Preaching

Preaching is hard work; listening to sermons is harder still. The reasons are not difficult to diagnose: the ubiquitous influence of high-tech advertising, the loss of oratory in contemporary culture, word-weariness as an effect of being overdosed with information and the fragmenting or dulling effect of visual media. Jaded listeners today are like the people who listened to, but did not hear, the prophet Ezekiel. “My people come to you, as they usually do, and sit before you to listen to your words, but they do not put them into practice. . . . To them you are nothing more than one who sings love songs with a beautiful voice and plays an instrument well, for they hear your words but do not put them into practice” (Ezekiel 33:31-32). In fact it has never been easy to hear or to deliver sermons. In 1857 Anthony Trollope wrote in Barchester Towers: “There is, perhaps, no greater hardships at present inflicted on mankind in civilized and free countries, than the necessity of listening to sermons” (quoted in Nouwen, p. 23). The low estimate of preaching in the world today is in sharp contrast to the high estimate of preaching in Scripture and among the converted.

What Is Preaching?

Preaching is “making present and appropriate to the hearers the revelation of God” (Craddock, p. 51). A sermon is meant to be the real presence of Christ. Preaching is bringing the living Word (Christ) through the written Word (Bible) by means of the spoken word (preaching). The New Testament has a far richer vocabulary than modern Christians to describe the many ways of doing this: prophesying (speaking with immediacy and directness), teaching, proclaiming, dialoging, debating, exhorting, persuading, correcting, evangelizing, conversing, admonishing and encouraging. Preaching sermons is part but not all there is to preaching.

The sermon, in the sense of a twenty-five-minute message constructed in a formal way for maximum persuasive effect, is an art form that arose in the Christian West from a combination of Hebrew prophecy, Greek rhetoric, Jewish synagogue preaching and the impact of the Christian gospel (Dargon 1:14). Originally the Latin word sermo meant “dialogue” because early Christian instruction involved interaction with hearers (see Teaching). This art form is a means of communication through which almost any spiritual gift can be expressed—teaching, exhorting, showing mercy, discerning, leading or even administering. In this sense it is like writing, singing or making movies. Preaching itself is not a gift but a vehicle for gifts.

While preaching is more than the presentation of prepared messages from the pulpit, one indication of the vitality of the church since the fourth century (when church buildings as we know them developed) has always been the quality of pulpit preaching. It is not an overstatement when surveying church history to conclude that “whenever preaching has declined Christianity has become stagnant” (Wiersbe and Perry, p. 9). After a thousand years of being relegated to secondary status, there was a genuine revival in preaching in the Protestant Reformation. There is need of a revival of biblical preaching today.

Even though formal sermonic preaching has been important for centuries, much of the influential preaching throughout history has been done by lay people untrained in rabbinic preaching or Greek rhetoric. Most of these were volunteers rather than paid ministers: the apostles, ordinary tradespeople, women in Caesar’s household, Origen, slaves, the lay preachers of renewal movements like the Salvation Army and the thousands of lay preachers in house churches in China (see Tentmaking).

Why Preaching?

In some parts of the Third World, the church is growing like a beneficent forest fire. I can stand in a marketplace of rural Africa and quickly get a crowd to hear my message. Many will respond. This situation may continue for a little longer. But in the Western post-Christian world, and increasingly as we experience the global village, preaching gets harder. The cardinal communication rule is “Don’t preach at me!” It is tempting to give it up altogether and settle for talk shows, interviews and “warm, fuzzy” conversations. Or we could use the Information Superhighway or television set to hook up electronically with one of the few “great preachers” left in the world. Why listen to an ordinary preacher? Why preach at all?

