Michael Bird had an interesting post recently on the level at which you should preach. There's always the danger of going to one of two extremes when preaching – making it far too academic, or far too simple – both of which have the same result of not helping those who are listening to grow and mature in faith. Bird offers a few points for consideration:
What I try to do in my homiletic journeys is: (1) Identify with your audience. Preaching to a youth group ain't the same as speaking at a retirement village. But make sure everyone can grasp what you're talking about. When in doubt, simple is better. (2) The form should be easy and aesthetically nice to hear, but the content should be theologically informed. (3) Remember, preaching is based on good exegesis, but it is not a display of your exegesis. (3) Preaching is about persuasion, changing peoples' hearts and minds, not just imparting more information; and (4) The most important elements of the sermon are the first thing and the last thing you say, so find a way to make it sing and sting!
I've argued this in the past before, particularly when I have discussed the problems with the celebrity pastor phenomenon in modern evangelicalism. And as I have preached on a more regular basis over the past year, I have found this to be true from experience. While there are always exceptions to the rule, in general there will be something lacking from your preaching when you do not know who you are preaching to.
Preaching derives part of its power because it is done by pastors. The one who stands in the pulpit to speak on Sunday is the one who has been with the flock, in a variety of settings, throughout the week and over the years. The lonely, detached preacher, cloistered away in the pastoral study for much of the week, is not the most fruitful image for faithful preaching. It is the pastor who stands at that fateful intersection between the biblical text and the congregational context, the one who rises each week in service to the congregation's, 'Is there any word from the Lord?' A sermon is not a perfectly prepared and delivered oration suitable for later publication. The sermon is an act of corporate worship within the gathered congregation. The pastor...[listens] to the biblical text on behalf of the congregation, so that the congregation may better hear the text. Therefore, the metaphor of the pastor as preacher is best employed within the context of the pastoral work within a parish where it is clear that the preacher is also pastor.
As I said above, it would not be fair to conclude that someone should never preach to people they don't know. But those who preach on a regular basis to the same congregation should be intimately familiar with their local context and the people they are preaching to. When the pastor really knows their parishioners, that is when the preaching will connect most deeply with them.
Over the weekend, I was made aware that Mars Hill Church in Seattle is hosting a preaching contest tomorrow to determine who will fill in for lead pastor Mark Driscoll on weeks that he is not preaching. Like those who pointed me to the news, I was hoping it was a joke. But it's not. The description on the Facebook event page reads as follows:
Tuesday, November 15th from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m., we'll be hosting our first ever Preaching Qualifying School (Q School) at Mars Hill Ballard. This event will be a pressure-cooker preaching competition a la American Idol between 3 Mars Hill elders with the prize of being part of our preaching rotation to fill the pulpit on weeks Pastor Mark is out of the pulpit.
The three candidates are: Pastor Thomas Hurst of Mars Hill Bellevue Pastor Scott Mitchell of Mars Hill Everett Pastor AJ Hamilton of Mars Hill Albuquerque Judging the candidates will be: Pastor Mark Driscoll (playing the part of Simon Cowell—minus the v-neck) Pastor Justin Holcomb Pastor Dave Bruskas Pastor Scott Thomas Emceeing and playing the part of Ryan Seacrest will be Pastor Tim Gaydos of Mars Hill Downtown Seattle. We're hoping to get a big crowd of folks to come cheer on these guys and make a event of it. So, come on by and cheer on your favorite contestant.
It's hard to know where to begin with this, but a few things immediately come to mind. First, the use of the phrase 'a la American Idol' is obviously not arbitrary because the aim of this exercise is to see who will preach the most like Mark Driscoll. He is really the standard against which these other preachers are being judged. If that were not the case, they'd simply put together a rotation of preachers to fill the slots.
Second, and more signifcantly, holding an event like this speaks volumes about the theology of preaching at work here. This is what concerns me most. For one, when you pit three preachers against each other like this and turn it into a spectacle, all the weight and responsibility of the task of preaching is removed. No longer is your concern to address the spiritual needs of the congregation and to apply the Word to the specific context you're ministering in, but it's to impress four men who are determining whether or not you'll get a chance to preach in the most prestigious pulpit in the Mars Hill world. Needless to say, the dynamics of preaching in such an environment will completely alter how these three guys preach.
What's more, the church is making a public declaration in judging between the 'contestants' that one preacher is better than the other two. What will happen as a result is that a very low view of preaching will be fostered among the members of the church because they are being taught that it is more worthwhile to listen to one preacher than another.
Quite frankly, this is disastrous for the ministry of the Word. Believers need to have the conviction that, when the Bible is expounded faithfully in the pulpit, God is speaking through the preacher, regardless of whether or not he is as animated, humourous, or gripping as another preacher. Without that conviction, they will not come before the preached Word with humility. They will approach preaching with the consumeristic mindset of our culture, only giving ear to the preacher who entertains and captivates them most.
There is much more that could be said about this, but for now, all I hope is that Mars Hill recognises these problems and cancels this event.
Preaching is not a game or a contest. It is serious business.
