Martyn Lloyd-Jones, the longtime pastor of the Westminster Chapel in London, England, described preaching as “The highest, the greatest, and the most glorious calling to which anyone can ever be called.”[1] While Lloyd-Jones’ assessment resonates broadly with evangelical preachers, precisely how one is to preach lacks such consensus. Read more

Evangelical Christians are in general agreement that preaching is God’s divinely appointed means to proclaim the gospel and to convey his truth to his people. Yet, within evangelical Christianity, precisely how one is to preach the Bible remains a contested topic—and with huge ramifications.

Though I sometimes wrestle with what text to preach, I never wrestle with how to preach it. I determined long ago for every sermon to be an expository one. For me, this started experiential and practical, but it quickly, and ultimately, became biblical and theological. Let me explain why.
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This past week Fred Craddock, one of the world’s most influential homileticians of the past half-century, died at the age of 86. Craddock burst onto the scene in 1971 with his As One Without Authority, and his seminal book landed like “a bombshell on the playground of preachers.” In it, Craddock called for a new homiletic, for preaching to start with the hearer, not the text, and for preaching to be inductive, not deductive. Read more

Faithful preaching has three primary ingredients. Creativity and homiletical polish are helpful, but the key ingredients of faithful preaching are preset and established by God. The three ingredients touch on who is qualified to preach, why one should preach, and what one should preach. Read more

For preachers, trusting authors of books on preaching is like is trusting authors of hunting magazines. The writer adds credibility if he has some nice mounts on the wall. Similarly, H. B. Charles, Jr. is a reliable guide on good preaching because he exemplifies it. Read more