What Really Makes the Church Grow?

I have believed for many years that the local church grows — when its growth is genuine — from the pulpit outward.

That does not mean that all a church needs is good preaching and the rest will care for itself. A local church is a complex body and there are many other standards that must be met for the church to increase both in spiritual depth and numerical strength.

Nor does it mean that the whole burden for the growth of a church is upon the pastors and if their performance in the pulpit is exceptional the church will thrive in every other respect. The growing church must also have a core of lay workers who bear the spiritual burden for growth and outreach along with the pastor.

It does not even mean that brilliant preaching is necessary for the church to grow. As G. Campbell Morgan so clearly summarized, real preaching must only meet three basic criteria: it must be true, clear and anointed.

What it does mean is that the center for spiritual nourishment for the congregation is the pulpit, and if the pulpit lacks authenticity either in content, clarity or unction, even an increase in numbers of people will not equal genuine congregational growth.

We have all seen hummingbirds hover in air, wings ablur, while they sip from feeders filled with a red liquid — sugar and water. I’m told that if the mixture is made up of saccharin and water they will continue to come and feed with equal thirst, but gradually they will become weak and unable to fly. The taste of saccharin is sweet enough to fool them, but it lacks the calories they need.

In a similar way, what is delivered from the pulpit must not only appeal to the ear of the listener; it must nourish the spirit. That is, it must speak the word of God to the deep hunger for soul-food that God puts in his people.

What can move pastors everywhere to come before their people with a well formed word from the Lord? I know of nothing but the commands of the Scriptures, and the best place to seek that prompting is in the Pastoral Epistles — 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus. These were first century pastors who were assigned to oversee young established congregations. And what did the Apostle Paul say to them in writing?

“…the overseer must be…able to teach (1 Tim. 3:2)” “Command and teach these things” (4:11). “Until I come, devote yourself…to preaching and teaching. Do not neglect your gift” (4:13,14). “Watch your life and doctrine closely” (4:16).

Also in Paul’s second letter to Timothy he writes, “And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others” (2 Tim. 2:2). And, “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth” (2:15). We take such exhortations as Spirit-inspired also for us today.

I cannot write this way without remembering that on many occasions I have fallen far short of doing what I believe is so needed. But God is merciful. He forgives and keeps the passion alive. So, “forgetting what is behind,” I call any pastor who reads this to join me in seeking renewal in Spirit — anointed preaching to the pressing needs and hungers of today — for the edification of the Lord’s people and the genuine growth of Christ’s church everywhere.

Further Thoughts About Truthfulness in the Pulpit

I have written previously about the importance of authenticity in the pulpit, and here are some further thoughts.

In a preaching class in seminary several decades ago, a classmate preached a trial sermon that had unusually good order and a fine treatment of the Greek text. Two weeks later his former college Greek professor came to campus and in chapel preached the identical sermon. There was a low buzz among his classmates.

What that seminarian did is called plagiarism. “To plagiarize,” according to Webster, is “to steal or purloin and pass off as one’s own (ideas, writings, etc., of another).” For sure, a pastor may preach another preacher’s sermon or use his illustrations if he gives credit to the source. But if he presents it in silence, as though it were his work, that’s regarded as below standard.

Not only churches take plagiarism seriously; universities do too. Here’s a doctoral student who hands in a final draft of her dissertation. Her faculty advisor discovers several portions of it are copied from another source but not credited. This is serious and the student may be denied the degree. The issue is truthfulness.

If something like this offence is committed in the pulpit during a Sunday morning worship service, should it be taken any less seriously?

It’s not that preachers must consider the sermons of others completely off limits. We read them, listen to them on CDs and DVDs, analyse them, discuss them, even imitate their style. We preachers learn from one another. But if we set forth someone else’s work as if it were our own, that puts our truthfulness under question.

So, in preaching truthfulness is a cardinal issue. But in addition, consider three other reasons why this sort of pretence has no place in the pulpit.

First, leaning so completely on the work of another for sermon content dampens the prophetic spirit. “Thus saith the Lord” should be evident in every sermon in the Protestant tradition. A real sermon is more than a lecture or an essay or even a religious talk. As Donald G. Miller once wrote, “Preaching is not a mere speech; it is an event.” It is an event in which the preacher delivers to the people a word from God received through diligent study and prayer.

