[This post is part 9 of a 10 part series of the most important lessons I have learned in my first year of ministry. While I understand that family, friends, and congregants will read it, please remember it is written more to other pastors--especially those new in ministry.]Lesson #2: Preach for the Pew, not the Professor
As I am now finishing my second year in the pastorate, I have had to radically rethink my approach to preaching. The benefits of ascending to the pulpit weekly (or, multiple times weekly) is that it affords one the opportunity to experiment with different models or styles of preaching. Apart from being rather taxing upon one's unfortunate congregation, it is nevertheless a tremendous learning experience for the young pastor.
In seminary (or bible college) we are taught an approach to preaching that I find rather unhealthy. While such schools generally (and rightly) emphasize the need for expository preaching, I have found their definition of such preaching is many times out of line with the preaching of faithful ministers throughout the centuries. The sermons that most impressed the professor I have found to be the very sermons that most alienated the person in the pew. The earnest Christian professor rightly calls upon us to faithfully preach the text, but the method of preaching they advocate is many times more suitable for a scholarly lecture than a Sunday pulpit. Over the past year I have come to realize that I have been called to preach for the pew, not the professor. Of course, I always believed this--I just didn't practice it.
A. Preach with clarity.
Your job as a pastor is to be very, very simple. The pulpit is not the place to creatively rearrange the text to fit it into some sort of contrived alliteration. Though that preaching method is from a generation ago, it rises from the still contemporary need to push the text into some grand framework. While creativity is an important dimension to preaching, it is secondary. Furthermore, the sermon is no place to speak of the technical aspects of Hebrew poetic structure, the Greek verbal system, or scholarly arguments about authorship. Nor is the sermon the place for excessive quotation from Church Fathers, the magisterial Reformers, Puritan expositors, and even your childhood pastor. By all means, be conversant in these things! They will help shape your preaching--but they shouldn't be the shape of it. Know your congregation. Keep it simple. Your goal is that they understand that passage and offer ways of application. Nothing more.
B. Preach the whole counsel of God.
Seminaries many times discourage us to incorporate other texts into our sermons. The strict exegetical approach to preaching--which binds one only to the text before him--is absurd and out of line with the great Protestant and Early Church preachers of our past. Pick up a Puritan, or read the great Early Church expositor Chrysostom--all of these men freely interacted with other portions of scripture. They were not afraid to preach the whole counsel of God and allow those scripture to inform the passage under question. They regularly drew their readers into a fuller understanding of God's revelation--and rarely (if ever) limited themselves to the confines of only a few verses.
C. Preach God's heart, not yours
To be honest, I don't care what's on your heart--nor should anyone care about what's on mine. My thoughts cannot change lives. The goal of a sermon should never be about communicating something that is important to me. There is a word for that--it's called a speech. A sermon, by contrast, is about what is important to God. We are called to preach His message--nothing more, nothing less. If people walk away impressed with me as a speaker, in a very real sense I have failed. Christ said that John the Baptist was the greatest man who ever lived, yet he sought to decrease that Christ may increase. If John was willing to get out of the way so Christ could work, I sense a chump like me should as well.
Previous Posts in this series:
As I am now finishing my second year in the pastorate, I have had to radically rethink my approach to preaching. The benefits of ascending to the pulpit weekly (or, multiple times weekly) is that it affords one the opportunity to experiment with different models or styles of preaching. Apart from being rather taxing upon one's unfortunate congregation, it is nevertheless a tremendous learning experience for the young pastor.
In seminary (or bible college) we are taught an approach to preaching that I find rather unhealthy. While such schools generally (and rightly) emphasize the need for expository preaching, I have found their definition of such preaching is many times out of line with the preaching of faithful ministers throughout the centuries. The sermons that most impressed the professor I have found to be the very sermons that most alienated the person in the pew. The earnest Christian professor rightly calls upon us to faithfully preach the text, but the method of preaching they advocate is many times more suitable for a scholarly lecture than a Sunday pulpit. Over the past year I have come to realize that I have been called to preach for the pew, not the professor. Of course, I always believed this--I just didn't practice it.
A. Preach with clarity.
Your job as a pastor is to be very, very simple. The pulpit is not the place to creatively rearrange the text to fit it into some sort of contrived alliteration. Though that preaching method is from a generation ago, it rises from the still contemporary need to push the text into some grand framework. While creativity is an important dimension to preaching, it is secondary. Furthermore, the sermon is no place to speak of the technical aspects of Hebrew poetic structure, the Greek verbal system, or scholarly arguments about authorship. Nor is the sermon the place for excessive quotation from Church Fathers, the magisterial Reformers, Puritan expositors, and even your childhood pastor. By all means, be conversant in these things! They will help shape your preaching--but they shouldn't be the shape of it. Know your congregation. Keep it simple. Your goal is that they understand that passage and offer ways of application. Nothing more.
B. Preach the whole counsel of God.
Seminaries many times discourage us to incorporate other texts into our sermons. The strict exegetical approach to preaching--which binds one only to the text before him--is absurd and out of line with the great Protestant and Early Church preachers of our past. Pick up a Puritan, or read the great Early Church expositor Chrysostom--all of these men freely interacted with other portions of scripture. They were not afraid to preach the whole counsel of God and allow those scripture to inform the passage under question. They regularly drew their readers into a fuller understanding of God's revelation--and rarely (if ever) limited themselves to the confines of only a few verses.
C. Preach God's heart, not yours
To be honest, I don't care what's on your heart--nor should anyone care about what's on mine. My thoughts cannot change lives. The goal of a sermon should never be about communicating something that is important to me. There is a word for that--it's called a speech. A sermon, by contrast, is about what is important to God. We are called to preach His message--nothing more, nothing less. If people walk away impressed with me as a speaker, in a very real sense I have failed. Christ said that John the Baptist was the greatest man who ever lived, yet he sought to decrease that Christ may increase. If John was willing to get out of the way so Christ could work, I sense a chump like me should as well.
Previous Posts in this series:
Lesson #9: They had to hate someone, it might as well be You.
Lesson #8: Poor Pastors Have Pretty Knees
Lesson #7: Know the Waitress by Name
Lesson #6: The Need is Not the Call
Lesson #5: I'm an Idiot
Lesson #4: Stink Like Your Sheep
Lesson #3: Remember Who You Work For
After many years in the pulpit and, so it seems, many years in formal Biblical training, I find you right on target. As I read the New Testament, it is constantly littered (if that phrase is acceptable) with Old Testament quotes and allusions. Why would I think that my way of expository preaching is to superior to their way of preaching?
ReplyDeleteHaving started my formal training after several years in the pulpit, I found myself saying from time to time in the classroom,"How in the world do I translate what you are saying to the pew and if I cannot, is it truly valuable?"
Thanks for writing it so clearly.
One item on may weekly preaching prayer list is, "Grant me the ability to make hard things easy to be understood." (This without oversimplifying, of course.) Too many preachers do the opposite and I don't want to be one of them.
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