The first preacher is one who is incredibly consistent. You are never going to be shocked by this guy. If you watched a sermon of this guy you wouldn’t have any idea if he was preaching to a bundle of small children or to a gathering at the local nursing home. He doesn’t shy away from using big words in his sermons. Nor does he pull any punches in presenting the truth. He just “tells it as it is”. There isn’t much nuance in this guy. If you’d ask him about this he would say something like, “it’s my goal to preach and present God’s truth. It’s not my concern how people respond”.
The second preacher is a bit like Groucho Marx. “These are my principles, if you don’t like them I have others.” He’s a chameleon. If he’s speaking to a group who wants a nice and warm ear-tickling message then he’ll give it. If they wanted a fire and brimstone fear-mongering type of message then he’d give that one too. Whatever the audience wants. He knows how to give them the truths they want to hear.
Which one of these preacher’s is faithful?
I’d argue that neither of them are. In fact, I think they bow to the same idol. Self. One is a people-pleaser for the sake of self-concern and the other is self-pleaser under the guise of biblical fidelity. What they both have in common is a lack of concern for the hearer and of honest submission to the Word of God.
I would argue that both of them haven’t learned the difference between accommodation and adaptation. The first guy refuses to adapt because he believes it’s capitulating. He doesn’t want any one to accuse him of accommodating sinners. The second guy is accommodating, perhaps because he’s never learned the wiser path of adaptation.
I think Jay Adams is helpful here:
Adaptation is not accommodation. The two are opposites. The accommodator changes God’s message to conform to the listener, to the speaker, or to both. There is concern about people, but it is a humanistic and unbiblical concern that overrides concern for God. And it is a concern that, in the final analysis, is superficial and often not genuine. This concern to accommodate truth often amounts to little more than a concern for one’s self—what others will think of me. True concern for others will push self into the background while concentrating on what is best for them; it will cause one to speak in season (when the results are likely to enhance relationships) and out of season (when they are not). It will impel him to speak hard things for the benefit of others when necessary, even at his own peril.
While accommodation is self-centered (or, at its best, humanistically oriented toward others), adaptation is other-concerned. The speaker who takes the time to adapt his message doesn’t change the message at all; he changes his own ways and in every circumstance adopts the best possible method of conveying that message to others. He changes himself, not the message; he, himself, becomes flexible and moldable in order to meet each situation and/or group of persons to whom he is speaking. He is the one who moves—he is willing to discover where his audience is and to travel to that spot. Unlike the professional, he does not expect his audience to make all of the movement toward him.
There is a balance here and it’s crucial. If we don’t catch this then we’ll end up calling our friends heretics or we’ll end up becoming heretics ourselves in the name of winning friends for the sake of the gospel. We must be absolutely dedicated to the truth of God but we must be willing to adapt ourselves so we can reach sinners where they are.
Consider the Apostle Paul who “became all things to all people”. Notice what changed for Paul. His message never changed. To the Jew he became as a Jew—but he still preached as a Christian. To those under the law he became like one under the law—but he still preached as a Christian. That’s the key. We can’t tamper with God’s message. But we can and must continually work through the best ways to communicate God’s message to diverse people for the glory of God. We must learn the difference between accommodation and adaptation. Rejecting one and learning to embrace the other.
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