Introduction
‘There are good preachers and there are original preachers, but there are no good original preachers.’ This anonymous quip highlights one type of answer that might be given to the question of where and when one acquires the faculty of good preaching. The basic tenet is that good preaching is caught, not taught - one simply learns it from other good preachers. This kind of answer arguably has its roots in what we might term the ‘pragmatics’ of preaching; here the stress in answering the question falls on the ‘picking up’ of good preaching.
However, our aim in this paper is to outline a more theologically oriented approach. We suggest that in answering this question everything depends on what is meant by ‘good preaching’. The definition of high quality preaching necessarily determines the ‘where’ and the ‘when’ of acquiring this faculty. We will suggest a view of preaching which measures its quality in the extent to which it is expository in nature, with ‘expository’ being understood as a three-way dialogue between the horizons of text, church and world. This will then lead us to suggest that these same three horizons, in different ways, also provide the answers to the where and when aspects of the question.Towards a definition of good preaching
There are, perhaps, many forms of pulpit address that might be called preaching. A preacher may offer some personal thoughts, a topical reflection, or a message that simply takes its starting point from a biblical text. We suggest that even when brilliantly executed, these approaches fail to capture the heart of good preaching.
John Stott has suggested that the task of any preacher is to fuse the ‘two horizons’ of the biblical text and the contemporary world in the experience of the listener. This provides a fundamental orientation to expository preaching. Here the preacher understands their task as being first to exegete the meaning of the biblical text but then also to bring this text into contact with the contemporary world, showing how the text both illumines and challenges the world. Stott argues that expository preaching is marked by two convictions (the biblical text is both inspired and in need of being explained), two obligations (faithfulness to the text and sensitivity to the world) and two expectations (that God will speak and his people will respond). [1]
The two horizons suggested by Stott arguably need to be complemented by a third equally necessary horizon - the church. In this way expository preaching is not simply fusing text and world, but text, church and world, [2] and the preacher’s task is to travel along Scripture’s historical time-line recognising the biblical drama as primarily the story of God’s relationship with his covenant people. Good preaching seeks to apply the gospel message as much to believers as to the watching world.
The three-fold horizons of text, church and world work together as dialogue partners in the act of expository preaching. The text provides the key content for the preacher’s address, restricting a use of the Bible as merely the spring-board for a few personal thoughts from the preacher. The church provides the context of believing reception of the Word, and reminds the preacher that their task is not to harangue the ‘outsider’ but to comfort and instruct the ‘insider.’ The world provides the stage of history which is governed by God and as such provides the points of contemporary connection for the Word. As we will argue below, this point of connection exists due to the doctrine of creation - the world is owned by God and derives its being from him, and as such is capable of hearing address from God. If this approach is taken as the foundational definition of good preaching, then we suggest that these three horizons should also have the major say in where and when the faculty is picked up.
On where one picks up the faculty of good preaching
First, it is acquired from the biblical text. This point is perhaps so obvious that it is easily ignored. However, there are at least two important points here. First, only the Bible in the lectern distinguishes a pulpit from a soapbox. The Bible provides the authority base required to speak for God in the act of preaching. In this sense, expository preaching engages in a genuine dialogue between text, church and world but it does not assume that the act of preaching is merely a dialogue, as if the possibility of repentance or rebuke is not an option for the goal of a sermon. Good preaching works from an authority base where there is a clear distinction between the authoritative Scripture and an authoritarian preacher. The former is theologically warranted by Scripture’s ontology and gives preaching its cutting edge; the latter denies the very definition of expository preaching by substituting the messenger for the message.
If this first point stresses that expository preaching comes from the biblical text, the second highlights that it comes from the biblical text. Good preaching is forced to reckon with Scripture’s multi-faceted collection of writings, diverse genres and vastly different homiletical challenges: the text ensures that expository sermons on Lamentations will not be identical to expository sermons on Romans. The form of the text sets the agenda for the content of the sermon. Good preaching wrestles with, for instance, the issues of whether narrative texts demand narrative sermons, and how best to express poetry and lament, tragedy and satire in exposition. The text exercises a constraining influence on the preacher: these words, spoken at this particular time in salvation-history, in this particular way, demand to be re-spoken so that they can be heard, felt and acted on anew.