The reasons to preach and to listen to preaching are deeply theological. First, we have a preaching God who speaks to and through human beings. Second, the central document of the Christian faith—the Bible—is itself a sermon, taking the revelation of God and “bringing it home” through human personalities to multiple cultures and contexts. Third, God continues to call and empower people to speak on God’s behalf as spokespersons. Fourth, the spoken word will always have a winsome power because speaking communicates truth strained through personality and is inescapably personal—the very thing postmodern men and women crave. Socrates once said, “I would rather write upon the hearts of living men than upon the skins of sheep” (quoted in Pattison, p. 2). Fifth, the basic human condition has not changed: we need good news. The heart of preaching is the proclamation of news especially to the outsider even more than the edification of believers.

The apostle Paul asks, “And how will they hear without someone preaching to them?” (Romans 10:14). Behind that preaching, Paul argues, is the sending God. Preaching originates in the initiative of God and is sustained by it. Preaching is designed by God to reach even the people who resist the news they so desperately need. There is some truth in the observation that the world is producing a type of person to whom it is impossible to preach the gospel. But as P. T. Forsyth said, the preacher is “there not simply to speak what people care to hear but also to make them care for what you must speak” (p. 94). This brings up an important question.

Who Should Preach?

Possibly everyone! Now that the Holy Spirit has been poured out on the people of God beginning with the day of Pentecost, there is universal potential for prophecy—inspired speech from God. “Your sons and daughters will prophesy,” proclaimed Peter, quoting Joel’s prophecy (Acts 2:17). In contrast to the Old Testament there is a thrilling assumption throughout the New: the prophethood of all believers. This means that every Christian is capable of delivering God’s Word. What was formerly the sacred responsibility of a few special leaders—prophets, priests and princes—is now universalized in the laity, the people of God as a whole. Each believer should be able to “give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have” (1 Peter 3:15). Paul expected prophecy (immediate and direct words to build up others) to be regularly expressed by ordinary members of the church (1 Cor. 14:1-3; Col. 3:16). Witness is every Christian’s vocation, whether it happens “in season,” in contexts where this is expected, or “out of season,” as a serendipity (2 Tim. 4:2).

Most of the preaching in the history of the church has been done by ordinary Christians who are unremembered. Foster describes the situation ably for the first few decades:

Much of the preaching would doubtless be to small groups, often an incidental opportunity which left little chance for preparation. One needed to be always ready. Perhaps it would be a casual group in the marketplace gathering round as a conversation or an argument is overheard, and turns into open-air preaching. Or it might be a family where one member is an inquirer, and on visiting him or her one finds, as Peter did in the home of Cornelius (and many a missionary nowadays), the whole company gathered, parents and children and slaves. (Foster, p. 51)

So the first task of the pastor-preachers in the church is to prepare the whole church to become articulate. P. T. Forsyth states this brilliantly: “The one great preacher in history, I contend, is the church. And the first business of the individual preacher is to enable the church to preach” (p. 53). Church leaders do this by equipping other people to share the pulpit—thus enlarging the scope and depth of the preaching ministry. But more especially preachers do this by equipping all the people to know God, to be able to make God known and to be able to open God’s Word for themselves. It is a widespread church tragedy, and a travesty of biblical preaching, that people can listen to two sermons a Sunday for their whole lives and not know how to open the Bible for themselves. Discussing the text and the sermon in small groups before or after the message will do much to equip both the church and the preacher. Restoring a conversational dimension to preaching, so fundamental to the early church, allows for mutual learning and life application.

The solution, however, is not to give everyone “a turn in the pulpit,” making Sunday services into the world’s greatest amateur hour. Martin Luther—a firm believer that every Christian should bear the Word of God—was careful to distinguish the in-house preaching ministry in ecclesia from the ministry of believers in diaspora Monday to Saturday, what someone has called “on-the-street guerrilla preaching.”

When [the Christian] is in a place where there are no Christians, he needs no other call than the fact that he is a Christian, inwardly called and anointed by God; he is bound by the duty of brotherly love to preach to the erring heathens or non-Christians and to teach them the Gospel, even though no one call him to this work. . . . When the Christian is in a place where there are Christians, who have the same power and right as he, he should not thrust himself forward, but should rather let himself be called and drawn forth to preach and teach in the stead and by the commission of the rest. (Luther, p. 80).

