There is however the difference between preaching to the Jews vs. the Greeks.
Modern Christian Evangelism is like preaching to the Greeks.
It’s really difficult.
Their foundations for belief are so entrenched that virtually any all attempts are cut down before you can even start.
Preaching the Gospel in today’s society
http://creation.com/preaching-the-gospel-in-todays-society
Today’s society seems to be becoming more and more impervious to the Gospel. So how can we present the Gospel to maximum effect? The book of Acts provides an answer.
It is reasonable for us to consider the book of Acts as having two main purposes that benefit us today. These are:
For our edification as Christians, as we are given an account of the formation of the early Church and related events.
For our example as preachers, Christian workers, and missionaries, as we are shown the way in which the Apostles went about the task of obeying the Great Commission.
If we examine Acts in this light—as our example of how we should go about preaching the Gospel in a cross-cultural situation or in our own culture (which is becoming more and more multi-cultural) —we see some surprising things.
The love of God
First, the love of God is not mentioned by any preacher in Acts in any sermon. In fact, as a concordance will show, the word ‘love’ does not occur even once in the book of Acts in any context. Instead, Paul and the other preachers reiterate the themes of the death and resurrection of Jesus, God’s judgment, and the need for personal repentance and belief in Christ. Paul’s expositions on the love of God, including the great theme in Romans 5:8 that God loved us while we were still sinners, were all written to Christians, and were not, it seems, preached to non-Christians.
This does not mean, however, that God’s love cannot be seen in action in Acts.1 Saul’s (Paul’s) conversion, recounted three times for us in Acts (Acts 9:1–20, 22:1–16, 26:9–18), is attributed by Paul in his letter to Timothy as being due to the grace, love, mercy, and longsuffering of God, and Paul says that his conversion was ‘a pattern to them which should hereafter believe on Him’(I Timothy 1:12–16). In Romans 2:4, Paul says that it is the goodness of God that leads to repentance, and the term ‘goodness’ here encompasses not only God’s holiness, righteousness and truth, but also His love, benevolence, mercy and grace.2
Two starting points
The second surprising thing about the way Paul preached the Gospel, as recorded in Acts, is that he had two entirely different starting points, depending on his audience.
When Paul preached to the Jews, he ‘reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead’. The focal point of his message was ‘this Jesus whom I preach unto you is Christ’ [i.e. the Messiah] (Acts 17:2–3).
When Paul preached to the Gentiles, for example the Lycaonians (Acts 14:6, l5) and the Greeks (Acts 17:22–31), he began with Creation and God’s role as Creator, and he appealed to what can be seen in nature as the evidence for this.
Why the difference between Paul’s approach to the Jews and his approach to the non-Jews? The reason is the key to our understanding of why preaching about the lost state of man, or even about the cross, often has little impact in society today, whether in the West or in missionary situations.
Judaism had a creation basis—Genesis. From the Old Testament Scriptures the Jews believed in the one true God and knew Him as Creator, Lawgiver, and Judge. The Jews already knew and believed the scriptural record of Creation and the Fall: they knew about sin and that the penalty for sin is death. They needed only to be shown from the Scriptures and from the Resurrection that Jesus was the promised Messiah.
Greeks … Evolutionists
On the other hand, the Gentiles, and the Greeks in particular, were evolutionary in their thinking. Professor Fairfield Osborn, of Columbia University and the American Museum of Natural History, has said that Empedocles, who lived in the fifth Century BC, ‘may justly be called the father of the evolution idea’.3 Aristotle, 384–322 BC, in his Physics, ‘refers to Empedocles as having first shown the possibility of the origin of the fittest forms of life through chance rather than through Design’.4 And Aristotle himself ‘taught that there was a continuous gradation of living forms from the lowest to the highest, culminating in man, and that this evolutionary sequence came about through an internal perfecting tendency.’5
When Paul was on Mars Hill, he was dealing with ‘certain philosophers of the Epicureans, and of the Stoics’ (Acts 17:18). The Epicureans followed Epicurus (342–270 BC), who denied that there was any purposive form in nature and taught that everything on the earth had evolved directly from the earth material itself. It is not surprising then that the Epicureans believed that pleasure, and particularly sensuous pleasure, was the chief good of existence. The Stoics, on the other hand, stressed a simple life-style, but were completely pantheistic. Thus Greek society was both evolutionary in its thinking and idolatrous in its practice.
These Gentiles did not have the Jewish Scriptures. Paul therefore had to reach them in terms of something they did have—the foundational knowledge of God as Creator, almost obliterated by their philosophies and idolatries, but still there and witnessed to by nature and their consciences (Romans 1:20, 2:15). And so, in his address to the men on Mars Hill (Acts 17:22–31), Paul began with the power of God in creation, and moved onto the goodness of God in His providence. He then spoke against their idols, and he urged them to repent in view of the fact that God was ruler and judge and there was a coming day of judgment. It was only after this that he mentioned the Resurrection. Presumably, if he had not been interrupted, he would have gone on to say that this Resurrection occurred after Christ’s death on the cross, and he would have expounded God’s grace in the provision of a risen Saviour. But note the order in which Paul developed his argument
1 Corinthians 9:20ff: to the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might win Jews; to those who are under the Law, as under the Law, though not being myself under the Law, that I might win those who are under the Law; 21 to those who are without law, as without law, though not being without the law of God but under the law of Christ, that I might win those who are without law. 22 To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak; I have become all things to all men, that I may by all means save some
That's different from what I'm observing. I'm talking about career preachers who don't study. They deliver shallow, superficial "lessons" simply because they can get away with it. They deliver these lessons to people who have been attending their respective services all their lives, yet know no more now than they did when they began.
Hebrews 5:12 is more appropriate for them. For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat.
This is why so many religious entities that call themselves "Christian" have completely abandoned truth. The Episcopaleans, for example, and their endorsement of homosexuals. They did that because their membership is ignorant of what the Bible says ........ about anything.
Preaching silliness and entertainment has nothing to do with strategy. It has everything to do with lazy con men (and, even contrary to plain Bible teaching, women) who have discovered they can get paid, sometimes quite handsomely, for doing nothing. Throw some scriptures on powerpoint, eat up about twenty minutes of time, and get paid.