This sermon may come forth like “the voice of one crying in the wilderness,” or it may be uttered with tears like the messages of the weeping prophet, Jeremiah, or it may be given as a passionately reasoned discourse such as the Apostle Paul gave in Jewish synagogues he visited.

Whatever the style, a sermon plagiarized from a book or the Internet or a CD can never have such a prophetic ring, and in our hearts we will know that to be true.

Second, plagiarizing in the pulpit very quickly dampens the passion to study the Scriptures in depth and to keep a growing edge on our understanding of the Bible. In the plagiarized sermon, someone else has already done the work and this becomes a convenient substitute for our exertion.

There’s a cost for such shortcuts in any creative work. The artist who decides to paint by numbers will dull her creative edge and her keen eye for blending colors. Or the cabinet maker who decides to make life easier by assembling do-it-yourself cabinets from Ikea will gradually blunt the fine mastery of lathe and plane.

Pastors who begin to trust pre-packaged material as their source can’t help but lose the impulses to pray and study required in getting a word from the Lord. They will quickly succumb to something equivalent to painting-by-numbers.

But the third reason is that some people in the congregations will detect what we are doing. Like the seminary class above there may be a buzz without any open challenge. Or worse still, there may be a conspiracy of silence between pulpit and pew, a sure sign that something is missing in the life of the congregation. In either case the pastor will lose the trust of the congregation – a serious loss!

In the free church tradition, we have never had towering cathedrals or colorful vestments or awesome liturgies to rely on. But in our best hours we have believed our calling is to offer our people fresh, impassioned, Bible-wrought preaching. Is not the morally soft era we are now living through an excellent time to renew the preaching commitments of Protestantism’s better days?

One More Appeal for Bible-Based Preaching

A few weeks ago we sat under the ministry of Walter C. Kaiser Jr., at Wesley Acres, about 140 miles east of Toronto and little more than shouting distance from Lake Ontario. Dr. Kaiser is a Bible scholar of note and former president of Gordon Conwell Seminary near Boston.

The congregations relished his rich Biblical insights as he preached from 1 Kings and Ecclesiastes — the latter a mysterious book, no longer quite so mysterious. What he had to teach was served up with little touches of humor that kept everyone alert and at the ready.

Listening to him, one came away with a keen sense that he has an unflinching concern that seminary-trained pastors give careful attention to the text of the Bible for every sermon. To make this clear, in one aside he placed his index finger on his text and raised the other arm high in the air, saying, “Preach with one finger on the text and the other arm in the air to make gestures. Then when that arm gets tired, move its index finger to the text and raise the other arm to make gestures.”

On another occasion, he said, somewhat wryly, “I recommend that pastors preach one topical sermon — every five years.” His point was clear that every sermon should at least be an effort at good, clear expository preaching. That is, it should assure that by study and prayer the sermon grows out of the text, rather than simply being imposed on the text, or worse still, not even having a text. A congregation deserves better!

On this continent, there are good Bible-grounded preachers aplenty but there needs to be more of them. And whenever a pulpit serves up thin gruel, it is not entirely the preacher’s fault. Congregations usually get what they will settle for. A congregation shows its values on this matter by the quality of study facilities it provides, the prayers it prays for the pastor through the week, the commendations it gives when sermons connect, and message it gives to the sending body at times of pastoral change: Send us someone who is serious about the preaching task as well as gifted in other aspects of pastoring.

Critiquing Your Own Sermons – Part 6 of 6

Continued from Part 5

DOES MY SERMON HAVE A BITE?

You’ll not find the term “bite” in a homiletics text. It was coined by my wife, Kathleen. She is a quiet person but there are times when she holds an idea with conviction and is moved to share it. One of those times came when she was serving breakfast to three or four ministers who were attending a Christian education seminar in a church nearby.

During the meal in our dining room that morning, the conversation turned to sermons. “The trouble with most sermons,” she told the visiting ministers, “is that they lack a bite.” The men were taken with the term and asked for an explanation.

