After my post last week, I realized that I failed to touch on a topic I had meant to cover more deeply: what is the purpose of preaching? Without first understanding this, we are unable to rightly discern whether preaching is "good" or "bad." When we say preaching is good, we may be right, but for the wrong reasons! The following is an excerpt from a paper I did in a seminar for my expository preaching degree:The final chapter of David Buttrick’s Homiletic is entitled “A Brief Theology of Preaching.” Here Buttrick asks a salient question:
From a social perspective,
preaching may be superfluous…. Reasons
for preaching can only be found in faith.
So, though we may enjoy the sweet freedoms of a superfluous vocation, in
faith let us struggle with the question: Why do preachers preach?”[1]
Most
of the works we read [in this seminar] suffer from failing to answer this question correctly, if
at all. It is difficult to overstate the
importance of knowing what the purpose of preaching is. The widespread lack of understanding of or
attention to the purpose of preaching in the evangelical community is perhaps the
most disturbing trend I have observed during our coursework. It was frustrating to read various authors
develop and defend methods that clearly did not share the passions of
Scripture.
Failure to Consider Purpose. On one end of the Protestant homiletical
spectrum are those works that fail to even consider why Scripture tells us we
are to preach. Fred Craddock rebels
against the idea of the authoritative proclamation of truth. He advocates that the preacher “re-create
with the congregation the inductive experience of coming to an understanding of
the message of the text.”[2] Eugene Lowry advocates the narrative form of
the sermon based upon our intuitive sense of how to preach: “Transforming our
intuitions into articulate form [the narrative] is precisely the purpose of
this book.”[3] Their works never even address what God would
have the preacher do.
Purpose and Proof-Texting. But even works written by sound bible
expositors sometimes betray a lack of proper concern with purpose. A biblical theology of preaching is not one
that can be simply defended with a few quick proof texts. Warren Wiersbe in Preaching and Teaching with Imagination develops an entire work
around the thesis that preaching should be creative. His text to defend this argument is 2 Samuel
17 where Ahithophel’s counsel is thwarted due to Hushai’s speech.
It
is not that Wiersbe is wrong to urge creativity in preaching. His practical suggestions are excellent. The problem lies in the fact that his work is
driven by a text that is simply not about creativity. The primary purpose of the text is to show
how the sovereign hand of God uses Hushai to protect David. Not to unfairly target Wiersbe, but the absence
of passion about God’s purpose for preaching in his work left me hungry for
something more. What is needed in
homiletical instruction is to develop within the preacher a heart that burns
for the things of the Lord.
A
passage that seems to creep up frequently in sections of preaching books that
are presumably dealing with purpose is 2 Samuel 12 where David is confronted by
Nathan through the telling of a story.
For example, York and Decker introduce their chapter entitled “The Goal
of Preaching” with this story. They
conclude their introductory remarks, “Making the emotional connection with
David was instrumental in getting David to act
on Nathan’s rebuke rather than just to hear it.”[4] But this text is not about preaching. And, what is more concerning, nowhere in this
chapter on the goal of preaching are any biblical texts that deal with
preaching in the church even mentioned, much less explored.
The
problem is that there is a lack of a clarion call to the church regarding the
true purpose of preaching. This problem
is not universal, but it is wide-spread.
Some works may feel that such a question is beyond the scope of their
work, but it seems to be so essential to anything else one might say about
preaching that it is a question that should at least be addressed at some
level.
Preoccupation with Pragmatics. Finding something that “works” is the
goal of many homiletical books.
Craddock’s call for change is not based on the fact that the church is
failing to fulfill God’s design for preaching but rather that “in countless
courts of opinion the verdict on preaching has been rendered and the sentence
passed.”[5] Graham Johnston assumes our primary task is
to “reach the present age without selling out to it.”[6] Even Michael Fabarez contends that the proper
evaluation of a successful sermon is “the biblical change it brings about in
the lives of our congregants.” [7] Our postmodern culture, as the handout from
the seminar contends, “is into whatever’s expedient.”[8]
Failure to Apply Purpose. Some of the works we examined have a
solid evangelical theology of preaching but fail to consider the implications
of that theology. Dennis Cahill in The Shape of Preaching provides an
overview of the tools available to the homiletician of the contemporary
church. He does this while maintaining
an appreciation for and a defense of traditional evangelicalism’s understanding
of the purpose of the sermon.
Unfortunately, he fails to have his theology truly interact with his
method. The purpose of the sermon is
never really applied to the methods he surveys.
At one point he juxtaposes preachers who neglect to develop a
propositional idea with homileticians “who sound as if preaching is just the
communication of information about the Bible.
For them…it is explanation with some application.”[9] Cahill never describes what the middle ground
looks like, nor what exactly is unsettling about explaining and applying the
Bible.
Focus on the Sacred Task. It should come as no surprise to anyone at
Southern that Dr. Mohler gets it right.
In the introductory chapter to Handbook
of Contemporary Preaching, he identifies the true reason we preach: “True
preaching begins with this confession: we preach because God has spoken.”[10] This simple statement is surprisingly
profound, even within evangelical circles.
Mohler’s conclusion to the article should be required reading for some
of the people who advocated various methods in our material:
The preacher is
a commissioned agent whose task is to speak because God has spoken, because the
preacher has been entrusted with the telling of the gospel of the Son who
saved, and because God has promised the power of the Spirit as the seal and
efficacy of the
preacher’s calling.
The ground of
preaching is none other than the revelation which God has addressed to us in
Scripture. The goal of preaching is no
more and no less than faithfulness to this calling. The glory of preaching is that God has
promised to use preachers and preaching to accomplish His purpose and bring
glory unto Himself.
Therefore, a
theology of preaching is essentially doxology.
The ultimate purpose of the sermon is to glorify God and to reveal a
glimpse of His glory to His creation.
This is the sum and substance of the preaching task. That God would choose such a means to express
His own glory is beyond our
understanding; it is rooted in the mystery of the will and wisdom of God.
Yet, God has
called out preachers and commanded them to preach. Preaching is not an act the church is called
to defend but a ministry preachers are called to perform. Thus, whatever the season, the imperative
stands: Preach the Word![11]
[1] David
Buttrick, Homiletic (Minneapolis:
Augsburg Fortress Press, 1987), 449.
[2] Fred
Craddock, As One Without Authority (St.
Louis: Chalice Books), 99.
[3] Eugene Lowry, The
Homiletical Plot: The Sermon as Narrative Art Form (Louisville: Westminster
John Knox Press, 2001), xix.
[4] Hershael
York and Bert Decker, Preaching with Bold
Assurance (Nashville: B&H Publishing Group, 2003), 11.
[5]
Craddock, 3.
[6] Graham Johnston,
Preaching to a Postmodern World (Grand
Rapids: Baker Books, 2001), 10.
[7] Michael
Fabarez, Preaching that Changes Lives (Eugene,
OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2002), 9-10.
[8] “Postmodernism
Handout,” Expository Preaching 80314.
[9] Dennis M. Cahill, The
Shape of Preaching: Theory and Practice in Sermon Design (Grand
Rapids: Baker Books, 2007),93.
[10] R.
Albert Mohler, Jr., “A Theology of Preaching ,” Handbook of Contemporary Preaching, Michael Duduitt, ed.,
(Nashville: Broadman Press, 1992), 14.
[11] Ibid.,
19-20.
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