This post comes far too late, but as the saying goes, better late than never.
About a month ago, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, invited comedian Frank Skinner to Canterbury Cathedral to have a discussion on Christianity. I really don't know what the purpose or premise to the conversation was, but it ended up being really a rather interesting discussion to listen to. Skinner is a practising Roman Catholic, and raised a number of different issues that are worth taking the time to think about. If you follow this link, you can find links to the conversation, three mp3's available for download on the Archbishop's website.
I found the most interesting part of their conversation to be the discussion about preaching. Skinner began by lamenting the state of most preaching today, saying that when he goes to church, he expects a lot from a sermon because, as Christians, they are dealing with the most important, serious, and profound thing in the world. "I go there to be given something that I can take with me into the rest of the week," Skinner added. "I'm a tough crowd; I go there expecting a lot. I really want something important."
Skinner recognises the importance of preaching, which is an emphasis that is increasingly lost in our day. And I think the point that sermons should be something significant and substantial (in quality, not necessarily quantity) should be heeded. He suggested that a lot of preachers approach their sermons with a sense of obligation. They do it because they have to, and because they know they'll have a captive audience for a few minutes on Sunday, they don't put in a lot of effort. Skinner's proposition was that the responsibility for preaching by turned over to a special group of folks who are trained to be highly skilled preachers, and then sent around on rotations to different churches or piped in via audio/video so everyone can hear them each week.
I can appreciate his point, and I think he's probably right that there are a lot of pastors who don't put a lot of effort into their preaching. This comes in large part, I'm sure, from a lack of conviction of the power of preaching. But I really cannot get on board with Skinner's suggestion that we have a collection of über-Prediger (I opted for the German instead of saying super-preachers; words like that always sound better in German) that meet the need for better preaching, for a number of reasons, one of which is that it turns preaching into more of an oratorical performance.
A much more significant reason to avoid this model, however, was raised by the Archbishop. He made a very important point that may have been the best thing said in the whole discussion on preaching. Emphasizing the importance of a minister being a part of a specific community, he said that the local preacher is able to key in to what is going on in that particular community at that particular time. So while they may not always produce memorable, penetrating, or powerful sermons, they might have something which strikes that community for that day.
This is one of main reasons I cannot understand the celebrity pastor phenomenon. You simply cannot preach effectively to your congregation if you are disconnected from their lives as individuals and the life of the community as a whole. Williams is exactly right that the local minister's preaching will have a unique ability to connect with people because of their sensitivity to the circumstances of that community's life.
Skinner's concern is something that certainly should be addressed. One of his other suggestions was that preachers should be better trained, which is something worth evaluating as well. But I think that unless a conviction of the transformative power of the Word is recovered, and we recognise that faith comes from hearing the message, a lot of this bad preaching that Skinner laments will continue.
This is just one portion of their 90-minute discussion, however, and I would encourage you to listen to the rest of the conversation. It's worth your time.
I don't often listen to the sermons of 'celebrity' preachers, for a variety of reasons, but I have benefited a lot from Sinclair Ferguson's preaching. In the current issue of Themelios, he has an article entitled, 'A Preacher's Decalogue,' in which he lays out ten important things for preachers to think about. The whole article is very good, but he absolutely nails it with the fourth point, discussing the importance of being Trinitarian in our preaching:
Be deeply Trinitarian. Surely we are? At least in some of our churches, not a Lord’s Day passes without the congregation confessing one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But as is commonly recognized, Western Christianity has often had a special tendency to either an explicit or a pragmatic Unitarianism, be it of the Father (liberalism, for all practical purposes), the Son (evangelicalism, perhaps not least in its reactions against liberalism), or the Spirit (Charismaticism with its reaction to both of the previous).
This is, doubtless, a caricature. But my concern here arises from a sense that Bible-believing preachers (as well as others) continue to think of the Trinity as the most speculative and therefore the least practical of all doctrines. After all, what can you “do” as a result of hearing preaching that emphasizes God as Trinity? Well, at least inwardly if not outwardly, fall down in prostrate worship that the God whose being is so ineffable, so incomprehensible to my mental math, seeks fellowship with us!
I sometimes wonder if it is failure here that has led to churches actually to believe it when they are told by “church analysts” and the like that “the thing your church does best is worship . . . small groups, well you need to work on that . . . .” Doesn’t that verge on blasphemy? (Verge on it? There is surely only One who can assess the quality of our worship. This approach confuses aesthetics with adoration).
John’s Gospel suggests to us that one of the deepest burdens on our Lord’s heart during his last hours with his disciples was to help them understand that God’s being as Trinity is the heart of what makes the gospel both possible and actual, and that it is knowing him as such that forms the very lifeblood of the life of faith (cf. John 13–17). Read Paul with this in mind, and it becomes obvious how profoundly woven into the warp and woof of his gospel his understanding of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is.
Our people need to know that, through the Spirit, their fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. Would they know that from my preaching?
Brilliant. As Herman Bavinck has said, "Every error results from, or upon deeper reflection is traceable to, a departure in the doctrine of the Trinity." Being Trinitarian in our preaching is absolutely essential.