She told them that earlier in her life when she attended a liberally oriented church, there were many good features to the services and the preachers often said uplifting things, but the sermons didn’t come out anywhere. They were little more than nice talks, giving the hearers something to think about. There was no application. This sort of preaching, she said, could actually inoculate people against the gospel.

Kathleen had been trained as a teacher. She knew, for example, that a lesson must have a beginning designed to capture interest, a middle that gives the essence of the lesson, and an ending that calls the children to do something to show they had taken the lesson in. For example, after a teacher has taught a third-grade class on the perils of pollution, he may list four things the children can do around the home to reduce the problem of pollution, urging their commitment to this new regimen.

What was missing in many a sermon, my wife contended, was this calling for some sort of response to show comprehension and agreement or the willingness to change.

A few days later, Kathleen got a call from one of the ministers, who lived 165 miles away. He said that after that breakfast conversation, he had gone home and reworked his Sunday-morning sermon and four people had responded to the invitation publicly. Later, another minister met her and told her that his preaching had not been the same since that breakfast table discussion.

Every sermon doesn’t have to call for a public response. That could get predictable and perhaps tedious. But every sermon should call its hearers to do something about the truth. Recently via television we’ve been educated in the way lawyers plead with great seriousness for a verdict. We preachers should do no less, making certain our sermons call for response.

We have looked at the six questions that we should ask of every sermon we preach: Is my sermon Biblical? Does it say one thing? Does it say it concretely? Does it say it relevantly? Do I expect to preach it under an anointing? And does it have a “bite”?

If we learn to answer these questions courageously, two things are sure to happen. First, when we know that we have preached poorly, even the commendations of a score of worshippers will not comfort us. And second, if we know in our hearts that we have preached well, we’ll not be downcast even if no one offers a word of appreciation.

Critiquing Your Own Sermons – Part 5 of 6

Continued from Part 4

CAN MY SERMON BE PREACHED WITH UNCTION?

Unction is defined by Thomas Oden as “an intense awareness of the holy in the midst of our concrete life revealed through human speech.” This question, then, unlike the previous four, centers attention on the preacher. But that is appropriate if, as Phillips Brooks said, preaching is truth mediated through human personality. The spiritual state of the preacher matters and this raises the issue of unction or anointing in preaching. To quote Thomas Oden again, anointing is “this subtle, compassionate, firm, set-apart quality of blessed speech — when firmness is accompanied by tenderness, when awe is engendered in common worship, when moral commitment is bound with love.”

We ought not to surrender to charismatic television preachers the exclusive use of the language of anointing. It’s a Biblical word used in both Testaments to suggest a special divine endowment and it should apply to all preachers. The word is applied to kings (2 Sam. 2:4), prophets (1 Kgs. 19:16), and priests (Ex 28:41). Essentially, the anointing was seen as an act of God (1 Sam. 10:1), though human agents such as Samuel administered it. Thus anointing was held in awe. The ritual of anointing with sacred oil suggests the conferring of power or authority.

Jesus began his public ministry in the synagogue on a Sabbath day by reading from the scroll of Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me. . . .” (Is. 61:2; Lk. 4:18f). Later, after the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, the apostles, evangelists, and prophets spoke with compelling power. It was evident that the Spirit was anointing them for the task.

Given this breadth of references to anointing, both as a general bestowal on the church and as a particular bestowal for special ministries, we ought to expect that every time we preach we do so under an anointing, and to pray regularly to that end.

But this calls for further clarification. For one thing, the Spirit’s anointing is usually consistent with our personalities. It is more likely to be experienced as a heightening and intensification of who God created us to be, than as a radical change of our make-up. Extroverts will likely continue to be extroverts, introverts to be introverts; proclaimers will proclaim with extraordinary power; teachers will teach with fresh clarity and persuasiveness. Barnabas will still be Barnabas; Paul will be Paul; but each will work with a peculiar anointing as a servant of the Most High.

Critiquing Your Own Sermons – Part 4 of 6

Continued from Part 3

IS MY SERMON RELEVANT?

A college student attending the first week of classes for a course on Western Civilization finally closed his text and barked out in frustration, “This course is not relevant to me.” He could not see how the course would help him in his after-school job pumping gas. Being relevant in this case required the teacher to bring her subject matter to bear directly on the larger but overlooked aspects of his life. For that student to live in the here and now without any idea how he got here would be to live in a narrow world.

