An interview with Hershael York

Hershael York has served as a professor of preaching for nearly three decades and as a senior pastor for more than 40 years. He recently stepped down after 20 years as pastor of Buck Run Baptist Church in Frankfort, Kentucky, but continues to serve as professor of preaching and Dean of the School of Theology at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville. He is author of several books and host of the Pastor Well podcast. He was recently interviewed by Preaching editor Michael Duduit while York was presenting the annual Clamp Preaching Lectures at Anderson University.

(Videos of those lectures will be posted at https://auministry.com/cpreaching/)

Preaching: You have pastored now about 40 years, and you’ve taught preaching for nearly three decades. How did you find those two roles interacted with each other, helped each other, maybe create challenges?

York: Unquestionably, each one made me better at the other. Being a pastor gave it a vibrancy, a reality, and even a cred- ibility, I think, in the classroom. Whether you’re talking preaching or pastoral ministry, both things, and those are the two things I teach. Students are more in tune with what you say when they know you’re doing it and that you’re having to put sermons together or you’re doing deacons meetings or whatever.

For instance, I can’t imagine teaching pastoral ministry today if I did not lead a church through COVID. That was such a game changer. Some 34-year-old who had to do it wouldn’t be listening to me very much if I didn’t have to do it. So I learned that being a pastor gave me a reality, a vibrancy in the classroom.

But similarly, being a professor gave me an analytical mind to think about why I do what I do. Why does this work or doesn’t work? How can I duplicate this? How can I help others do this or avoid it as the case may be. We’re all amateur critics. You hear someone preach, you walk away knowing you either liked it or you didn’t. The question is why. When you break it down and say, “Why was that guy good?”

There’s a YouTube channel where they read all of Spurgeon’s sermons. I can’t listen to it. I can’t even listen to it. It’s terrible. I guarantee you it didn’t sound like that when he did it. You could take the same person using the same words and it just puts you to sleep. It’s dull. It’s not good. And I had to think about why this is good or why it fails, how can I communicate it? So, both things made me better at the other and I’m so grateful I got to do them both.

I was a pastor quite a while before I went to Southern. I went to Southern and for six years I did interims. And then for three of those six years, I was a teaching pastor at Highview Baptist Church; I preached the 11 o’clock service for Kevin Ezell, but I really missed the nuts and bolts of being a full-time pastor. When Buck Run Church came along and said, “We’ll let you do both” – at the time it, I thought, oh, this is a little church and won’t take a lot of time! Growth and relocation, a $12 million project later . . . I didn’t foresee all that when I went there but it really was a great experience in getting to do both. I’ve been at Southern now, this is my 28th year and 20 of those. I was pastor at Buck Run.

Preaching: You were a pastor for a number of years prior to beginning to teach. As you look back, did you find that as you started teaching it modified anything about the way that you were preaching?

York: Yes. I look back at my preaching I did at Ashland Avenue Baptist before teaching, and there are certain things I look at and I cringe because I felt the freedom to be more topical, I think, than I later became. I would preach sermons that were not as scripturally deep, I think. Not always but some. Once I began teaching preaching, I got more serious about it. I wouldn’t do those one-off topical sermons nearly as much. It did, it changed. No one was making me do it. It wasn’t like there was some sermon policeman out there calling me on it.

Preaching: That’s what we need. We need some sermon policemen out there.

York: But that voice in my head said, oh, you can’t really do that. That was too cutesy. I became convinced that what I did in the pulpit needed to be reproducible. If what you’re doing in the pulpit is based purely on your literary bent or your talent, then really people can enjoy it, but they can’t do it. And I grew up with that preaching.

My dad was a poet, my dad was a systematic theologian and he would preach sermons where he would take this phrase out of – it was always the King James Bible – and he would work that phrase, but he would infuse it with his systematic theology, and everything he said was true and nothing he said had anything to do with that text. I grew up on that.

