Tag: preaching

25June2009

The Power of the Pulpit

Written By robfaircloth

“There are many evangelicals who have a high view of the Bible and are willing to do battle for it, but who have a very low view of the Word of God as proclaimed in the sermon. This is one of the strangest paradoxes in the church today: vigorous defense of the Bible as the Word of God hand in hand with low esteem for the preaching of that same Word to build up the church of Christ. …

“Bible study, small groups, and religious sharing are increasingly urged as the route to revitalization of the church, while faith in the pulpit fades and grows dim. I am convinced that it profits a church little to have a high view of Scripture if at the same time it has a low estimate of the preaching of the Word.”

(James Daane, Preaching with Confidence: A Theological Essay on the Power of the Pulpit (Resource Publications, 1980), p viii.)

Not much has changed in almost thirty years…Very little of what passes for evangelical preaching today is able to inspire and uplift a congregation, because it omits from the proclamation the power of God in it. Moralism, ear candy and how-to messages take the place of the “power of God for salvation.” Yet history bears out the ineluctable result that when the preacher, the man of God, proclaims the power of God through the Word of God to the people of God, the church is edified, God is glorified, and the lost are evangelized.

22April2009

Orderly or ‘Dead Asleep’?

Written By robfaircloth

I frequently lament that much of what passes for worship in church services, of what substitutes for prayer by believers, of what masquerades as preaching in our pulpits must be seriously devoid of whatever fueled the New Testament examples of those things.

I also frequently lament that all the ‘great ideas’ that come across my synapses get taken by others before I can broadcast them. To wit, I thought about a preaching series on the significance of the gospel long before David Platt ever preached it (see the Church at Brook Hills sermon archives). Now, if I preach what I originally intended, people might think that I took it from him. This is, I am painfully aware, a mini-lesson in humility, and how the body of Christ should work together when credit is not at issue.

But chalk up yet another pre-empting at the hands of no less a figure than J.I. Packer, who said this about power:

“First Corinthians 12-14 is a passage of Scripture which makes painful reading for thoughtful evangelical believers. … These chapters make painful reading because, whatever evils they confront in us, they do at least show us a local church in which the Holy Spirit was working in power. So reading the passage makes one painfully aware of the impoverishment, inertia, dryness and deadness of so many churches at the present time.

“If our only reaction to these chapters is to preen ourselves and feel glad because our churches are free from Corinthian disorders, we are fools indeed and ought to think again. I fear that many of our churches today are orderly because they are asleep. And in many cases I fear it is the sleep of death. It is no great thing, is it, to have perfect order in a cemetery?”

(J.I. Packer, Serving the People of God: The Collected Shorter Writings of J.I. Packer, Volume 2, Paternoster, 1988, p10.)