Preaching by ordinary members of the church in both pulpit and parlor often has extraordinary winsomeness, laced as it is with story and illustration from everyday life.

What to Preach

There is almost no greater revolt in Christendom today than the universal revolt against bad preaching. Far too often today the fare being offered is baptized psychology, stream of consciousness, dialogues without any transcendent point of reference, and commentaries on “the scene.” The problem is deeper than mere technique. Preachers are commissioned to bring messages that are not their own—messages from Scripture.

Biblical preaching is crucial for four reasons: (1) preachers have no authority in themselves; (2) God’s Word has the power of its own fulfillment and can generate new life; (3) only the Bible in its “full counsel” can correct the tendency for preachers to ride a favorite hobby-horse; and (4) the Bible is the supreme preacher to the preacher, as Forsyth says, “the sacrament of God to the soul” (p. 12).

All preaching then should be expository in that it finds its content and manner of delivery from the Bible. The preacher does this not merely by explaining the text verse by verse—a good thing to do—but by elliptically going round and round the two foci of the ancient Word and the Spirit-informed application to the situations of the day. In this way the walls between the first century and the present fall down. Moses, Jesus or Paul speaks, and the person today hears.

How to Preach

Much has been written about the art of preparing a sermon. Methodologies include the homiletical plot (Eugene Lowry), saying one thing (Stott), using the narrative form (Buechner) or the expository form (Robinson), and creating a context in which hearers convince themselves of the truth (Buttrick). These are all ways to go beyond the “three points and a poem” of the traditional sermon (a structure that generally delivers three sermons rather than one). All preaching starts with an introduction, a development and a conclusion, with application to life along the way, preferably not being left to the conclusion.

But there is something more important than the technology of sermon preparation. The genius of effective preaching through the centuries is expressed by John Stott: “The preparation of the preacher is more important than the preparation of the sermon.” Does the preacher have passion for his subject? Has the preacher applied this message to himself? Does the preacher love me? Does the preacher respect me? How does the preacher live? When we analyze what people mean when they say “Don’t preach at me,” we may discover that this is a natural and justifiable revulsion about being talked “at,” or “talked down to,” by someone who does not really care or who has not taken the trouble to find out who we are. Implicit in the complaint is a call for incarnational preaching, the very thing biblical preaching demands.

The biblical understanding of speaking is that the message and the messenger are one. The person comes right out of the mouth (Matthew 12:34; Matthew 15:18). Someone who had heard many sermons once summarized what he looked for in the preacher: (1) evidence of a deep relationship with the Bible, (2) willingness to spend time with people, (3) a prophetic stance—not someone who reads the newspaper and believes it, and (4) an obvious deep relationship with words. On this last point Buechner points out that the gospel is closer to fairy tale than newscast—it is too good not to be true (p. 81). So what is desperately needed today is not only good messages but preachable persons—deep people through whom God speaks.

Fundamental to anointed preaching is dependence on God, prayerful expectation that God will speak, humility before the truth of God’s Word, a heart purged of selfish ambition and a hunger in the preacher to live the truth. God may choose to anoint the ministry of a hypocrite from time to time, but sooner or later that person’s words, unlike those of Samuel (1 Samuel 3:19), will “fall to the ground” resultless and dead. It is a simple fact of life: you cannot give bread if you do not have bread. Forsyth names the problem:

Churches and preachers are choked with a crowd of paltry things kept in place by no sure authority, and dignified by no governing power. Both ministers and churches have as much of a struggle to get time for spiritual culture as if it were none of their business. . . . And religion becomes an ambulance, not a pioneer. (pp. 116-17)

But the spirituality of preaching is not only the cultivation of inner authenticity in the preacher; it is dependence on the Spirit. Spirituality is Spirituality.