These considerations about the role of the Bible are very closely related to the next location - good preaching comes from the church. The church has a very definite role to play in homiletical interpretation. For instance, a major presupposition of the Christian church is that Old and New Testaments alike are theologically construed as Christian Scripture; the point here is that this is not an approach that is accepted, by and large, in the modern secular academy. Francis Watson has argued that the academy maintains a strong ideological commitment to a line of demarcation which separates the Christian Bible from the Hebrew Scriptures. However, as Watson shows, the Christian is bound to question this. He states: ‘the Old Testament comes to us with Jesus and from Jesus and can never be understood in abstraction from him.’ [3] The Jesus of Christian theology is irreducibly a Jesus who claimed that the Old Testament Scriptures ‘testify about me’ (John 5:39). Expository preaching accepts this presupposition, operating as it does from within the church and not the academy.
This means that the discipline of biblical theology, much neglected by the academy, is most at home in an ecclesiological context. Charles Scobie has recently suggested that biblical theology should be seen as a bridge or intermediate discipline whereby historical-critical study is never adopted as an end in itself but always seeks to move from analysis to synthesis and, because of Christian presuppositions, brings these findings to bear on the life of the church. [4] In this way biblical theology provides the grist for dogmaticians and homileticians as they seek to apply biblical norms to the contemporary world. It is vital that expository preaching does not seek to serve the academy if this means bowing to its demands. Sermons that over-engage with critical disputes or reel off historical data in commentary-like fashion are ignorant of the ecclesiological context for preaching. For that preaching to be good, it must move beyond the strict norms set by the academy, actively transgressing its boundaries and flaunting its rules: issues of unity, continuity, thematic development, promise and fulfilment, type and anti-type, history, truth and theology, all belong in the scaffolding of the expository sermon even if, in some places, they have to first be rescued from the academic dust-bin.
However, arguably the major reason expository preaching comes from the church is ontological; it is grounded in what the church actually is. To follow a key strand of New Testament thinking, the church is the eschatological outpost of God’s bringing everything in heaven and earth together under the headship of Jesus Christ (Ephesians 1:10). With the dividing wall between Jew and Gentile destroyed through Christ, God is now working out his manifold wisdom (Eph. 3:10) by bringing Jew and Gentile together in the church as an eschatological sign to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms. The church is God’s new humanity, a sign of the new creation and the world to come.
This means that good preaching, in coming from the church and being addressed to the church, is intrinsically eschatological in nature. The doctrine of the church ensures that preaching is addressed to ‘strangers in the world’ (1 Peter 1:1) and provides the challenge to ‘live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age while we wait for the blessed hope - the glorious appearing of our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ’ (Titus 2:12-13). Preaching which comes from the church roots its ethics in the eschatological reality of both coming judgment and promised reward (2 Peter 3:11-14). It interprets suffering as a participation in the frustrated groans of a cosmos waiting for its liberation, and holds out the comfort that ‘our present sufferings are not worth comparing to the glory that will be revealed in us’ (Romans 8:18-21). It means that the proclamation of the gospel does not offer a dualistic ‘saving of the soul’ or merely a ‘ticket to heaven’. Instead, ecclesiology ensures that good preaching heralds a whole new way of being human in the world - reconciliation to God and to others by participating in the first-fruits of the new creation. [5]
The doctrine of creation is vital here. It is on this basis that the church exists as the location of good preaching, for the church is the embodiment of the recapitulation of creation, the new humanity brought into being through the resurrection of Jesus. Creation also underpins the third horizon of the world. Made by God and owned by God, the world provides the structures of thought, language and rationality that are needed to process and understand the divine address that comes in preaching. The claim that expository preaching actually comes from the world should be taken literally. As Watson shows, the church is not an ‘enclosed, self sufficient sphere, for its members can never leave behind the broader socio-linguistic formation that continues to permeate every aspect of their lives’ and therefore any expression of the church’s faith in the world through its preaching ‘will occur only within and through the medium of contemporary discourse.’ Indeed, the gospel message can ‘only be proclaimed through the mediation of a language normally employed by a broad socio-linguistic group for quite other purposes.’ [6]
Approaching the world theologically will allow the preacher to connect the text with culture and affirm its God-given goodness, as well as to address the world in its rebellion and alienation from God. The world is neither a value-neutral entity to be affirmed by the preacher, nor an irrelevant distraction to the other-worldly spiritual concerns of the sermon. The preacher needs to listen to the world and fuse the biblical text with its joys, aspirations and agonies; the preacher needs to understand the way the world feels, argues and thinks, what plausibility structures it erects and what its primary objections to the gospel are. Careful listening to the world will also require good preaching to make distinctions between the stages of world history known as modernity and postmodernity, distinctions that will even have a significant bearing on the form and structure of the sermon. For instance, due to the suspicions many postmoderns feel towards an authoritarian preacher, or in light of the problems created by epistemic relativism, the contemporary preacher must take time to explain to the congregation not only what the text means but also how they have come to that conclusion. There is a need to show the ‘working out’ behind the sermon. In this way, any congregational postmodern fears about authority and abusive power paradigms are totally disarmed through the preacher’s constant clear call to examine the text - in this way the listener is invited to be a part of the act of preaching and not merely a passive recipient who is being told what to think.
