I recently shared some notes setting out what I’m looking for from a preacher.. I suggested that we are looking for, in terms of content:
- The applied primary purpose of the passage – so that the congregation know what God’s is saying to them through that specific passage
- Their working out. Can the congregation see how the preacher got there. The aim is to help them see for themselves. It should not feel like rabbits were pulled from the hat. I don’t want people to be amazed at what I found in the text. I want them to feel like it was obvious by the end.
- A flavour of what us going on, so they are helped to know and remember what Scripture says. It’s the word if Christ that we want to dwell richly in them.
I would suggest that in recent years, the emphasis has tended to be more and more on the first of these with a nod to the second. That to some extent is a good and healthy correction to dry meandering sermons with lots of interesting, commentary style observations and little if any application,
However, I wonder whether we are paying enough attention to the third? I believe this matters because alongside the objective of applying God’s word to people’s lives to effect change, there is another purpose or objective. Colossians 3:16 says:
“ Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts.”
Now, we shouldn’t miss the point that preaching isn’t expected to bear the full weight of responsibility for this objective, singing has a major part to play too and perhaps we should pay more attention to what we sing. However, what we see here is that the focus is on the big need for believers to be filled with Christ’s Word and the result of that is that they should be able to teach and correct one another. For that reason, I want to suggest that a primary aim of preaching is so that the Word of Christ will dwell richly in believers. This in turn will saturate the counsel we give to each other, the songs that naturally pour out from our lips, our prayers and, for those of us in charismatic contexts, our prophetic words too.
This has some practical implications for how we approach preaching and teaching. First, it will get us to think about how we assess the effectiveness of our preaching. We are tempted to measure by how well people are able to recall the points that we’ve made but is that really a good measure? At best it tells us how good people are at remembering and how memorable the preacher was. Better to be looking at what people are doing. Don’t ask what people can remember about the application. Ask how they are getting on with applying it themselves.
However, we do want to see them remembering words of Scripture themselves. You see, once we have got the Word putting its roots down deep into our lives, it will continue giving beyond the Sunday sermon. So, check in with people, through life groups and conversations. Don’t ask them to tell you what the message was about. Ask them to tell you what the Bible passage was about.
And this will affect how we approach preaching themselves. I want my excitement and delight in God’s Word to be infectious and so, that’s one of the things I want people to pick up from hearing me. I don’t want people to remember me and what I said. I want them to remember God’s Word. That will have a few how to implications. For example, it is one reason for showing our working out, we keep going back to the text. It means helping people to see how things link together in terms of context and how to spot themes throughout. It might include using more narrative style preaching where appropriate.
It will also mean that we’ve made sure that we’ve dealt with any obstacles that might hinder people from digesting the Word. So, we will take time to identify challenges and questions people might have. This might mean that they find a passage hard to understand or hard to accept. There is a kind of apologetics involved in preaching. Good preachers won’t duck or ignore the difficult stuff but will scratch where people itch.
How are you helping people to let the Word of Christ dwell in them richly?
Faithroots 