I’ll give you an example. He had this incredible sermon on parenting, and he got it from, I want to say Genesis 32. It’s the reunion of Jacob and Esau. And Jacob is still not sure he can trust Esau. Esau says, come on home with me, let your wives and everybody come on after us. And Jacob says, and this is King James, “The children are tender and I must lead them gently.” Boy, there was my dad’s phrase. He preached this incredible sermon on Christian parenting, but I would submit that the last place you want to go for Christian parenting is Jacob!

I grew up on that and it was my exposure to John Stott and D.A. Carson and Walt Kaiser in my early 20s that I began reading them and it was a game-changer for me. I went, oh, this is the way to do it! When I came back to Pastor Ashland Avenue in 1990, I had done all my coursework for my PhD except the dissertation. I took some shortcuts and did some things I look back and go, “I shouldn’t have done that.” But teaching preaching enforced a discipline on me, I think, that I didn’t always have before I was teaching.

Preaching: Thinking back now, you still preach almost every Sunday, but you’ve stepped down from Buck Run, so as you no having that single pastoral preaching context. Thinking back to when you were pastoring Buck Run, what did your preaching ministry look like? What was your approach?

York: I preached through books of the Bible or major sections of books. I think Chris, my successor, figured it up that I preached through roughly 80% of the Bible in the 20 years I was there. Some of that with more depth than others. My last year and a half, I preached through Romans. My last sermon as their pastor was the doxology of Romans 16. It was just a great way to go out.

It was nuts and bolts. I became convinced that I wanted it to be reproducible. My preaching book and my method of preaching is not fancy and I don’t even believe it’s the only way to do it. I have some friends in the preaching academy who are convinced their way is the way and every other way is the wrong way. I’m not there. I think there are a lot of good faithful ways to preach, even different ways to be expository. But I think my way is first of all doable and secondly, teachable, reproducible.

I think you can take my preaching class or read my book and go to Ghana and teach pastors there how to do that. I think it’s very doable and it’s just a solid methodology of how to let the text speak you and illustrate it, apply it. I think the way you handle the text in the pulpit is ultimately the way they’ll handle it in the pew. And I was always aware of that, that I’m not merely teaching them the meaning of this text – I’m teaching them how to read the Bible, how to understand the Bible. I could just tell you story after story of how I’ve seen lives transformed by people who just sat in my preaching.

I’ll tell you, this past Sunday, Tanya and I went to Buck Run; I didn’t take a place to preach this week. There were three young adults, early 20s – honestly, if you had asked me if I’d had any impact on them as their pastor, I would’ve said, “yeah, not really.” These weren’t kids that I had in their teen years that they gave me a lot of engagement or anything. And Sunday three came up to me and said, “Dr. York, I just can’t tell you what you meant to me.” And one of them said, “Man, I’ve been gone for a while, out of the will of the Lord, but man, I have been listening to your sermons and I just can’t tell you how much it meant to me to have that background.” Basically, three different young adults came up to me with some version of that story Sunday.

I told Tanya, “That’s just remarkable. These weren’t the ones that I thought would be saying that. There are those that I know I’ve had an impact on them, but these guys were shocks. Yet the things that I just preached week in and week out, now in their adulthood, God is bringing it back to them and it means more to them than it did when I did it. That is the power of the Word, that you’re discipling them. Even when you’re not seeing results and you don’t think anything’s happening, take heart because God is using His Word; it is not going to return void. And that’s just a joy to see it.

I taught them how to understand the Bible, how to read it for themselves and how to apply it. Every time I preached the text, I wanted them to locate the main point, even if that’s not the main point of the sermon. I’m going to show them the main point and then say, now notice that. Don’t lose sight of that, but what we’re going to look at is this. And I think that’s legitimate. I’ve preached probably 20 sermons through Luke 15. You’re not going to be talking about the main point in 20 sermons. But in 20 of them, I’m telling them, now don’t forget the main point is this, but what we’re going to look at is this, and then make appro- priate application. And what I’m doing is teaching them every time you open that Bible, you’re looking for two things. You’re looking for the main point and application.

This keeps them from abusing the scripture, misusing it, misunderstanding it, misapplying it because they just get the discipline of, okay, what’s the main point here? Why is this here? Why did the Holy Spirit think I need to know the descendants of Esau? And that’s the way I want my people to approach the Bible.

