British Preaching by Matt on Flickr. Some rights reserved.
Have we turned ‘God is love’ into ‘God is nice’? Have we turned ‘God is for me’ into ‘God is my butler’? Do we water down the Gospel in our desperation for new church members? And is that desperation more about maintaining our institution than introducing people to Christ?What message exactly do we proclaim?
What message exactly do we proclaim? Adam4D has an uncomfortable infographic on our lapse into ‘Moralistic Therapeutic Deism’. Read it – and if you don’t squirm, I’ll take your pulse.
Thinking About Mission 
I’m not sure it’s the preaching that’s the problem, but rather how people hear the message. And that may be affected by their own ideas, experiences, misunderstandings or preconceptions. For example, I have heard many preachers preaching about the cross and salvation, and then go on to say that we are saved to do good works; good works are a result of salvation, not something we do to get salvation. Yet talking to people afterwards, what they have heard is “salvation means doing good works.” This is what they believe, and in some cases have believed for many years, so this is what they hear when the preacher talks.
Or the preacher may be talking about God, our Father, and his love for us. But someone’s experience of a father was that they had to try to please, or impress, him, do things to make him proud or somehow earn his love; so this will be how they listen to that word.
In the latter case, the Holy Spirit can minister to a person – sometimes through appropriate pastoral care – to heal their hurts. In the first example, if someone doesn’t want to change their belief that salvation is all about doing good works; they won’t.