It is also this kind of approach to the world that must govern the issues of illustration and application in the sermon. They are not optional bolt-ons to the really important issues of theology in the sermon; rather expository preaching loses the right to adopt that name where application surfaces only as an appended after-thought. However, neither is it necessarily the correct approach to pepper the sermon with references to contemporary culture and current affairs in an attempt to show that the preacher is ‘with it’. What is required is not anecdotal reference to the world but rather, as Melvin Tinker has argued, vibrant engagement with the world to show that the God and gospel of the Bible alone make sense of the world and can bring comfort and clarity to its pains and confusions [7]. A congregation quickly discerns whether their preacher really lives in the real world which they inhabit from Monday-Saturday outside the few hours of pew dwelling on Sundays, and at least two negative reactions set in where the preacher operates without a strong doctrine of the world. First, the congregation begins to stagnate spiritually by losing connection from a gospel that is capable of connecting with every area of their lives and sermons begin to mean the transportation to an increasingly alien world. Second, the congregation will associate this alien theological world with what it means to be truly spiritual and, because they cannot survive in it, some will conclude that theology is only for certain types of people who are more spiritual (or clever) than they are.
In such cases, where other-worldliness is implicitly communicated from the pulpit, no only do believers never learn how to engage with this world but they simultaneously grow bored at the prospect of the next. When believers begin to find their present physicality a distraction from the task of being ‘really spiritual’ then the hope of a future physicality becomes something hard to relate to or look forward to. This kind of misunderstanding is present, for instance, in dispensational approaches to eschatology, acutely pin-pointed in Paul Blackham’s comment:
The real danger of a rapture-based eschatology is not so much that it has such a small exegetical foundation, but that it abandons the earth to the wicked. The righteous are taken away from the world, whereas the wicked remain - the exact opposite of Christ’s point, where, with Noah, the eight Christians are alive on the earth whereas all the wicked are taken away by the flood. It is the meek who inherit the earth - not the wicked. [8]
The gospel hope of a real transformed body in a real physical world in a real life to come demands that, in this world, we engage imaginatively with the fact of the world. Expository preaching needs to connect with the inherent goodness of being made physically male and physically female in relationship to God and each other while we wait and work for the bringing of everything in heaven and on earth together under Christ.
On when one picks up the faculty of good preaching
Our suggestion here is that the faculty of good preaching is acquired when a particular set of relationships exist between the preacher and the three horizons. In this way the ‘when’ question is answered not so much in temporal terms as in moral terms. Good preaching ensues when the preacher adopts certain theologically necessary relational stances towards the text, the church and the world. To not adopt these positions is to adopt a culpable stance which short-circuits the theological understanding of the preacher’s task. What do we mean by this?
