Found at The Sacred Sandwich.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
The Lost Art of Preaching...
In today's world of topical sermons and seeker-sensitive attitudes, one would wonder how someone like John Calvin or Charles Spurgeon would fare in our day. I think one of the biggest problems facing the church today is it's drive to change the way the message is being presented. All for the sake of being relative.
I do believe the church should be able to speak a language that the culture understands. I dislike attending a service that stresses the need for the "anointing" or if the preacher uses words like "regeneration" without explaining the meanings of those words for the unbelievers in the audience. I think sometimes we speak a "Christianese" that no one else understands.
Preaching itself should not change. Many churches want to turn the sermon into "story hour" at the church or maybe eliminate it altogether in favor of dramas or poetry readings. I am not against the use of any of these mediums in the service. BUT, I am NOT in favor of replacing the sermon with any of these.
The other issue, which I think is just as deadly, that is infiltrating our churches is the fact that preachers almost never preach through a book of the bible any more, instead they preach on topics. Topics range from love to kindness to prayer to the end times. Now I am not saying the bible does touch on all of these topics, but the problem is that preachers are picking the topics and picking 10 verses to support said topic and then delivering messages on that topic that may or may not align with the whole word of God.
Here's a common example: I recently heard a preacher on the radio preaching on love. This is a popular topic. He picked some verses out of the bible (including every preachers standby in 1 Cor. 13) and then proceeded to explain what love is. It is patient, kind, etc. You get the point. The problem was not that this was not biblical. The problem came in what he didn't say. He never mentioned got around to speaking about true love which is God. He never mentioned the atoning work of Christ on the cross. He never explained the good news. He went on to challenge his congregation to "love more" and the love their neighbors better and to love God better.
Most of you can see the problem in this already. We preach love, equip them to love, send them out the door to love and they fail. Why? They get outside in the church parking lot, the husband gets mad at the wife and the next thing you know, love is thrown out the window. Love is not something that we can "do better". It is a fruit. In order to truly love, the way God intends for us to love, we must have a change in nature. Repentance must come first along with the forgiveness of sins in the name of Jesus before one can love like that. God must regenerate your heart. This all could have been explained in the sermon, but that might have offended someone. So it was left out.
I heard someone describe it this way. You have to grow a beard. You don't just decide to have one. I tried to have one a 12. It didn't happen. No matter how hard I tried, the beard just didn't grow. Now, I could have went out and taped one on. It would have looked like a had a beard, but upon close inspection everyone would have known it was a fake. The same is with love. It is something that grows from your relationship with Christ. You can go out and tape some love on, but in the end, people will know that it is fake and when they see the heart hasn't been changed.
Sometimes we need to rediscover our roots. Great preachers like Calvin did not preach very many topical sermons. Instead he preached directly from the text. He went through entire books of the bible. He did not skip around like modern day preachers do. He instead devoted his life to proclaiming the word, in the way God said it. He preached directly from the Hebrew and Greek. He spoke very simply and instructed his people in a way they could understand.
According to S.J. Cole, who wrote an essay on John Calvin here, Calvin would preach an average of 170 sermons a year. This is far more than the average of 50 to 100 for most American pastors. Calvin preached two different sermons on Sunday, as well as one sermon every day of the week, every other week (at 6 or 7 am depending on the time of the year). He preached 189 sermons straight through the book of Acts, which took him five years to accomplish. He preached 5 sermons of the one chapter of Obadiah, 25 sermons on the 5 chapters of Lamentations, 123 sermons on the book of Genesis, and so on. This is in conjunction with everything else he did, including the writing of The Institutes of the Christian Religion and lecturing pastoral students three times a day every week that he wasn't preaching every day.
Calvin suffered from many physical problems during this time as well: impaired digestion (he only ate one meal a day), migraines, lung hemorrhages, perhaps tuberculosis, chronic asthma, kidney stones, hemorrhoids, frequent fever, and gout. Even with all these issues, he still managed to preach the word.
A Few Key Points on Preaching
1 - Preach expositionally. This is very important. We should be in awe of God and his power and might and never seek to promote our own agenda from the pulpit. Topical sermons tend to promote one's own ideas about God, but not God himself. Let God do the speaking.
2 - Preach Jesus in every text. Jesus is found throughout the Bible. If we ever loose sight of him, we have lost sight of everything. Everything we do should be about Jesus. Period.
3 - Preach humbly. If we truly understand who we are, wretched sinners, then we will preach accordingly. Paul says he was the chief of sinners, yet his messages are still effective because it was not his message, but God speaking directly to the hearts of man.
4 - Preach repentance and forgiveness. One without the other will not do. We must have both. Some churches focus on one without the other. We must endeavor to preach both and do it constantly.
