Good Preaching

What constitutes good preaching?  A man once commented to me that such-and-such a pastor was the best pulpiteer in the city.  It made me think: “Is a preacher like a Musketeer, a Buccaneer, or Puppeteer?  Please now, a pulpiteer?

Paul cut to the heart of this false thinking when he told his Greek, philosophy-loving  friends that “Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel: not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect.”

Effective-less preaching is preaching that is filled with pulpiteering.  Somehow we have mistaken educated preaching, exegesis, and polished delivery for a Spirit-empowered, Jesus-love poured out to a needy people in the atonement of the cross.

Paul continued his rather bold rebuke of the Corinthians’ pulpiteering-infatuation by saying, “My speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power” (1 Cor. 2:4). Good preaching for Paul was defined as something spiritually demonstrative and full of power.

It is so sad that homiletics has been reduced to a myriad of things other than the cross applied. How do we get back to the circumstantial nature of the Spirit’s application of the blood of Christ in the immediate.

Most preachers would call this application.  It is usually the weakest part of the sermons you and I hear on Sunday mornings.

Additionally, what is being applied?  The text is often applied to people by the preacher.  Yet the Holy Spirit yearns to apply himself to us through the word of God.  I am not arguing against expository preaching in saying this.  I am affirming it.

If the word of God is the word of God and not a suggestion, when we preach it, the power is infused by the Holy Spirit into the hearts and mind of people.  If we don’t get that on Sunday, maybe the text is not being preached or the preacher does not live the text he purports to affirm.

This is not just semantics either.  If the word of God is the WORD OF GOD, than the Spirit of God is in its preaching.  Yet if the wisdom-of-words-principle goes into effect, HOW WE PREACH IT makes all the difference.

The “no-effect preaching” of Paul’s rebuke seems to be all too common today. People leave the sanctuary untouched, unmoved, and not comforted, much less convicted.  I long for the power of the living God, not the oratory of the wannabee pulpiteer.

So what does that look like?  Frankly, it has no M.O., so to speak.  It takes the shape of the simple servant, the broken minister, the poor-in-spirit person who climbs the steps and stands behind the authoritative pulpit with no confidence in his education, his flesh, the size and growth of his congregation, his ability to articulate, his prowess of verbal construction, his illustration, his verbal schemes and carefully constructed tropes.  He lives in the realm of the Spirit of the Living God, connecting people to the Savior in the cross which he learned in the early hours of the morning from his prayer-life in communion with an omnipotent Christ.

Herein we find optimism.  Herein we shed our selfish personal glories.  Herein we anticipate enduring results, growth, and power.  Before we enter into the power of Savior’s blood, yes ‘blood,’ we put to death our personal ambition for pulpiteering- success. Jeremiah 45:5 is very applicable at this point.

Additionally, there are other byproducts of weakness-preaching.  We shed the need to fight over worship music—hymns or contemporary music.  We don’t create a crisis of scheduling, and formats, and a myriad of other secondary agendas.  Jesus takes center stage. He consumes the heart of the listener.  People leave filled with him in the simple healing from the brokenness of their condition. The power has fallen on the congregation and the preacher fades into the background.  When the preacher gets lost in the shadow of the One Preached, that’s good preaching.