Preaching: As you’re moving through a book, are you trying to cover every text, are you trying to cover just highlighted texts? What’s your approach to that?

York: I change the lens and I make those decision before I go into the book. You can use a wide angle lens where you’re just giving the overview stuff. I did 12 sermons through the 12 minor prophets, overview sermons. That’s still expository. My defini- tion of expository preaching is really broad. It’s any preaching that teaches the meaning of the passage and makes appropriate application. Now you look at Haddon Robinson’s definition, you look at Brian Chapell’s, you look at Al Mohler’s, they all are a lot more complicated than that. But when you define something, you say, okay, if you take out any element of this definition, what you’re left with is not the thing I defined.

When Haddon Robinson puts in his definition that the Holy Spirit first makes the message vital in the personality of the preacher, I’m going, that’s not realistic. I’ll just confess, I don’t feel my personality transformed by the Holy Spirit every time I step in the pulpit. There’s other stuff going on in my life. My kids are doing stuff, now my grandkids, stuff’s happening in the church. But I think I can still preach faithfully.

I believe in that broad definition. I’ll usually want to accom- plish more than that, but that’s not the definition. That’s a vision for preaching. That’s what I want to do. Sometimes I’m going to do that with the wide-angle lens. Sometimes I’m going to do it with a magnifying glass, sometimes a microscope. So, I make those decisions up front. How much time am I willing to give this? Because time is always the thing you have to deal with. You’ve got limited time.

I’m not Lloyd Jones, I’m not going to spend six volumes in Ephesians. And he didn’t finish his series on Romans that he did on Friday nights. Few of us have that luxury. By the way, I would say a good 25% of all his lectures was repetition. Remind them what he said last week. We just don’t have the time that we once had. We have to be a little bit more targeted.

You have to make those decisions and I think you should change it up because again, that’s the way we’re going to study the Bible. There are going to be times we’re going to do great in-depth studies. I encourage everybody to read through the Bible at least once a year, and I want them to do that. That’s going to be a far more cursory reading of the Bible. But I hope they’re also doing an in-depth study of a book, at least one book at a time. That’s the way I preach.

Preaching: As you’re moving through those books, you’ve got a different situation than the average pastor in that you are pastoring full time but you’re also teaching. What did your sermon preparation process look like?

York: Yeah, it really was very different. When I was, I say, only a pastor, I had the luxury of blocking out my mornings. I did all my other pastoral duties in the afternoons and evenings, and I took all my mornings for sermon prep. That was a luxury I lost. I did not have that luxury at Buck Run, so it was sort of catch it as I could.

We put the outline in the bulletin – pre-COVID, we had paper bulletins – so that had to be the in by Friday morning. I had to have my basic outline always done by Friday morning. I had a rhythm. Even Sunday afternoon, I’m looking at the next week’s passage and then Mondays I was teaching. I was at seminary all day Tuesdays and Thursdays, so I would give it some time on Wednesday. And then Friday was my big sermon prep day.

I would have that basic outline done by Friday morning. Then I’d spend my time fleshing it out, illustrating all that on Friday. I tried to not accept things on Saturday night if I could help it. It wasn’t a rule but it was a strong preference. And I let people know that was my strong preference. I would really try and prepare my heart and mind on Saturday night to preach on Sunday morning. It was between all the other stuff when I was doing both things. If you can find a way to do two things at once, that’s great. You’re preaching a book, you’re also teaching, that’s wonderful. But I couldn’t always do that.

Preaching: How long was a typical sermon for you?

York: I sort of hate to admit it was probably 50 minutes, but I will tell you my strong advice to Chris, when I left, was he should preach shorter. He’s put a countdown clock on him and he’s preaching 40 and people are loving it. They have noticed. He’s really good. He’s a remarkable preacher. But I told him, “If you’ll just really work hard to cut out repetition, you’ll save five minutes right there.” And he’s taking that advice.