The Holy Spirit takes ordinary human speech and transforms it, often without the preacher’s knowing, into a word that addresses the human heart. Because of this, oratory and manipulative technique are both inappropriate and irreverent (1 Cor. 2:1-5; 1 Thes. 1:5). The Spirit does the persuading and does so in a way that profoundly respects the personality of the listener. The anointing of God’s Spirit—so fundamental to effective preaching—may happen in the preparation of study, in the act of delivery, in the hearing, or in any combination of these. Depending on the Spirit, however, is not an excuse for shoddy preparation, nor does it guarantee “an anointed message.” There is a mystery to preaching. It a fool’s task. So is listening.

How to Listen to Sermons

In the article on listening I noted that we are not fitted anatomically with ear lids. So the decision to hear is more subtle, intuitive and inward. If only the preacher could guarantee continuous hearing! But that can be done only by the listener, and even then through a spiritual discipline. John Stott’s summary of predisposing factors (here paraphrased) for the preacher to be available to the Holy Spirit apply equally to the hearer: (1) conscious dependence on God (to hear God speak—a miracle of communication), (2) meekness (to submit to the written Word of God), (3) godly ambition (to desire a genuine encounter with Christ), and (4) faith (to rely on the Spirit’s power rather than our own analytic skills).

There is work for the listener to do before, during and after a sermon. Beforehand, it helps to read and meditate on the passage. Some churches follow lectionaries which facilitate multiple learning contexts. Discussion before, during or after the message will restore the normal corporate context for hearing the Word of God. During the sermon we should have the Bible open and follow the sermon in the text, praying all the while both for the preacher and for ourselves. What is he or she really trying to say? What is the burden of this message? Is the sermon a faithful expression of the passage being expounded? Afterward we should ask: What is there to obey in this sermon, what promise to lay hold of, what issue in my life to be adjusted, what sin to be repented of, what good news to be appropriated? These are dimensions of the response of believers to preaching.

In 1 Cor. 14:24-25 Paul gives a stunning description of the unbeliever’s response to true preaching: “He will be convinced by all that he is a sinner and will be judged by all, and the secrets of his heart will be laid bare. So he will fall down and worship God, exclaiming, `God is really among you!’ ” No less should happen when a sermon is preached to believers. The Scriptures are written, Jesus said to the Pharisees, not so that people will find life in the Scriptures, but so they will “come to [Jesus] to have life” (John 5:40). Preaching should be the Christ-event, the written Word expressed through the spoken word so that people will encounter the living Word.

» See also: Conversation

» See also: Evangelism

» See also: Teaching

» See also: Witness

Resources and References

F. Buechner, Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy and Fairy Tale (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1977); D. Buttrick, Homiletic: Moves and Structures (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987); F. Craddock, Preaching (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1985); E. Dargan, A History of Preaching, 2 vols. (New York: George H. Doran, 1905); P. T. Forsyth, Positive Preaching and the Modern Mind (London: Independent Press, 1907); J. Foster, After the Apostles (London: SCM Press, 1951); E. Lowry, The Homiletical Plot: The Sermon as Narrative Art Form (Philadelphia: John Knox Press, 1975); M. Luther, “The Right and Power of a Congregation or Community to Judge All Teaching and to Call, Appoint and Dismiss Teachers, Established and Proved from Scripture,” in Works of Martin Luther, vol. 4, trans. A. T. W. Steinhaeuser (Philadelphia: Castle Press, 1931); Henry Mitchell, The Recovery of Preaching (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1977); H. Nouwen, Creative Ministry (Garden City, N.Y.: Image Books/Doubleday, 1971); T. H. Pattison, The History of Christian Preaching (Philadelphia: American Baptist Publication Society, 1903); H. W. Robinson, Biblical Preaching: The Development and Delivery of Expository Sermons (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1980); J. R. W. Stott, Between Two Worlds: The Art of Preaching in the Twentieth Century (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982); W. W. Wiersbe and L. M. Perry, The Wycliffe Handbook of Preaching and Preachers (Chicago: Moody Press, 1984).

—R. Paul Stevens