What makes the difference between someone who grows in
preaching versus someone who doesn't?
I often have to answer the strangest question anyone
could ask a preaching professor: “Do you think preaching can be taught?” I
always want to respond, “No, I’m just going through the motions for the money.”
Of course I never do, not only because it’s best not to say the smart aleck
things I sometimes think, but because I know what they mean when they ask. It’s
not really an unfair question.
No one denies that a preaching class and some coaching
can help anyone become better. What we question is the possibility that
someone with no natural giftedness and ability can be taught well enough that
he can become really good.
For the last 16 years I’ve sat in a seminary
classroom, listening to student sermons on an almost daily basis, and I’ve
heard every kind of sermon and every level of preacher.
I’ve seen guys so nervous that they had to stop and vomit
during the sermon, and I’ve been so moved by a student’s sermon that I felt I
had been ushered into the presence of the risen Christ. I’ve seen guys who were
no better the fifth time they preached for me than they were the first time,
but I’ve seen guys whose initial sermon was depressingly awful turn it around
so radically by the end of the semester that I almost couldn't recognize them
as the same preacher.
On the first day of the semester, or the first time I
hear a student preach, I have no way of knowing if he has what it takes or is
willing to do what he must to be the preacher he needs to be, but I can usually
tell by the second sermon if he does, because that is when he has to act on
what I told him after his first sermon.
What
makes the difference?
1. Calling
The most frustrated preacher is the one who has a sense
of duty, but not a burning calling.
Preaching is not just another helping profession, a
Christian version of politics or the Peace Corps. The call to preach is a
definite demand issued by the Holy Spirit that ignites a fire in one’s bones
that cannot be extinguished by the hard-hearted, stiff-necked or dull of
hearing.
A preacher who has been called must preach what God has
spoken simply because God has spoken it. The success of one’s ministry will
depend on the strength of his calling. His willingness to work at his preaching
will be proportional to his conviction that God has called him to preach and to
be as fit a vessel for God’s use as he can be.
The Holy Spirit must undergird everything else from preparation
to delivery, and that will not happen apart from that calling.
2. Teachability
Being a preaching professor is like getting paid to tell
a mother that her baby is ugly. It might be the truth, but it’s not a truth
anyone wants to hear.
Most guys I have taught dread my comments and cringe when
I tell them they missed the point of the text or seemed unprepared. They tire
of hearing me tell them they lacked energy or failed to establish a connection
with the audience.
Every now and then, however, someone smiles gratefully as
I offer corrections and suggestions.
Someone may even say, “I want you to be really tough on
me. Tell me everything I’m doing wrong, because I really want to do this well.”
That guy is going to be fine, because his spirit is teachable and he’s willing
to pay the cost of personal discomfort in order to be effective. He understands
that he is a vessel in service of the text, and his feelings are not the point.
3. Passion
Almost all my students are passionate about Christ, about
reaching the lost and about the Word of God. The problem is not that they
don’t feel passionate, but rather that they do
not show passion. What I feel is never the point, whether good or
bad, but rather how I act.
If my delivery of the Word does not convey that passion,
then my audience will not be moved to be passionate about it either. The
prophets were all passionate. The apostles were passionate. Jesus was
passionate. Why else would farmers, fishermen and housewives come and stand in
the Galilean sun for hours just to hear Him?
I once heard a missionary preach at the Southern Baptist
Pastors Conference. He was dynamite, preaching a great expository sermon with
incredible energy and moving the entire audience by his treatment of the Word
and his testimony of baptizing tens of thousands of Africans. Astonished by his
great preaching, I approached him and held out my hand to introduce myself.
“Hershael,” he said, shocking me that he knew my name,
“we went to seminary together.” Embarrassed, I admitted that I did not remember
him. “You had no reason to,” he explained. “I was very quiet, never spoke in
class and never went out of my way to meet anyone.” I asked him to explain what
happened.
“When I got on the mission field, no one would listen to
my preaching of the gospel. I was putting them to sleep. When I came stateside
and preached in churches, they were bored to tears. Finally, I realized that
the only way to be effective was to preach the Word in the way it deserved to
be preached, so I became willing to go beyond my natural personality and
comfort zone and allow God to make me effective. I prayed for the Word to so
grip me in the pulpit that I would never be boring again.”
His teachability led him to show a passion that was not
natural to his introverted personality. It was supernatural.
4. Reckless Abandon
The generation of students I now teach have grown up with
the written word—on screens, smart phones, blogs, Kindles and now iPads.
Through video games they have raced cars, built civilizations, won wars, destroyed
zombies and killed hundreds.
They communicate orally far less than any previous
generation, and when they do so, they typically do it with less passion. Yet
God still uses the preaching of His Word—an oral event—to edify the church,
encourage the saints and engage the lost.
So to preach the Word, a young man has to be willing to
get completely out of the comfortable cocoon he’s built in his personality and
habits, and recklessly abandon himself to risk being a fool for Christ.
I tell my students, “That little voice inside your head
saying ‘That’s just not who I am’ is not your friend. Sanctification is the
process by which the Holy Spirit overcomes ‘who I am’ and shapes me into who He
wants me to be. So if I need to preach with a reckless abandon that is foreign
to my natural way, I will beg the Holy Spirit to help me do it for Christ.”
Pay the Price
Frankly, very few students I teach fail to get the
meaning of the text. They often demonstrate an exegetical and hermeneutical
sophistication that astounds me. They are serious about the Word.
But they make the mistake of thinking that if they
just feel that way, and if they just say the words, the preaching
will take care of itself. And if they keep thinking that, if they insist on
“data dump” sermons that just concentrate on the content and not also on the
delivery, there’s not much I can do for them. They will be the kind of
preachers they want to be.
But if someone has a burning calling, a teachable spirit,
a passionate heart and a reckless abandon to pay the price to preach well, then
not even the limitation of their own background, personality or natural talents
will keep them from preaching the Word of God with power.
Hershael W. York is the
Victor and Louise Lester Professor of Preaching and Associate Dean in the
School of Theology at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville,
KY. He also serves as Senior Pastor of the Buck Run Baptist Church in
Frankfort, KY, and co-wrote Preaching with Bold Assurance (Broadman and Holman, 2003) with communications
expert Bert Decker, chairman and founder of Decker Communications.
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