That’s usually the best advice for most of us. We do repeat ourselves and we’re not as targeted as we should be. We’re not as well planned. I wish I’d preached 40 to 45 minutes. I get asked all the time, how long should you preach? And my stock answer to that is, as long as you can hold them. Most of us can’t preach 50 minutes and hold their attention consistently. We think we can but we probably shouldn’t. If on occasion you do it, that’s fine. But I think 50 was probably too long.

Preaching: Shifting from your pastor hat back to your professor of preaching hat, what do you find to be some of the most challenging issues that students are bringing to the classroom in terms of the preaching?

York: Man, there are a lot! There’s the theological stuff. For one thing, it’s shocking to me how many of this generation, they arrive (in the classroom) already with an opinion about how you should do this. It’s always startling to me that a guy who has preached three sermons in his life has no reservations what- soever about disagreeing with me in my method. I’m humble enough, I think, to know he could be right. I’m also wise enough to know the chances of that are really slim.

I take a moderating approach. I don’t think every sermon has to be Christ-centered. If I preach 2 Samuel 11, David’s sin with Bathsheba, I’m going to tell you my big point there is going to be: don’t do that. How many times can you say David was a failed king? He makes us long for a great king and that’s Jesus. I believe that. I’m going to say that somewhere in that series. But if you’re saying it in every sermon, they really don’t even need you anymore. I believe in hanging the framework and then working within that framework. Once you’ve established that framework for your people – this is the way we read this and understand that – I don’t think you need to say it every time. I’m not one of those who says every sermon must X but I do think that’s the way we read the Bible. That’s way we should understand it. So, I’m sort of in the middle. I’m not strong enough for the hardcore Christ-centered guys who think I’m too soft on that. And then guys like Abe Kuruvilla, my dear friend who thinks I’m too much that way. And frankly, I’m comfortable right where I am.

But my point is that students come in the door already with an opinion on this stuff and they’ll choose a professor based on who teaches the method they already believe in. And I just think that’s weak. Don’t do that. I like exposing myself to another view and I want to hear the best that someone has to offer. So, there’s that element.

Then also, students come in and I think they have too easily become mimics. I think this was probably always a problem. But now with so much media, I can tell who a guy listens to. When he preaches in my practicum, I can tell you who that guy’s listening to. They sound like him. They move like him. If a guy gets up and he says “brothers” every 50 seconds, then you know he’s a Piper guy – you just know it. That’s who he’s listening to.

They come in already with opinions on these things and they’re not always as teachable as I wish they would be. Also, this generation was raised on screens and text messages. They’re really good at expressing themselves in written communication but they’re really usually not good in oral communication because they’ve never had to do it. And I think we’re losing the social art of public conversation or being able to stand up in front of a group and talk. When I try and gently tell a guy, “you’re dull, you’re boring,” he just thinks that’s ridiculous. I find that a challenge to try and convince someone, you need to be more energetic. You need to be more animated. Oral communication and written communication are radically different media.

When guys try and treat one like the other, I think they usually don’t do as well at either. That’s a challenge, I think.

Preaching: Who are the guys you want them to listen to?

York: My two favorites are Alistair Begg and Robert Smith. You can’t imagine two guys more different than those two, but they represent the best out there. Both are so biblical and so engaging and so winsome. I want students to listen to them. But there are a lot of young guys out there too, that I think are really good. I like it when they tell me they’re listening to Matt Chandler and J.D. Greear. There are a lot of young guys out there that are doing it well.

The thing is, if you’re only listening to one guy, even two guys, you’re probably going to be a mimic. And if you’re listening to 100 guys, you’re probably going to be confused. Somewhere in there, you need to find people that are doing it well and listen to what they’re doing and learn from them but you’re not trying to imitate a style.

I could never be either Robert Smith or Alistair Begg, and I don’t want to be. I can’t pull that off. I’d look goofy trying to mimic either one of those, but man, I learn from what they do. Again, it’s the analysis of: what is it that makes them good? How much are they in the text? Look at the way they talk to an audience, the way that both of those guys are able to really make an audience your friend. You feel intimate with either one of those guys when they’re preaching. I want students to see that that preaching is not merely information. We’re not preaching what I call data dump sermons; it’s relationship. It really is. It’s an invitation to come and watch me die in the pulpit here and do this with me. That’s what I want students catching.

