Two of the best things that your preaching should do

Let me share two stories from personal experience with you.  In the first case, I was the preacher.  Imagine the scene.  I’ve completed my second year of theological training and my home church pastor has arranged for me to do a summer internship at a little village church (Halling Baptist) without a pastor at that time. 

One Sunday as the service starts, one of the members walks in with her parents who are visiting.  I recognise her dad, it was a man called Bev Savage and he was immediately recognisable because he had been a senior leader of the FIEC network of churches before heading off to the States for a fruitful ministry as the teaching pastor at a very large church.  After the service and in reality having waded through my text, I come down from the pulpit.  Bev walks up to me and with a warm smile and firm handshake he says “yes it’s a wonderful Bible passage isn’t it.”   He was far to gracious to add “a shame about your handling of it.”

Now, I’m not saying that I did a good job of this but Bev had picked up on something important.  What is one of the best things we can do as preachers?  The answer is that we can leave people remembering God’s Word and rejoicing in Him, whether or not our actual words had an impact.  The converse is that one of the worst things we can do is that no matter how powerful our rhetoric, piercing our logic or practical our application, if we end up obscuring the word then we have failed.

Here’s the second story.  A number of years ago, John Piper spoke at the FIEC’s Easter conference.  I didn’t go to the conference and I hadn’t even heard of Piper before but people came back really excited and motivated by the messages.  They were able to communicate the big theme (you’ve guessed it), that we are to glorify God by enjoying him together. Without hearing Piper or at that time even reading his books, I was able to grasp the message and its significance.  I too was captivated and excited by it.

There is something else that we can do for our congregations.  I want to suggest, especially to pastors that our congregations should be able to pick up on what our priority/main theme/passion is, especially over a period of time, whether or not they can remember the details of specific sermons.  They should be able to communicate both the passion and the point to others.  This also means that we get the big main theme of our ministry right so that people are once more left glorifying and enjoying God.