First, the Christian minister acquires the faculty of good preaching when their relationship to the text is primarily one of humility and patient willingness to listen and be addressed by someone other than themselves. In his discussion of Schleiermacher’s hermeneutics, Anthony Thiselton has shown the value of the concept of the ‘hermeneutical circle’ for appropriating the meaning of texts, although the sense of Thiselton’s term is perhaps better explained in Grant Osborne’s depiction of a ‘hermeneutical spiral.’ [9] In coming to the text, the preacher brings a pre-understanding-horizon which shapes their perception of the text-horizon. However, the text is capable of reshaping the preacher’s understanding, so that repeated exposure to the text results in a closer approximation of its message. Much like conversation with a good friend deepens understanding, so constant listening to the text allows the exegete to ‘spiral in’ on its meaning.
For the Christian preacher, this is a moral and theological issue as much as a hermeneutical one. Luke 1:2 portrays the first eyewitnesses of the Christ-event as ‘servants of the word’ - the stance is that of humility in the presence of something greater. Expository preaching demands that the preacher allow their pre-understanding of the text to be confronted by the text, lest they serve only themselves in their preaching. Similarly, Paul presents his own ministry as one which has renounced secret and shameful ways, which does not use deception and does not ‘distort the word of God’ (2 Corinthians 4:2). The implication is that distorting the word is a real possibility. The preacher is required to be a listener before being a speaker, for only a clear grasp of the text’s other-ness will prevent distorting it into the preacher’s mould.
Here it is important to see the way in which such theological principles must impact praxis at the deepest level, even right down to issues of how the preacher structures their week and organises their priorities. To listen, and to listen well, takes time. A lot of time. This means that where the preacher does not protect sermon preparation time with prosecuting zeal, the end result of the sermon will be the work of someone who speaks before they listen. The sermon will reveal the kind of person who thinks they know best before they’ve heard both sides of an argument - the text will be handled in ways which ignore its details and nuances and miss its structure or surprises. Perhaps one of the clearest signs of a sermon that is not born out of sensitive listening is one where the congregation gets more Bible, not less, as the preacher draws on a reservoir of knowledge to speak about the text, expanding it, but does not explain the text, expounding it. (Winston Churchill once remarked after a lengthy address that he hadn’t had time to prepare a short talk). The preacher’s approach to the sermon text will go hand in hand with the approach to their over-all ministry. Where the sermons are under-prepared and ill-conceived, so too pastoral relationships will often be under-developed and stunted because genuine listening as a moral imperative is not being adopted as intrinsic to the theological task. The minister will be hurried and busy, an activist, and on the fast-track to becoming a church manager doing God’s work rather than a preacher speaking God’s word.
Second, the faculty of good preaching is acquired when the preacher adopts a particular set of relational stances towards the church that are mandated by the biblical text. From his study of 1 Thessalonians, James Thompson suggests that paraklesis, ‘appeal’, is the fundamental summary term for both Paul’s evangelistic preaching and his pastoral preaching: his evangelistic appeal is followed by an ongoing appeal to the believing community to incorporate the gospel into their lives. [10] This demands of the preacher certain pastoral stances towards the church and here Stott has provided a telling outline of some of the pastoral metaphors enjoined on the preacher. To give two examples, there is the domestic metaphor of the ‘steward’ (1 Corinthians 4:1; Titus 1:7), entrusted with goods for the well-being of others, and the familial metaphor of the father (1 Corinthians 4:15), a position of responsibility and loving leadership. [11] Within the context of a ministry that is constantly ‘appealing’ to the people of God, these relational stances are to shape and mould the manner of the preacher’s appeal - it must be neither self-interested nor over-bearing, but rather faithful and affectionate. There are a plethora of other relational stances that the minister of the gospel needs to adopt, at different times and in varying circumstances - Derek Tidball outlines these as ambassador, athlete, builder, fool, pilot, scum and shepherd. [12] Such metaphors emerge out of relationships with new converts and shape the biblical articulation of the factors involved in Christian growth and maturity. In this way, pastoral practice becomes married to pulpit address so that the preacher sees their task as being not just to deliver a sermon, but to help form Christian character that is in line with the gospel. As Bishop Philip Brooks said, ‘The preacher needs to be a pastor, that he may preach to real men. The pastor must be a preacher, that he may keep the dignity of his work alive. The preacher who is not a pastor, grows remote. The pastor who is not a preacher, grows petty.’ [13]
Finally, a particular set of relational stances towards the world, mandated by the biblical text, are also required for the faculty of good preaching. Again Stott provides two metaphors which illustrate this: first, the political metaphor of ‘herald’; second, the legal metaphor of ‘witness’. To consider just the first of these, Paul states that ‘we preach (keryssomen, we herald) Christ crucified’ and makes it clear that it is through this heralded proclamation (kerygma) that God is pleased to save those who believe (1 Corinthians 1:21-23). As Stott states, ‘whereas the task of the steward is to feed the household of God, the herald has good news to proclaim to the whole world.’ [14] If good preaching comes from the world, in that it uses the language of the world, it also demands a functional ‘distance’ from the world. The distance is not that of moral superiority, but simply urgent necessity - the preacher is the bearer of a message, a go-between, and as such carries the authority of the sender and entreats on their behalf.