The preacher’s task is similar: to give perspective — an eternal perspective — to the here and now. But we preachers sometimes confuse relevance with novelty. We cast about for a new and sometimes startling way to get our message across. Indeed, innovation can be good and we want preaching that is fresh and imaginative. But preaching that is only cute or clever or sensational is not necessarily relevant insofar as the Bible’s message is concerned.

A sermon is relevant when it connects a basic Biblical truth to the real needs of the people who hear. The story is told that a missionary to an Indian tribe many years ago was discouraged because he could not reach through to the people. The tribe had lost several children to an epidemic and the parents were grieving stoically but deeply. Finally, the missionary began a message with the words, “I can tell you where your children are.” Immediately he had their interest and was able to give them the gospel of eternal life in a way that was relevant to their sorrow.

We can test a sermon for its relevance by asking:
•    Does this sermon speak to some universal human need — the need for hope, forgiveness, mercy, love, repentance, purity, holiness, or Christian assurance?
•    Does it link the Bible’s message with life as it is lived in the community?
•    Is it faithful to truths that can be known only by divine revelation – such as the promised return of Christ, the certainty of final judgment, the revealed destiny of saints and sinners?

Men and women who are lost may not be aware of the need for these truths. But when the words are preached with clarity and power, they establish their own relevance.

P.T. Forsyth said that the preacher’s first duty is not to secure his audience but to secure his gospel. If we become clear in our understanding of relevance, we will be saved from any effort in our preaching to be cute or clever or even merely artsy. Thomas Oden notes that “preaching that has lost touch with the vitalities of Scripture is easily captivated by egocentric faddism, pretentiousness, and sentimentalism.”

Critiquing Your Own Sermons – Part 3 of 6

Continued from Part 2

DOES MY SERMON SPEAK CONCRETELY?

A word is abstract when, of itself, it does not elicit a visual image. Words like “helpfulness” and “truthfulness” and “weariness” are abstract. To be sure, we can’t think precisely without abstract words such as these. But the preacher’s task is always to make the abstract concrete to the hearer. Concreteness in speaking makes our communication vivid.

The best source for concrete preaching is the Bible.
•    The story of creation is concrete, even though it deals with truth beyond the full grasp of the human mind.
•    The Bible doesn’t teach us about marriage by giving us a definition; it gives us the story of Adam and Eve, which confronts us concretely with deep and essential truths about marriage.
•    The word “greed” may create only fuzz in hearers’ minds until they meet Achan and see his greedy conduct during the conquest of Jericho.

The New Testament does no less with its stories — stories about conversion (Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch) and kindness (Dorcas making garments for the poor); stories about providence (Paul’s divine deliverance from shipwreck on his way to Rome) and treacheries (Judas betraying Jesus). The cross of Jesus Christ will forever stand as the concrete picture of the utter coarseness of human sin, the fathomless reach of divine love, and the cost of redemptive suffering.

Consider the Proverbs. They give pithy insights about life for the training of the young, but they would be in danger of being opaque if it weren’t for the vivid similes they often draw. How about this one: “Like one who seizes a dog by the ears is a passer-by who meddles in a quarrel not his own” (Prov. 26:17). Similes like this contribute to vividness in preaching. So do metaphors, such as Jesus’ words to his disciples, “You are the light of the world . . .” (Matt. 5:14). These literary devices are easier for some to come by than for others, but we can all strive to create them in order to make truth vivid.

Preaching that always has a sense of the concrete will make its mark because the mind of the hearer is not so much a dictionary of definitions as an art gallery where pictures can be easily hung. Preaching concretely exploits this fact.

Critiquing Your Own Sermons – Part 2 of 6

Continued from Part 1

DOES MY SERMON HAVE UNITY? THAT IS, DOES IT SAY ONE THING?

Was it not A.J. Gossip who said that the last and hardest task for him in preparing a sermon was to reduce it to one sentence? This is how we can test a sermon for unity.

