go outside to die. “There was,” he said, “a small chance they might stay inside.” If that happened, he wanted me to know a faint odor could linger for a day or so. “But don’t worry,” he added. “Do you know what I call that smell?” “No,” I said. He gave me a big smile and said he calls it “The Smell of Victory.”
That happy response to the stench of decay remains a matter of perspective. Yes, for us who live in the house, the unpleasant smell signals that all hope is not lost and that we don’t have to move to a new house. But to the other mice, to those who are perishing, it is the smell of death to death.
Paul uses this very language in 2 Corinthians to describe the binary outcomes of gospel ministry. “For we are the aroma of Christ to God,” he says, “among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life” (2 Cor. 2:15–16). This imagery for gospel ministry seems grotesque, especially when paired with the image in the previous verse. Paul pictures himself as a captured foe led shackled in the victory parade of Jesus, while outsiders presumably mock him as a loser (2 Cor. 2:14).
For these reasons, many in the Corinthian church held Paul’s ministry in low regard. “Some apostle,” they scoffed. “Everywhere he goes, a few people might get saved, but more people want to kill him.” The views of success that wafted into the church from Corinthian culture led those inside the church to think success meant big speaking fees, compelling orations, splashy results, and viral TED talks. Their Corinthian hearts wanted super-apostles, leaders who didn’t seem so needy and weak. In the comment sections on social media, these wolves would not have been kind to Paul.
Yet Paul rejects this prevailing wisdom and doubles down. As should we. “For we are not, like so many, peddlers of God’s word,” Paul says (2 Cor. 2:17a). He borrows the term peddler from the marketplace. The word denotes buyers and sellers, supply and demand, products and consumers. In a market, a peddler must understand what the buyer wants and then find a way to meet those felt needs, eager to adapt his product to a changing market. These are not necessarily bad impulses. God uses the market to provide us with food and clothing, cars and homes, and exterminators skilled at killing mice.
What Paul critiques are those who adapt God’s Word to meet the market, thinking, “Hmmm, ‘as is,’ the Word of God seems to bring both life to life and death to death. What if I changed the Word of God so that it brought only life to life? Perhaps I can alter the Word to get better results.”
In contrast, Paul says, “But as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God, in the sight of God we speak in Christ” (2 Cor. 2:17b). His point is that if you change the Word of God, you don’t get more life to life; you get what seems like life, but that which in the end leads to death. Commissioned by God and in the sight of God, Paul remains unwilling to tamper with the Word to win people’s favor. He already has the favor of the King. The lines have fallen for him in pleasant places, even as his general always leads him in triumphant procession everywhere he goes.
“If you change the Word of God, you don’t get more life to life; you get what seems like life, but that which in the end leads to death.”
I think back to my exterminator and the faint stench he called “the smell of victory.” All things being equal, no one in my family wants dead-mouse particulates in our nostrils. So perhaps my shrewd exterminator could have thought, “Instead of spreading poison, I’ll spread potpourri.” We would all have been happy—at first. Not only would the mice soon disappear, but my house would smell of cinnamon apples, and I’d give him a glowing Google review. Yet exchanging poison for potpourri offers false security.
This kind of short-sighted peddling recalls the haunting rhetorical question Jeremiah posed about the end of everything:
An appalling and horrible thing
has happened in the land:
the prophets prophesy falsely,
and the priests rule at their direction;
my people love to have it so,
but what will you do when the end comes? (Jer. 5:30–31, emphasis added)
In our cultural moment, so many once-faithful churches and denominations have gone the way of the peddler, untethering from orthodoxy and moving beyond the fruit of the Spirit to get more people in the building. “If we change what God says about sex,” some say, “we’d have a whole new demographic to reach,” while others might say, “If we preach angry hot takes and political rants, we’d have a whole new demographic to reach.”
Of course, these logical steps away from orthodoxy and orthopraxy rarely seem overt or brazen to the one making them. The Overton (ministry) window shifts subconsciously, just as the good desire to contextualize morphs into synchronism easily. Still, if our church mocked protestors and immigrants as always evil, I know we could fill our church with more giving units. And if we mocked law enforcement and immigration enforcers as always evil, we’d find plenty of people who would love to make our church their home. Extending the imago dei even to our enemies seems antiquated, something that might have worked in the past but doesn’t get results in a negative world.
Paul renounces this kind of peddling, choosing to stay focused on Jesus and to preach faithful, steady, nuanced truth, even if it doesn’t make him appear as a super-successful apostle. Bold preaching that bears the fruit of the Spirit will sometimes look boring and blah when compared with the faux boldness of tribalism.
I’m not advocating that preachers always find the middle way or seek the supposed safety of avoiding all language someone might deem too left-or right-leaning. May it never be. Instead, I’m advocating not being so tethered to one ideology or another that Jesus can no longer critique your own leanings or your own tribe. Rightly dividing the Word and maintaining godly character always go together when we follow the Way, the Truth, and the Life. “Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching,” Paul told a young preacher (1 Tim. 4:16).
So, when the algorithm smothers your live-stream and sermon clips, double down and do the ministry that Christ rewards. When your ministry looks and smells like a cross to the watching world, rejoice, and again I say rejoice, for in Christ you already have the favor of the only one who matters. When snark and vitriol earn a larger platform, remember that as the cross of Jesus has become to you the beautiful smell of victory, so also your cross-shaped life will give others the faint aroma of Jesus.
And when people mock you as a coward for not preaching sermons that get more clicks, remember that those who deny themselves and take up their crosses daily will one day take up their resurrection.