The paraklesis of preaching is vital here and, as Stott shows, the stance of being a herald means that the preacher must neither appeal to the world without proclamation, nor proclaim to the world without appeal. [15] The former runs the risk of manipulating and brow-beating a congregation into a crisis of faith that has not been provoked by the gospel. It also ignores the varied stress on the intellectual endeavour of expository preaching - preaching must teach, argue, dispute, confound and prove and to seek a response without this prior engagement is deceptive. [16] The latter approach to preaching ignores another of the relational metaphors used to describe the preacher, that of the ambassador: ‘We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God’ (2 Corinthians 5:20). The appeal is necessary simply because the preacher is not in the pulpit to communicate information, but rather to effect a relationship between the listener and God.
Conclusion
We do not mean to give the impression that a theological approach to preaching is the last word on the matter, nor suggest that many practical issues such as diction, style, or presentation, are inconsequential. On the contrary, it is possible to have a solid grasp of homiletical theology and still to bore a congregation half to death! However, we suggest that the horizons of text, church and world provide the big picture of preaching, even if they do not fill in all the details. They place into the preacher’s hands a framework for good preaching that orients the preacher away from themselves to the other-ness of words from God, to people redeemed by God, and to a world owned by God. These convictions are capable of creating excellent preaching.
ENDNOTES:
[1] John Stott, The Contemporary Christian: An Urgent Plea for Double Listening (Leicester: IVP, 1992), 362, 512-515.
[2] This vision of the theological (and hence homiletical) task is suggested by Francis Watson, Text, Church and World: Biblical Interpretation in Theological Perspective (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1994).
[3] Francis Watson, Text and Truth: Redefining Biblical Theology (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1997), 182.
[4] Charles H. H. Scobie, The Ways of Our God: An Approach to Biblical Theology (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2003), 46-47.
[5] For insightful elaboration of this theme, see James W. Thompson, Preaching like Paul: Homiletical Wisdom for Today (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), 90-106.
[6] Francis Watson, Text, Church and World, 9.
[7] Melvin Tinker, Bridge-Building and Preaching, Address given at the 2003 Scottish Ministry Assembly (online in Preaching Articles at www.beginningwithmoses.org)
[8] Paul Blackham, ‘Holding a Living Hope Before a Dying World’ (unpublished paper). The terminology ‘Christians’ to describe Noah and his family is questionable but his point stands.
[9] Anthony C. Thiselton, New Horizons in Hermeneutics: The Theory and Practice of Transforming Biblical Reading (London: Harper Collins, 1992), 221-236; Grant R. Osborne, The Hermeneutical Spiral: A Comprehensive Introduction to Biblical Interpretation (Downers Grove: IVP, 1991).
[10] James W. Thompson, Preaching Like Paul, 54.
[11] John Stott, The Preacher’s Portrait (Leicester: IVP, 1961).
[12] Derek J. Tidball, Builders and Fools: Leadership the Bible Way (Leicester: IVP, 1999).
[13] Philip Brooks, Eight Lectures on Preaching (H. R. Allenson, 1895), 77. Cited in Stott, The Preacher’s Portrait, 72.
[14] John Stott, The Preacher’s Portrait, 29.
[15] Ibid., 48-52.
[16] Ibid., 49.