The Cause Of The Downward Spiral In Preaching

Dr C. A. Criswell says, "Preaching is increasingly looked upon disparagingly; they

(ie, church members) just 'put up with it.' "What has caused this situation to develop?

Criswell thinks that the preacher himself has caused it.  Instead of preaching the Gospel, instead of expounding the Word, instead of saying, 'Thus saith the Lord,' the preacher began preaching psychology, and sociology, economic and civic amelioration. The time was when preachers proclaimed the Gospel; but now they preach sociological life situation sermons that have left the church anaemic. 

Criswell sees the training of preachers in modern seminaries as being at fault in this very thing. I fear that within evangelical circles, there has been a serious move away from the systematic exposition of whole chunks of the Bible, and preachers have adopted a method of textual preaching instead. Now I would be the last to deny that such methodology has been greatly used of God in the past. One just has to mention the name of C. H. Spurgeon to prove the point. Yet I think that the practice of Spurgeon has had a detrimental effect upon the pulpits of the Church, as men have tried to emulate the Prince of Preachers, and have failed. Textual preaching, coupled with the desire to draw the crowds, has enticed men to reduce to a respectable minimum the Biblical and doctrinal content of their sermons, and have compromised their whole ministries thereby. Thus preaching has been degraded by preachers!

It is true that textual sermons can and must be expository. But very often, all you have is a few pious thoughts on some of the words of the text instead of grappling with what the text in its context is actually saying. This has given the clear impression that preaching is something that anyone can do. That's why "anyones" are doing it! And the inevitable result? Preaching has been disparaged in the modern mind.

And worse; church attendees cannot now concentrate long enough to benefit from sustained expository preaching. So the preacher is timed to a 15 minutes sermon, and a 60 minute service. The whole thing has become devalued. 

Preaching - The Major Issue In Ministry

Preaching must be THE issue for the minister. 

"The whole basis of our spiritual life and our church life is that we respond to what God has done. The essence of preaching is the proclamation of what God has done; therefore if we are to have experience with God, both individually and corporately, it is going to be the basis of responding to the knowledge of what God has done, which in one form or another, must come from proclamation. Preaching is, therefore, fundamental in the church life and therefore should have a high priority in the life of the pastor," Dr S. Briscoe. 

All of the spiritual life is simply a response to God, who has revealed Himself through His Word and through His messenger, the preacher.

Therefore proclamation is of vital importance and an essential ingredient in the worship of God. Praising God and preaching His Word are essential to true worship. Through God-owned preaching, sinners and saints alike meet with the living God. In the 

Word, believer's experience fellowship with their Lord and with each other. Take away the proclaimed Word, and little else remains. The Westminster Directory for the Publick Worship of God states,

Preaching of the Word, being the power of God unto salvation, and one of the greatest and most excellent works belonging to the ministry of the gospel, should be so performed, that the workman need not be ashamed, but may save himself, and those that hear him.

In the Presbyterian Church, the sermon is the climax of our church's worship services. 

Preaching Is Not A Profession.

"Preaching is not a profession; it is an obsession, and a passion. And if it isn't, a man should not preach," says Dr Leonard Ravenhill. It is the key to any church and to any pastorate. Where the preaching fails, all else fails; but where the preaching is raised to its proper place and priority in the mind of both minister and congregation, everything else is raised thereby. It is the central aspect of the church's life and mission. 

Minister's must never think of preaching as a mere adjunct,a duty that has to be performed, a part of their professional responsibility. It should be their very life, their obsession, their passion. To preach the Gospel should be the one thing they live to do above all else! He must burn to do it week in and week out. He must preach, or his heart will burst. Jeremiah speaks with deep feeling when he talks about God's Word in his heart like a burning fire, shut up in his bones, (Jer.20:9). He says that he is weary of holding it in, indeed he cannot! He must preach the Word, or burn up. His burning prophetic vocation compelled him to testify concerning covenant spirituality, despite all opposition from his beloved fellow countrymen, (R. K. Harrison, Jeremiah, Tyndale Press, 1973:113). Jeremiah did not regard himself as a professional prophet. To him, preaching was a categorical imperative. He must preach or die! His attempts not to do so merely wearied him out.

The true preacher knows that his work is an obsession and a passion; with Paul he can say, "Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel," (1Cor.9:16).

Preaching Helps With Counselling

Preaching is by far the most important of the minister's public duties. More will be done for more people in that concentrated preaching session that at any other moment. Patterson says, "If preaching is do one properly, it will alleviate the need for a large percent of counselling necessities."Lloyd-Jones, drawing on his vast medical and pastoral experience, argues that the task of the church is not to alleviate the symptoms of a man's spiritual condition until the cause of those symptoms has been isolated and dealt with properly. Counselling generally sees to help people who have problems of various kinds, and this is good so far as it goes; but sometimes the 'successful' counsellor is seen to be the one who can make people feel 'good' after a session. But this is nothing short of criminal, because it removes the only indicator that something is wrong.

