Just read a great blogpost by Christopher Bernard, titled I Need to Cover My Mouth When I Preach. Here’s what he had to say about our tendency to want to speak for God in our preaching…

“There is a real danger in pastoral work. The temptation to push past humility in our confession of what God is doing pulls at us all, and we need to resist this temptation. Often we are called upon to make sense of what is going on around us, and far too often we can’t. This leaves us scrambling with uncertainty at best; and at worst, it puts us in a position to substitute our own authority for God’s. But God speaks for Godself. It is not our place to judge or to condemn. It is our place to love. Because most of the time we don’t know what’s really going on. And when we attempt to place judgment on someone, or explain why God has allowed something to happen, we end up looking foolish. Who knows the mind of God? Not Job, not his friends, not his wife, and certainly not us.”

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I recently posted a series of responses to questions about preaching from John Brand of Encouraging Expository Excellence. In the interest of reciprocity, John asked me to respond to the same questions. Here is the result…

1. How did you discover your gifts in preaching? Once or twice a year my home church would allow the youth group to lead the evening service. On several of these occasions I was encouraged to preach. I think my first sermon was from Judges 6 – the story of Gideon. I was a mere 17 years old. It can’t have been much of a sermon, but the people were encouraging and I began to sense my gift. I actually still have the notes! It strikes me that we don’t do enough of that sort of thing with young people today.

2. Is it important to you that a sermon contain one major theme or idea? I admit I do follow the “big idea” approach to preaching popularized by Haddon Robinson. I’ve noticed in my writing that editors (and readers) prefer it when my pieces are unified in structure. Sermons benefit from the same kind of unity.

3. What is the most important aspect of a preacher’s style and what stylistic elements should be avoided? The most important stylistic aspect I would recommend is “humbled confidence,” and no, it is not an oxymoron. What I would avoid is an arrogant posture that communicates that the preacher stands above or is in a privileged position over the congregation.

4. What notes, if any, do you use? I haven’t used notes in my preaching for more than 15 years. It’s a lot more work, but I think it’s worth it, for the way it enhances communication. The trick is to assimilate the sermon, and not merely memorize it.

5. What are the greatest perils that preachers must avoid? Preachers must avoid the sense that they are the ones that are doing the preaching. God is the preacher, we are merely his assistants in the process.

6. What are the top five books on preaching that have been most helpful to you as a preacher? Five books that have influenced me (I’m not sure if they are “the most Important” or not) include, Biblical Preaching by Haddon Robinson. Eugene Lowry’s Doing Time in the Pulpit opened my eyes to a world of new possibilities in preaching when I read it years ago. I really love Kent Edwards’ new book, Deep Preaching. Larson and Robinson’s The Art and Craft of Biblical Preaching is valuable because of its scope (full disclosure: I was a contributing editor), and Ian Pitt-Watson’s A Primer on Preaching, continues to bless me.

7. Which preachers, living or dead, have had the greatest influence on your own ministry? I’ll have to mention Robinson, yet again. No man has done more to shape the preaching of evangelicals in North America, for the better. I was also personally influenced by Calvin Miller who was a real encouragement to me early on. I loved his integration of creativity with biblical fidelity.

8. What steps do you take to nurture or encourage developing of future preachers? I mentor a lot of emerging preachers. It’s hard to replace the value of listening, critiquing, and challenging preachers toward improvement.

9. What advice would you give to a young man who is wondering whether God is calling him into a preaching ministry, firstly in terms of recognizing the genuineness of a call and secondly in acting on it? In terms of recognizing a call, the ancient advise is that if you can do anything else, you probably should. I’m not sure I buy that. In my experience, my mentors took the other approach. You are obviously gifted, they told me. Why would you possibly want to do anything less than preach? I remember an older preacher saying, “never step down from the pulpit… to become Prime Minister.” I’ll admit I didn’t buy it at the time, but it is making more and more sense to me, the more I do this work.

10. Is good expository preaching something that is ‘caught’ or ‘taught’; what is the balance between the two? Is expository preaching “caught” or “taught?” The answer is “yes.” God gifts us, but we are expected to make the most of our gifts through diligent effort.

11. What is the secret of perseverance in a preaching ministry? I think perseverance is assisted by humility. When we realize that preaching is what God does, we are less likely to feel the need to bear the weight of it ourselves.

12. What is the secret of freshness in a preaching ministry? The secret of freshness in preaching is to stay close to our listeners. When we walk with the people, as one of them, we see the impact of our preaching and feel the importance of it more keenly. Being with people is what inspires me to a creative kind of courage in my preaching.

One of the things I learned early on in ministry was the importance of loving those I served. I was very young when I started preaching. Young people can tend toward arrogance, especially when they are given responsibility for which they are not ready. In my case, I was reasonably aware of my limitations. What came clear to me early on was the power of loving the people to whom I preached. Of course, it wasn’t enough for me just to act and speak lovingly, but they had to know that I loved them. So, I told them, as often as I could, then I tried to act in ways that bore that love out. As I said, in Choosing to Preach (p.175)…

“Preachers need to love their listeners. We might not always get it right. Things we say can be misconstrued. Sometimes we will make comments that would have been better left unsaid. But, love cover a multitude of wrongs. When people are convinced that the preacher really loves them, they will listen with more grace and more intention. Of course, loving listeners is another way the preacher maintains integrity with the loving message of the Bible.”

Dave McClellan in his excellent Preach By Ear blog recently posted the following comment. I would encourage you to follow Dave, perhaps the most intriguing homiletician you may have never heard of! …

“I drove by a big church today. I drive by them all the time. They bug me. Not for any good reason. That church never did anything to me. It’s just that it was big and mine is small. That’s really its only crime. It got big and we didn’t. I’m trying to be Ok with that… being a small church pastor. But I’m only partly Ok with it.”

“I have this sense that I’m a good preacher and that preaching is key to a growing church. So when I add the two together… it just seems inevitable. Especially because deep inside I think I’m not only a good preacher, but exceptional. But then again maybe all preachers think that deep inside. That would be funny if we all thought we were better than average.”

“So what do I do with that? Usually just feel bad and try harder. Try anything that might draw and keep people. The drawing isn’t that hard. It’s the keeping. People are hard to please over the long haul. But boy do I try. I get the feeling sometimes that everybody will move on eventually. So it’s my job, in preaching, to try to keep them as long as possible. I feel that pressure. That can’t be good.”

“Everybody who goes to church has to abide some sort of weekly monologue preached by a guy who, like me, is trying to hang on to people. So if my monologue were to be marginally better than the competing monologues around me there’s a fair chance that some church folk might come to choose my place over theirs, and that I’d be tempted to call that success. But that’s not what preaching is supposed to be about. That’s not about the love of the word or His people. It’s about something else entirely. Something not worthy of ten hours of work each week.”