Posts Tagged ‘Expository Preaching’

Pastors are called to preach sermons, not deliver rants. Too often God’s people are subjected to the latter, but it is the former they truly need. This distinction struck me several years ago, while co-preaching a conference with several other pastors.

I sensed we were in for a rant when one of the speakers declined a microphone, assuring the sound-booth attendant he would be sufficiently loud without it. When his moment to preach came, he did not disappoint. I was as amazed at his volume as I was disturbed by his handling of the text.

Pastors are called to preach sermons, not deliver rants. What differentiates the two? Read more

While beginning to sense God’s call to ministry, in February of 1998 I joined a car full of college-age men aspiring to the ministry, and we traveled north from Mobile, AL, on Interstate 65 to attend the Conger Lectures on Preaching at Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham.

Friends described that year’s lecturer as the “John MacArthur of the North.” I would soon get to hear him in person. His name was John Piper.

While at Beeson, I grabbed a copy of Piper’s, The Supremacy of God in Preaching. I devoured it, marking up every page. I’ve reread it every few years, and now, in the 25th year since its initial publication, it deserves renewed attention. Read more

What constitutes an expository sermon? Better yet, how might the preacher know if he has preached an expository sermon, and how might the congregation know if they’ve heard one? Much preaching gets crammed under the heading “expository preaching,” though it bears little resemblance to classical exposition.

A consensus definition of expository preaching proves stubbornly elusive, but there are three essential marks that are supported by Scripture and consistent within most classical definitions of the term. Consider how Alistair Begg, Haddon Robinson, and Bryan Chappel define expository preaching.
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One book that merits an annual reread is John Stott’s Between Two Worlds. In this classic, Stott depicts the preacher as a man positioned between two civilizations—tasked to bridge both the ancient world to the modern world and the ancient text to modern hearers. Read more

“How shall they hear without a preacher?” (Rom. 10:14). With airtight logic, the Apostle Paul sets forth the indispensable human link in fulfilling the Great Commission—the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ. In so doing, he instructs us in the way of the kingdom, that in every generation God is calling out preachers to serve His church.

Paul’s timeless question is especially relevant for the twenty-first-century church. Evangelical churches are in the midst of a massive generational transition, with vacant pastorates and empty pulpits dotting the landscape. Read more