Don't Strive To Be a Great Preacher

Reading Levy's post this morning set me thinking. As I prepare to transition from PhD studies back to pastoral ministry in the local church, I've received much wise counsel from older saints on making said transition. One aspect of it that has been on my mind particularly is the temptation for those of us who preach week by week to strive to be great preachers. 

Don't misunderstand me. Preachers should be constantly striving to improve their delivery, clarity, and most importantly, content. We who ascend the sacred desk should warmly receive criticism from older brothers who are better preachers than we. We should read books that help us feed God's people better. We should listen to the constructive criticism of those who sit under our ministries week after week.

No, what I am arguing against is the actual attempt to develop into a preacher with a reputation for being so unusually wonderful that people flock to you. There is a fine line here, to be sure: typically, gifted men attract larger audiences. Nothing wrong with that per se. 

But the current culture of celebrity tends to foster in younger seminarians a desire to be known as a great preacher. This seems to have been the case in Lloyd-Jones's day as well. The young men did their best to imitate the better older preachers like Lloyd-Jones.The same thing happens today. But imitation, in many cases, is the mark of the immature. You try to sing like Eddie Vedder only until you realize you have your own voice. (As an aside, this is one reason why so much contemporary Christian music is little better than the knock-off colognes at gas stations).  Keep Reading >>>

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Orators and Heralds: Audience-Driven vs. Obedience-Driven

Two weeks ago, I posted a third principle of faithfulness for Gospel ministry from 2 Corinthians 4. If the Gospel is veiled to those who are perishing (2Cor 4:3), and if the problem we’re trying to solve is the world’s blindness to glory (2Cor 4:4), then our task is to preach a message that is powerful enough in itself to overcome that blindness. Paul tells us that such a proclamation is not ourselves, but Christ Jesus as Lord (2Cor 4:5).

And yet it seems that many pastors, churches, and individual Christians have not understood the implications of those principles. Sadly, many do preach themselves. Jerry Wragg has offered us two magnificent posts over the last two days (one, two) outlining some reasons he sees for this. Another of the reasons I believe that is the case is that we have a fundamental misunderstanding of our role. Many evangelical preachers see themselves as orators rather than heralds.

To help us see the difference, I want to quote generously from a chapter by Duane Litfin called “Swallowing Our Pride: An Essay on the Foolishness of Preaching.” It appears in Preach the Word, a book on expository preaching in honor of R. Kent Hughes. In this chapter, Litfin examines the widely-held notion that 1Cor 1:24 speaks only of the foolishness of the message preached to the exclusion of the method of preaching itself. He contrasts the ancient keryx, or herald—that is, what New Testament preachers are called to be—with the orator that Paul labored so diligently to distance himself from (1Cor 1:17–2:5).