Chapter 3: Pastor, Preach for Church-Wide Impact

Pastor, do you expect lives to be transformed when you preach the Word of God? How many lives? Do you anticipate individual transformation or congregational transformation? Probably both. But do you target the latter? The deliberateness of your community-focus will set the trajectory of sermon-listening within the church. William Thompson explains, “One would certainly not want to downplay or eliminate the personal nature of Christian experience; neither would one make it the totality of Christian experience. Preaching is always helping to enhance or downgrade community, whether it intends to do so or not.”[1] Has your preaching been directed at the entire flock of God under your care, or just to individual sheep? Have you proactively promoted community sermon-listening?

Usually, it is more encouraging to gauge the spiritual growth of select individuals in the church than to measure church-wide growth. If you only hear the positive responses from those who are excited about your sermons—those who are growing in Christ and are constantly giving you good feedback—then you will more regularly be satisfied with the fruit of your ministry. As a result, many preachers tend not to reflect on church-wide impact because it’s often not as encouraging as individual impact—or at least, it’s harder to measure. Ignorance can be bliss.

John Stott comments:

Low expectations become self-fulfilling. Where little is expected from sermons, little is received. Many moderns have never been taught to expect sermons to matter much, and so their habit at sermon time is to relax, settle back, and wait to see if anything the preacher says will catch their interest. Most of today’s congregations and preachers seem to be at one in neither asking nor anticipating that God will come to meet his people in the preaching.[2]

Preachers with low expectations find themselves preaching toward individual-change rather than communitywide-change. Instead of risking the disappointment of a non-congregation-wide response to the preached Word of God, they preach their sermons calling only for individual responses. Subsequently, they overlook the community-aspect of many New Testament passages. Don’t allow yourself to do this. Remember the second person plural imperatives and plural pronouns in the Bible. Explain the corporate nature of sanctification when the Bible calls for it. Yes, community-oriented application is harder to foster, but when it’s in the text, you need to faithfully communicate its intent.

When you conclude your sermon in prayer, pray for a church-wide response. Even when the sermon application is directed at individual Christians, pray that the church will work together to make the necessary steps toward Christlikeness. Then call the church to discuss the implications of the sermon immediately after the sermon. This is what partnership is all about. Normally, the church family will engage in conversation after the service, so prime them with discussion points. These can guide their fellowship over tea and coffee (or whatever follows the service).

As you call for church-wide transformation, be compassionate towards the people. Call the flock of God to obedience, expressing your love for them. Their struggle against sin is just as difficult as yours. Lloyd-Jones taught:

To love preaching is one thing, to love those to whom we preach is quite another. The trouble with some of us is that we love preaching, but we are not always careful to make sure that we love the people to whom we are actually preaching. If you lack this element of compassion for the people you will also lack the pathos which is a very vital element in all true preaching.[3]

May Samuel Chadwick’s love for preaching encourage you to continue this most important role:

I would rather preach than do anything else in the world. I would rather preach than eat my dinner or have a holiday. I would rather pay to preach than be paid not to preach. It has its price in agony and sweat and tears, and no calling has such joys and heartbreaks, but it is a calling an archangel might covet. Is there any joy like that of saving a soul? Any thrill like that of opening blind eyes?[4]

---

[1] William D. Thompson, Listening on Sunday for Sharing on Monday (Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press, 1983), 31.

[2] J. I. Packer in Dick Lucas, Preaching the Living Word: Addresses from the Evangelical Ministry Assembly (Geanies House, Great Britain: Christian Focus Publications, 1999), 32–33.

[3] D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing, 1971), 92.

[4] Archibald Naismith, 2400 Outlines, Notes, Quotes, and Anecdotes for Sermons (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1967), 184.

Chapter 2: Pastor, Preach with a Plan

Important endeavors require preparation. Preachers need to plan ahead in order to help the church family take full advantage of the sermon-event. This is especially true when community-oriented sermon-listening is practiced. Your goal is to change the sermon-listening culture of the church. So, the details of that change need to be well planned.

Pastor, the first thing you can do promote community-anticipation for the weekly sermon is to publish the sermon topic and passage ahead of time. You can post the sermon title and Bible text on the church website. You can have the church office e-mail the sermon information to the congregation. It can also go into the church bulletin a week ahead of time. But frankly, just sending out a passage reference is not enough. You need to do more than that to generate interest in the upcoming message.

Try asking the congregation questions that the Bible passage will answer in your sermon. Get them wondering about issues that are addressed in the text. Consider the way you typically garner the congregation’s interest in your sermon introductions, and employ the same techniques to write questions that will pique the church’s interest even before they gather to hear the sermon. In addition to using the church website and e-mail contact list, you could also post your thoughts on Facebook or Twitter. If you have video recording capability (a smart phone will do), you could deliver your questions in person via a two-minute video message that could easily be uploaded to YouTube. The church will value that personal touch. It is another way to maintain contact with the congregation during the week. The goal is to have the entire church preparing for the sermon together, asking questions about the passage, asking questions that relate to application, praying together, and anticipating personal and corporate transformation.

Second, you should encourage prayer groups to pray for you, the upcoming sermon, and the church’s response to it. Prayer groups can meet before, during, and after the sermon event. Donald Whitney recounts a story:

An American preacher once visited Spurgeon and was given a tour of the church building where he ministered, the Metropolitan Tabernacle. He noticed that there was no heat in the worship center, so he asked, “Don’t you have a heating plant?” Spurgeon responded by leading him down to a large basement room. In that room four hundred men met before each service to pray for the pastor and the salvation of souls. Spurgeon said, “That’s our heating plant.” He responded similarly in 1882 when some American visitors to the Tabernacle asked what was the secret of success: “My people pray for me.”[1]

No wonder thousands were converted under Spurgeon’s preaching ministry. If you want the same kind of fruit, the entire congregation must commit to faithful prayer, and you—the pastor—will need to encourage that, just as Paul did (2 Thess 3:1).