5 - Preach to refute false teaching. Our world is littered with false teaching. Some churches have chosen to ignore it. Others have indeed promoted it themselves. We need to endeavor to preach to the true gospel and make sure we point out the false ones.
I do believe the church should be able to speak a language that the culture understands. I dislike attending a service that stresses the need for the "anointing" or if the preacher uses words like "regeneration" without explaining the meanings of those words for the unbelievers in the audience. I think sometimes we speak a "Christianese" that no one else understands.
Preaching itself should not change. Many churches want to turn the sermon into "story hour" at the church or maybe eliminate it altogether in favor of dramas or poetry readings. I am not against the use of any of these mediums in the service. BUT, I am NOT in favor of replacing the sermon with any of these.
The other issue, which I think is just as deadly, that is infiltrating our churches is the fact that preachers almost never preach through a book of the bible any more, instead they preach on topics. Topics range from love to kindness to prayer to the end times. Now I am not saying the bible does touch on all of these topics, but the problem is that preachers are picking the topics and picking 10 verses to support said topic and then delivering messages on that topic that may or may not align with the whole word of God.
Here's a common example: I recently heard a preacher on the radio preaching on love. This is a popular topic. He picked some verses out of the bible (including every preachers standby in 1 Cor. 13) and then proceeded to explain what love is. It is patient, kind, etc. You get the point. The problem was not that this was not biblical. The problem came in what he didn't say. He never mentioned got around to speaking about true love which is God. He never mentioned the atoning work of Christ on the cross. He never explained the good news. He went on to challenge his congregation to "love more" and the love their neighbors better and to love God better.
Most of you can see the problem in this already. We preach love, equip them to love, send them out the door to love and they fail. Why? They get outside in the church parking lot, the husband gets mad at the wife and the next thing you know, love is thrown out the window. Love is not something that we can "do better". It is a fruit. In order to truly love, the way God intends for us to love, we must have a change in nature. Repentance must come first along with the forgiveness of sins in the name of Jesus before one can love like that. God must regenerate your heart. This all could have been explained in the sermon, but that might have offended someone. So it was left out.
I heard someone describe it this way. You have to grow a beard. You don't just decide to have one. I tried to have one a 12. It didn't happen. No matter how hard I tried, the beard just didn't grow. Now, I could have went out and taped one on. It would have looked like a had a beard, but upon close inspection everyone would have known it was a fake. The same is with love. It is something that grows from your relationship with Christ. You can go out and tape some love on, but in the end, people will know that it is fake and when they see the heart hasn't been changed.
Sometimes we need to rediscover our roots. Great preachers like Calvin did not preach very many topical sermons. Instead he preached directly from the text. He went through entire books of the bible. He did not skip around like modern day preachers do. He instead devoted his life to proclaiming the word, in the way God said it. He preached directly from the Hebrew and Greek. He spoke very simply and instructed his people in a way they could understand.
According to S.J. Cole, who wrote an essay on John Calvin here, Calvin would preach an average of 170 sermons a year. This is far more than the average of 50 to 100 for most American pastors. Calvin preached two different sermons on Sunday, as well as one sermon every day of the week, every other week (at 6 or 7 am depending on the time of the year). He preached 189 sermons straight through the book of Acts, which took him five years to accomplish. He preached 5 sermons of the one chapter of Obadiah, 25 sermons on the 5 chapters of Lamentations, 123 sermons on the book of Genesis, and so on. This is in conjunction with everything else he did, including the writing of The Institutes of the Christian Religion and lecturing pastoral students three times a day every week that he wasn't preaching every day.
Calvin suffered from many physical problems during this time as well: impaired digestion (he only ate one meal a day), migraines, lung hemorrhages, perhaps tuberculosis, chronic asthma, kidney stones, hemorrhoids, frequent fever, and gout. Even with all these issues, he still managed to preach the word.
A Few Key Points on Preaching
1 - Preach expositionally. This is very important. We should be in awe of God and his power and might and never seek to promote our own agenda from the pulpit. Topical sermons tend to promote one's own ideas about God, but not God himself. Let God do the speaking.
2 - Preach Jesus in every text. Jesus is found throughout the Bible. If we ever loose sight of him, we have lost sight of everything. Everything we do should be about Jesus. Period.
3 - Preach humbly. If we truly understand who we are, wretched sinners, then we will preach accordingly. Paul says he was the chief of sinners, yet his messages are still effective because it was not his message, but God speaking directly to the hearts of man.
4 - Preach repentance and forgiveness. One without the other will not do. We must have both. Some churches focus on one without the other. We must endeavor to preach both and do it constantly.
5 - Preach to refute false teaching. Our world is littered with false teaching. Some churches have chosen to ignore it. Others have indeed promoted it themselves. We need to endeavor to preach to the true gospel and make sure we point out the false ones.
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