Preaching: What’s the most important insight that you want to help students understand in a preaching class?

York: It’s about communication. At Southern Seminary, students who come to us are almost always serious about the text. They’re conservative, inerrantist and believe in exegesis. It’s the commu- nication aspects. I think if I taught somewhere where students didn’t have that theological underpinning, that would be my concern but at Southern that’s not. It’s that they can get up in the pulpit and make the Word of God dull and boring. That’s criminal.

And this is where I really want to push them – you can’t do that! This is the most exciting book in the world and you need to show that excitement. You need to have some kind of energy when you deliver it. People should want to listen to you. That’s the thing that I have to work on them the most.

They always do well in my basic preaching class because I’m doing the talking, but in the practicum where they have to preach four or five times for me and get my critique . . . First of all, I say it’s like getting paid to tell people their baby is ugly. Nobody wants to hear that. And they’ve labored over this and delivered this, and they expect me to lay down my pen and say, “Oh, this is so magnificent. I dare not even grade this. That would be sacrilege. That is not going to happen.” To tell them why that didn’t work and why it’s better in your head than it is coming out of your mouth – you’ve got to be able to hear both and to know both things. It’s always better in my head than it is coming out of my mouth. It’s not an unusual thing, but why? What happened between here and here that made it not do what you wanted it to do? And we’ve all had that feeling.

To get them to think on that level, I think the students that I teach think too much exclusively about the text and not enough about the audience. And you’ve got to exegete both. You have to understand and be intimate with both. I think the best preachers are able to do that.

Preaching: What do you love most about teaching preaching?

York: I don’t get tired of it. I love seeing great things in the Word of God. One of the most delightful moments for me is when in that practicum class, a student preaches something and teaches me. There’s just a joy.

I’ve given my life to the study of the Word of God. I did not have an ordinary childhood. I was saved when I was seven. I was reading the Puritans on my dad’s shelf when I was eight. He and I went through Strong’s theology for two years. And then when I was 12, we went through Berkhof. This was my childhood. So, I’ve done this my whole life and studied and prepared and have earned degrees. When a student stands in the pulpit in my class- room and teaches me something or says it in a way that is really gripping, there’s just a joy in that. It’s like, oh, that is so good to be able to sit here and see that happen. There’s just no delight like that.

I can go back in my mind and remember certain sermons and students and that happened and it was just an incredible moment. If I can illustrate it, I had a student from India named Aubrey Sequeira. And Aubrey, he came in my practicum class, great student. He wanted to do a PhD in New Testament, and he was great with the text. He comes in and he reads his sermon, no life in it whatsoever. I said, “Aubrey, don’t do that again.” I said, “Give yourself an outline. Make what I call breadcrumbs along the trail that get you home but you need to engage with your audience more.” Your content is great but we could read it. Just email it to us if that’s all right, we can read it. There’s something real about your personality that needs to come through. He comes in, sermon number two. He does the same thing again.

Now, I say this jokingly because it sounds so absurd but this is what I will say to students. I say, “Aubrey, if you do that again, I’m going to punch you in the throat.” I tell you, I said, “Are you not listening to me here?” I said, “You can’t do that. Next time, come in with an outline, not a manuscript and I want you to really engage.” He came in for sermon number three, and the night before he had preached it to his wife, Nishika, and appar- ently it didn’t go well. She said, “Oh, Aubrey, I think you should read it.” And he said, “Oh, no. I will not do that.” He said, “Dr. York would kill me if I did.” He preached from John 13 and it was the most incredible sermon on servanthood.

We were, at the time, looking for our Clyde T. Francisco Preaching Award winner to preach in chapel. Russ Moore was the dean. I called him. I said, “I don’t know how many submis- sions we’ve had. It doesn’t matter. I’ve got the guy. I’ve got the sermon.” Russ trusted me enough that I was not going to say that and embarrass myself. Aubrey preached that sermon in chapel. You can go on Southern’s website and listen to it to this day. Russ says not only was it the best student sermon he ever heard, he says it was the best chapel sermon he ever heard delivered at Southern Seminary.