When Norman Vincent Peale was a young pastor he committed himself to send his father a ten-word telegram each Saturday night stating the essence of his sermon for the next morning. A telegram for a sermon on the prodigal son might read: God has a big surprise for sinners who come home. Or, forgiveness is always a big surprise.

Unity is an artistic principle that all artistic endeavors must follow. For example, a composer strikes a theme and works with it from beginning to end. He may move from the major to the minor key, give the theme to the strings and then to the woodwinds. Or he may invert the theme, introduce sub-themes, and tuck in “episodes” to rest the audience. Either way, once the theme is struck, he unifies everything around it from beginning to end. The same may be said about a choice oil painting or even an award-winning quilt. So it should be with a sermon.

If a sermon is preached in points, the points should be stated so they treat two or three aspects of that one thing. The points may be parallel, or they may be sequential (one point leading naturally to the next), but the one central issue of the sermon is always in view. By contrast, if the points don’t show unity by the way they are stated they are likely to come through as individual mini-sermons — or even wandering thoughts.

How does one tell whether a sermon is unified or not? When a sermon has unity, people remember it. When it doesn’t, they don’t.

How to Critique Your Own Sermons – Part 1 of 6

Are you uncertain about the effectiveness of your preaching? Do you wonder if you are connecting? If so, this six-part series on how preachers can critique their own efforts may prove helpful. I’ll release my reflections in six parts. My suggestion is that you ponder the points one-by-one, applying each one to your own work. See if they make sense to you in the actual process of sermon preparation.

There’s a story about a young soprano in the Midwest who showed great promise – perhaps even operatic promise. She was an unusually fine singer with a keen ear who could memorize music quickly. Her teacher sent her to audition with a famous voice coach in New York, but he refused to take her as a student. The reason? “She lacks the power of self-criticism,” he said.

Self-criticism is essential in all artistic endeavors — and preaching is at one level an artistic endeavor. Preachers who lack the power of self-criticism may not be overtly rejected by their people as this young singer was. Tragically, though, they may preach for a lifetime, all the while falling far short of their potential. To avoid this, it’s good for preachers to have a method for critiquing their own sermons.

The key is knowing the right questions to ask. Here are six questions we can ask of every sermon we preach:

I. IS MY SERMON BIBLICAL?

Just exactly what is Biblical preaching? The question is not about types of sermons — topical, textual, textual-topical, etc. It is about how seriously we take the passage on which the sermon is built! Ask yourself: Have I carefully determined its central issue? Is the sermon in some way related to a major biblical truth — e.g. creation, the fall of man, redemption, the return of Christ? Does the sermon “expose” the meat of this passage in an orderly way? When we take such questions seriously in the earliest stages of our study, our sermon is at least more likely to be richly biblical.

Haddon Robinson, the prince of contemporary preachers, has the question in mind when he says, “Expository preaching is the communication of a biblical concept, derived from and transmitted through a historical, grammatical, and literary study of a passage in its context, which the Holy Spirit first applies to the personality and experience of the preacher, then through him to his hearers.”

The definition seems complex, but here are its elements in question form:
•    Is the thesis of my sermon in harmony with the mainline of Biblical truth? (We preachers can be too easily sidetracked.)
•    Does the sermon show that I have studied the passage in terms of its historical setting?
•    Have I examined its grammatical elements?
•    Is there evidence that I am aware of the literary category the passage belongs to – prophecy, or poetry, or parable, etc.?
•    Has the passage made its impact on me first?
•    Finally, will the hearers get the message?

Many a biblical sermon has been preached without fully meeting Robinson’s exacting criteria. His definition nevertheless rewards repeated reading. If we neglect the arduous background work that his definition recommends, our sermons will likely stay too close to the surface.

But the issue of biblical preaching is not fully addressed until one further question is asked — the premier question: Is the sermon Christ-centered? John Calvin said that preaching consists substantially in the clarification, exposition, interpretation, and reappropriation of the written Word that witnesses to the revealed Word. As Paul wrote to Timothy, “. . . from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Jesus Christ” (2 Tim. 3:15 NRSV).

Biblical preaching thus involves the convergence of the written word of Scripture, the living Word, Christ Jesus, and the proclaimed word in the language of our own day. When these converge, a sermon may be called biblical.