But when the word is truly and pastorally preached, needy people will find their problems being sorted out as they attend to that word. Sometimes the charge can be levelled against preacher's, especially in the Reformed Church, that their preaching is too cerebral at times, and not experiential enough. I think there is truth in this charge. The result is that people are driven to look for someone, possibly even their minister, who will help them sort out their difficulties. This is very time consuming, and in itself is not guaranteed to be successful. Well prepared and faithfully proclaimed sermons will do more to counsel people than is often imagined. Preaching is still God's chief way of sharing His Word with His people.                                                                               

Institutional Maintenance

The 'firm's men' are not interested in truth or in the Gospel; all they are interested in is "institutional maintenance," to use the unforgettable term used by Dr Jonathan Lamb at a convention in July 2013 in Northern Ireland. This is all they know and this is all they do. And anyone who stands in the way of "institutional maintenance," is to be removed by whatever means, moral or otherwise.

Do such men care about preaching the Gospel with conviction and passion? Do they want to see sinners saved and brought into the Kingdom of God? No. Do they want to see their church live on for many years? Of course they do. Do they want anything else? Yes. They want to see the money flowing in, for it is from the hard-earned money of church members that they hold their well-paid jobs. What else do they want? They want the removal of all those, whoever they might be, from the church because they might make their church an endangered species.

But there whole aim to "institutional maintenance." How pathetic! Why maintain an institution that is no longer (to use civil service speak) "fit for purpose"? If the churches today are not preaching the everlasting Gospel of redeeming grace, they are surplus to requirements. They are promoting the eternal damnation of those who sit and listen to them speaking utter irrelevancies. God is offended by their very existence. Remember what He said to and about Israel in Amos' day? “I hate, I despise your feast days, And I do not savor your sacred assemblies. Though you offer Me burnt offerings and your grain offerings, I will not accept them, Nor will I regard your fattened peace offerings." (Amos 5:21, 22). That is serious talk, is it not? For the Almighty God to utter such damning words is fearful.

Yet for the institutional maintainers, this is what the LORD is saying. May He have mercy on us for our unfaithfulness to Him.

The Firm's Men.

Why is it that the 'firm's men' within the churches do not want to face up to the challenge of reforming the church to which they belong? One answer: their church is so perfect that it does not need further reformation, or reforming. A perfect church does not need to be brought into line with Christ and His will for His people, because such a church is already there.

One question to ask the 'firm's men' within your denomination is this: what must be done to conform our church to the likeness of Christ? What changes does she need to make? Are they fundamental changes, or are they peripheral? Does your church base its activities, beliefs and practices around your preferences, or are they biblically based? If they are biblically-based, why do so many other sound evangelicals believe and practice differently?

Is your church the kind of church that you could, with confidence, bring an unsaved friend along to and be sure he would hear the Gospel being preached by the preacher? Does your man preach the Gospel clearly and with passion? Can you sense that he is heart and soul committed to what he is telling you? Or is it just a lecture, a 'glorified bible study,' as Dr Lloyd-Jones describes such performances? When you listen to him praying, reading the Scripture and preaching, do you get a sense of God, an awareness that God is in the midst?

These are the questions that Christians within the churches need to ask their leadership and address with urgency. Too many professing Christians seem content to be part of a denomination that opposes and rejects the Gospel and that has a clear alliance with theological liberalism. They don't mind evangelicals and liberals cooperating and exchanging pulpits and sharing 'fellowship.' They, by their actions (or inactions) are sending out a very clear message that liberalism is not wrong, that it has an understanding of the Gospel that differs from theirs, but it is not that bad at all because we believe that if God wants a sinner saved, He will do it anyway. Now thank God that He is sovereign in salvation as in all other matters; but how wicked a thing it is to use this precious doctrine to excuse the error and falsehood of liberalism and also to excuse their refusal to deal with this evil and to remove it from their midst!

Do evangelicals in theologically corrupt denominations not realise that liberalism is as different from Christianity as Islam and Hinduism and Buddhism are from Christianity? Now here's the irony: evangelicals in these denominations would be up in arms if they were to join with these other world religions, but seem to be blissfully ignorant of the strange bed-fellows they are sharing with right now. To accept error as just another and different way of understanding the Scriptures is to damn countless souls in hell and to love what God hates.

God So Far Away.

There are times when Christians feel that the Lord is far away from them, times when He seems so distant, times when your prayers do not seem to get beyond the ceiling.  You’ve had that experience, as we have.  Maybe you’re having it at the present time.

I came across this very challenging statement from Ravi Zacharias: "I think the reason we sometimes have the false sense that God is so far away is because that is where we have put him. We have kept him at a distance, and then when we are in need and call on him in prayer, we wonder where he is. He is exactly where we left him.”

If you cannot find God, where did you last leave Him?  When you were last with Him, where did you put Him?  Don’t take these too seriously, but they do have a point, do they not?  If God seems far away from us, it’s not His fault.  Like the fallen axe head in 2 Kgs.6:1-7, to find the Lord you have to return to where you ‘lost’ Him, and you’ll probably find that He’s there waiting for you. 

There's another way of looking at this situation. If God seems far away from you, who moved? You or God? Has God changed His commitment to you? Or have you changed your commitment to Him? These are very challenging questions, are they not?

I think we need to pause and stay with this point for a while.  We tend to read over points like this without stopping and meditating on what they imply for us as Christians.  Stay with this for a moment, and examine your own heart in the light of this truth.  Allow the truth to impact your own soul, and stay before it until it does.  This is called ‘doing business with the Lord.’