He pastors now in Dubai. I think it’s Dubai. Just phenomenal. He did his PhD in New Testament like he wanted to. But he will tell you, and he frequently tells this, that where he got the heart to be a pastor and a preacher was in my class, that he was going to be a professor, but he said, man, that experience transformed him. When you hear that story, you go, okay, this is why I do this right here. That’s what I’m looking for. And what a gift to the church. He would be effective in a classroom somewhere, but the guy’s pastoring in a country where the gospel needs to be preached, and that’s thrilling to me. So when that happens, I go, okay, this is my favorite thing right there.

Preaching: Speaking of international, you’ve done a lot of mission stuff in Brazil. Has that international exposure or experience impacted your preaching in any way?

York: Yeah, it really does. One thing, it demands you understand your audience. My family lived in Manaus Brazil when I was real small. My dad was a missionary there. That’s where I’ve been going back my whole life. A church that my dad helped plant, my mom and dad, my two sisters were charter members, and I was in my mother’s arms at the organizational service. And it was a little thatched roof hut, 10 miles outside of Manaus in the jungle in 1960. Today, it’s one of the 10 largest churches in Brazil. They have 30 campuses. I preached there in July to about 13,000 people at the main campus. You wouldn’t believe the growth. But if I get in a boat and cross the river and go to a little village called Samauma, that’s a radically different audience than even being in the city of Manaus.

And I do both things. So, Lake Janauaca and the little village of Samauma is dear to me. I’ve been there many times and preached to a very different audience. These people are mostly indigenous in their genetic makeup but Portuguese is their first language. But if you go deeper up the river and then you get to indigenous people where Portuguese is their second language, if they know it at all, then that’s still a very different thing. The gospel is the same at every place. I’m not changing the gospel but I have to change the application.

People in Manaus, it’s become a very middle class city. Lots of industry. People are industrious and entrepreneurial, they have money. If you’re talking about Lordship with them, you might talk about time management, but if I cross the river to preach in that village and talked about time management, that would be silly because for them it’s just sunup, sundown, 6:00 A.M., 6:00 P.M., it’s right on the equator. So, it’s like, what are you talking about? We have things we do the same time every day and there’s no time management. Their issues about application of the Lordship of Christ would be different.

Being international makes you think on that level. The meaning of the text is not changed, but the application and how I bring it home, that changes. So, going to other countries makes you do that real quickly. I remember I was in Cuba with another preacher and we were teaching about 400 pastors, and using an interpreter. I can sometimes preach in Portuguese. I can under- stand Spanish, but I cannot preach in Spanish. And this other preacher, he couldn’t understand Spanish at all.

We were both preaching through an interpreter but I can tell when the interpreter gets it right or not. He was telling some story about the first church he pastored, and there was a certain woman in the church he said she was the bell cow. I knew what he said and I thought, oh, this is going to be fun. The interpreter was a guy that grew up in Bolivia. And he stopped and said, “What is that belk?”

The preacher said, “Bell cow.”

 And the interpreter had no concept. He didn’t know what those two words are. This preacher was going, “Bell cow.” The interpreter didn’t even know what the two words were. And then when he explained to him, you had to explain what a bell cow is. And that’s sure not going to translate across lines there. When you see some things like that happen, it makes you think: I’ve got to connect with them where they are. So, I think the cross-cultural preaching environment really forces you to think on that level.

Preaching: Suppose and angel shows up at your door one day and says, “Hershael, you have one sermon left.” What would you preach?

York: I know this is a cop-out answer but it depends on my audience. If you tell me I’ve got one sermon left to preach tp lost people, I think I would probably preach: believe in Lord Jesus Christ and you’ll be saved. If you tell me it was to my church, I think I’d probably preach the doxology of Romans 16. It really does depend on my audience.

That’s just the way I think about preaching. To whom am I preaching and what is their need? But frankly, if I had one sermon to preach, my orientation would not be about, I’ve only got one left, it’d be who am I preaching to? That’s the way I think about preaching: who are they? What do they need?