On the desk in his office, the pastor of our church has this definition of expository preaching, which he ascribes to someone named Dr. Olsen. I'm not sure who that is, but I think this is a helpful working definition:
In recognition of the power of the Holy Spirit through the preaching of the Word of God, and expository sermon explains a given passage of Scripture clearly, interprets it carefully in its context and in relation to the whole of Scripture, and applies it relevantly by deriving its central idea and structure from that text in expectation of the response of the hearers in faith, obedience and worship.
Since I was just chipping away at the book one essay at a time, it took me a while to finally finish Knots Untied, the collection of essays by J.C. Ryle that I have been reading and commenting on here in the last several weeks. In an essay on the Lord's Supper, Ryle raises the question of what is to function as the primary element of worship. Some Protestants, particularly evangelicals, have a tendency to elevate the preaching of the Word as the primary element, sandwiched between a few songs. In some cases, the preaching and the music occupy such a place that almost everything else becomes unimportant and worship loses its character altogether.
Anglicanism, the context in which Ryle is writing, tends in two directions (at least among those who hold convictions about such things): Anglo-Catholics tend to view the Eucharist as the pinnacle of worship, while evangelicals align themselves with the Reformed perspective, which takes the preaching of Scripture as primary. Ryle's essay, written from an evangelical perspective, attempts to demonstrate that the Anglo-Catholic position is unwarranted. He comments:
Like the ark of God in the Old Testament, this blessed sacrament has a proper position and rank among Christian ordinances, and, like the ark of God, it may easily be put in the wrong one. The history of that ark will readily recur to our minds. Put in the place of God, and treated like an idol, it did the Israelites no good at all... Treated with reverence and respect, it brought a blessing... It is even so with the Lord's Supper.—Placed in its right position, it is an ordinance full of blessing. The great question to be settled is,—What is that position?
...The Lord's Supper is not in its right place, when it is made the first, foremost, principle, and most important thing in Christian worship. That it is so in many quarters, we all must know... The sermon, the mode of conducting prayer, the reading of 'holy Scripture,' in many churches are made second to this one thing,—the administration of the Lord's Supper.—We may ask, 'What warrant of Scripture is there for this extravagant honour?' but we shall get no answer... To thrust the Lord's Supper forward, till it towers over and overrides everything else in religion, is giving it a position for which there is no authority in God's Word.
If you are looking to Scripture for evidence, as Ryle suggests, it is hard to miss the prominent place that the preaching of the Word holds in the ministry to which Christ calls his people. Ryle notes further on that the New Testament speaks with relative infrequency about the Supper in comparison with how often it speaks of and gives examples of the verbal presentations of the gospel. Looking to Luke and Acts, for example, it is time and time again the proclamation of the gospel that brings people to repentance and faith. Even in Jesus' own ministry, his making known the presence of the Kingdom through miracles and healings was always secondary to his announcements that the Kingdom of God was at hand.
The focus of Ryle's essay, as I mentioned above, is merely to demonstrate that the Lord's Supper should not hold the place it does in high church Anglicanism. However, he does not end up sharing his thoughts on its place and significance. This is unfortunate because the tendency in evangelicalism is to go too far in reacting to the excesses of those they deem to be making an idol of the sacrament, and they in turn undermine its value and partake of it far too infrequently. Would Ryle align himself with John Calvin, who rightly stressed that the Supper should always accompany the preaching of the Word because it is a visible representation of the gospel?
It is important to remember that Jesus' institution of the Supper before his death and resurrection is of enormous significance for the church. Too often evangelicals forget this an adopt a view of the Supper that reduces it to a mere memorial. The invitation to the table is an invitation to enter into intimate communion with Christ. It is an invitation to "taste and see that the Lord is good" (Ps. 34:8). It is an invitation to be united with Christ by physically partaking of the elements. It is an invitation to have a foretaste of the coming marriage supper of the Lamb (Rev. 19:6-10). It is an invitation to receive—not just to remember—his grace.
Of course, a further question arises that underlies this whole discussion. While we can go back and forth all day on whether the preaching of the Word or the celebration of the Lord's Supper should be primary in our worship, we need to first ask if it is even warranted to single out one element as the primary act of worship. Are we right to herald one part of our worship as the most important, whatever it may be, or must we understand worship as one unified whole, each part—singing, prayer, preaching, sacrament, offering, doxology—playing an equal part in our communion with God before his throne?
John Stott, in discussing the necessity of pastors to be sincere in what they preach, cites a story in his book, Between Two Worlds, about the 18th century philosopher, David Hume:
A friend once met [Hume] hurrying along a London street and asked him where he was going. Hume replied that he was going to hear George Whitefield preach. 'But surely,' his friend asked in astonishment, 'you don't believe what Whitefield preaches, do you?' 'No, I don't,' answered Hume, 'but he does.' (269-270)
Whitefield had a transparent sincerity that attracted Hume. So it must be with us. John Poulton has said, "The most effective preaching comes from those who embody the things they are saying. They are the message."
