By Micheal Goetz

Preaching has always been at the center of Christianity because it has as its foundation the Word of God and preaching is its exposition. Preaching is the most visible part of a pastor’s ministry and it has a significant influence on the spiritual journey of a congregation. It regularly shows up on surveys as being one of the top two reasons an individual attends a church. But while it has been a driver in the Christian church and is today an element that draws the individual to attend church, according to a five-year-old Barna study, 46 percent of regular churchgoers see how the Bible is publicly presented each week and this results in no change in their lives.1

The question begs itself: if preaching has been noted as such an important part of church, why is our preaching not working? “Our” includes both the one in the pulpit and the one in the pew. As any communication guru or counselor will remind us, communication is a two-person activity.

Much of what is considered when we reflect on the public presentation of the Word of God, or preaching, is actually the elements that are the least of what make it “powerful.” Think of preaching as a house. The components of that structure that make it strong are not the factors that can be seen once it is finished. Things like the creative design, paint, wall hangings, or finish work are what make it nice. But that which makes a structure strong, or let’s say powerful, is the foundation, groundwork, and framing or concrete work. It is no different for preaching. What compels preach- ing to be powerful and impacting are factors that cannot be seen. The wall-hangings and finish work of a sermon are nice, like illustrations, creative presentation style, stories, graphics, and such. But we’ll leave those for another time. For now, let’s talk about the foundation and framing of sermons, keeping in mind that these two parts are not visible, but we all feel it when they are not there.

Personal Preparedness

There is that time when the guards were sent to arrest Jesus in Jn. 7, remember? They return empty handed and when the now-angry commanders asked them where was the captive, they responded (verse 46) that they had never heard a man speak as that Man. Isn’t that the style of preacher we want at our church? But the reason for this was that never man lived as He lived. Had His life been other than it was, He could not have spoken as He did.

This often escapes our thinking, that the power of words come from one’s personal, private life. Let me share with you a few lines from my favorite author on prayer and holy living—E.M. Bounds:

The church is looking for better methods; God is looking for better men. . . . What the Church needs today is not more machinery or better, not new organizations or more and novel methods [or better sermons], but men whom the Holy Spirit can use—men of prayer, men mighty in prayer. The Holy Spirit does not flow through methods, but through men. . . . Preaching is not the performance of an hour. It is the outflow of a life. The real sermon is made [or received] in the closet. The man—God’s man— is made in the closet. . . . Prayer makes the man; prayer makes the preacher [listener]; prayer makes the pastor.3

Preachers, our lives must be in pursuit of the holiness of which we preach. Preaching is not personal performance. It is the overflow of the eternal, omnipresent, omnipotent God in you. Our prayer time, lingering in God’s presence, must be long and passionate. Let’s pause on that prayer word for a moment. Martin Luther is known to have said, “If I fail to spend two hours in prayer each morning, the devil gets the victory through the day.” The picture we have of God is that if we bug Him too much, He will get annoyed like the parent who finally responds to the child’s cry of “Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!” However, the Bible is repetitious with narratives and instruction that continual and persistent prayer makes for miracles. God is not a “catch me if you can” god, but gave us the verbal, public proclamation of His word to make miracles happen.

Before you have the ah-ha moment and determine that your preacher must not be very holy or prayerful because the sermons lack inspiration, reread the parenthetical inserts above (which were my additions). Bound’s challenge is as much for the listener as it is for the preacher. One who spends no time learning the voice of God during the week will not recognize Him speaking in any public presentation. The sermon is made from the private and personal meeting with God by both the preacher and the listener.

I grew up in the Pacific Northwest and so my ear naturally catches the news of wildfires. During the year 2017, they weren’t necessarily setting records, but the statistics are big. Since the beginning of this year, 46,951 fires have burned across 7,650,844 acres of the United States, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. You can’t help but reflect that each one of these massive landscape-changing fires started with a single flame. It’s the old campfire chorus, “It only takes a spark to get a fire going . . .” That personal, private, prayer time with God is the flame that can cause the forest-fire-burning we long for in our churches.

Theology of Preaching

The theology of preaching has at its foundation two elements. First, God has chosen to speak and His word is powerful, creative, and effective. Second, God calls humans to be surrogate voices in speaking His word to others. Because of the Holy Spirit, the latter can have the same result as the former.

Often preaching is thought of as being “about” the Word of God and not “the very Word of God.” This nuanced difference may have been or is being cultivated by poor preaching, but it doesn’t change what it is supposed to be.

Preaching through the span, from Noah to the third angel, includes a side of judgment and destruction. Not every time, but a significant number of times, preaching is what provides the opportunity for the individual or community to be saved from either physical harm or eternal destruction. God is love, and He is giving His all for the salvation of mankind (Jn. 3:16). It is fair to conclude that God would only give His best effort to save all (1 Tim. 2:4), and according to the biblical account and command, preaching is one of God’s primary methods to such an extent that in Matt. 10, Jesus told the preachers He was sending them out so that communities would be held accountable in the judgment based on what they had heard preached (v. 15).

God’s Word brought everything in this universe into existence from nothing, but it is not just an historical event of the past, rather it is the breath that sustains and keeps creating life today. Could it be that same Word is what we today call preaching? The answer comes in Romans 10. The sequence described (vv. 13-16) is that those who are lost need to hear in order to believe. However, verse 17 summarizes with a parallel sequence: “So then faith comes by hearing, and hear- ing by the word of God.” The position the preacher occupies in the order presented in verses 13-16 is clarified in verse 17 as being the same position as the Word of God. In preaching then, the preacher and the Word of God become the same.

If preaching is the very Word of God, then how I relate to it as a preacher changes, and how I relate to it as a listener changes. Everything changes if preaching is the proclamation of the Word of God. As a preacher, I come with a holy, prayerful reverence, diligently studying, preparing and practicing the sermon in advance so that when I step into the pulpit, the word spoken is the Word. As a listener, I will come early (or on time), having lingered in prayer listening to His voice through Bible study, surrendering my heart and mind to Him, and petitioning Him for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the preacher and on me. Both reactions, from the preacher and the listener, are because God is about to speak.

And when God speaks, preaching does work.

–Micheal Goetz is senior pastor at Campion Seventh-day Adventist Church in Loveland, Colorado. Email him at: [email protected]