Michael Fabarez asks people in the church to pray for elements of his sermon preparation: Tuesday 8–11am, study of text; Tuesday 11am–noon, word studies; Thursday 1–5pm, commentaries; Friday 8am–noon, study significance; Friday 1–3pm, craft outline; Friday 3–4pm, prepare handouts; Saturday 8–9am, refine content; Saturday 9–10am, prepare illustrations; Saturday 10–11am, introduction and conclusion.[2] Each hour of his sermon preparation is covered in prayer by someone. This is one way to get the congregation involved in the sermon. They take ownership of the process and contribute to it.

Third, you can plan to have the entire worship service support the main theme of the sermon. Meet with your worship leader and discuss the next sermon series. If he knows what’s coming up, he may be able to select songs that contribute to the overall theme. This may be hard to achieve in some sections of Scripture, but more often than not, he’ll be able to select worship anthems that express concepts and ideas similar to that of the Bible text you’re preaching. Bible readings and other elements in the public worship service can also coordinate with the overall message. Careful planning with your worship team will bring harmonious expressions of worship that work in concert with each other, and will also prepare them to hear the sermon.

Next week, we’ll discuss preaching for church-wide impact.

---

[1] Donald S. Whitney, Spiritual Disciplines within the Church: Participating Fully in the Body of Christ (Chicago: Moody Publishers, 1996), 71–72.

[2] Michael Fabarez, Preaching That Changes Lives (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2002), Appendix 2.

Chapter 1: Pastor, Preach Expositionally

Anything less than expository preaching is technically not really preaching at all.[1]

—   A. Duane Litfin

Take a deep breath before you read this next sentence—it’s my working definition of expository preaching. Here we go: Having prepared his own soul, and having studied the historical background, context, words, structure, and syntax of a portion (or portions) of Scripture in order to discover the original author’s intended meaning, and filtering that meaning through a systematic theological grid to determine the timeless biblical truth, the preacher then authoritatively proclaims that timeless truth to his contemporary audience by implicating them with a full explanation of the text (or texts), drawing them to a steadfast conviction of that timeless truth, and fully expecting corresponding personal assimilation and Christ-exalting responses in today’s context. Whew! You can breathe again. Despite what some people say, expository preaching is not verse-by-verse commentary void of illustration and compelling argumentation. It’s not limited to a three-point outline. It’s not a lecture presenting pure scholarly exegesis void of passion and pastoral care. Neither is it a devotional or prayer meeting talk.

In his classic book on preaching, Between Two Worlds, John Stott dismisses a popular misnomer:

All true Christian preaching is expository preaching. Of course, if by an ‘expository’ sermon is meant a verse-by-verse explanation of a lengthy passage of Scripture, then indeed it is only one possible way of preaching, but this would be a misuse of the word. Properly speaking, ‘exposition’ has a much broader meaning. It refers to the content of the sermon (biblical truth) rather than its style (a running commentary). To expound Scripture is to bring out of the text what is there and expose it to view. The expositor prizes open what appears to be closed, makes plain what is obscure, unravels what is knotted and unfolds what is tightly packed. The opposite of exposition is ‘imposition,’ which is to impose on the text what is not there. But the ‘text’ in question could be a verse, or a sentence, or even a single word. It could equally be a paragraph, or a chapter, or a whole book. The size of the text is immaterial, so long as it is biblical. What matters is what we do with it. Whether it is long or short, our responsibility as expositors is to open it up in such a way that it speaks its message clearly, plainly, accurately, relevantly, without addition, subtraction or falsification. In expository preaching the biblical text is . . . a master which dictates and controls what is said.[2]

In other words, all preaching is to be expositional if it is indeed true preaching. If the sermon is not expositional, it doesn’t have the goal of exposing the biblical text for public viewing. If it doesn’t expose the text, it’s not from God. If it’s not from God, the preacher should be replaced by a man who will deliver exposition.

Paul commanded Timothy: “Give attention to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation and teaching” (1 Tim 4:13). Mark Dever contends: “A commitment to expositional preaching is a commitment to hear God’s Word.”[3] “Someone may happily profess that God’s Word is authoritative and that the Bible is inerrant. Yet if that person in practice (intentionally or not) does not preach expositionally, he denies his own claim.”[4]

Pastor, don’t read this blog looking for a shortcut to community sermon-listening. Your desire for church-wide impact (via community sermon-listening) starts with your dedication to expository preaching.

Lance Quinn asserts:

Expository preaching is and always has been God’s chief tool for producing growth in grace. Therefore, it deserves the closest attention. Though every Christian should read, study, and meditate on Scripture, God uses Bible exposition for the optimal enhancement of his spiritual growth. It is not overstating the case that preaching should be the chief means of dispensing strengthening grace in a believer’s life. Spiritual advancement, then, will hinge on how determined one is to assemble with other Christians when God’s Word is faithfully proclaimed.[5]

So important is the task of preaching that Mark Dever willingly admits, “I [am] happy to see every aspect of my public ministry fail if it [needs] to . . . except for the preaching of God’s Word.”[6] He knew he was “set apart by the congregation for the public teaching of God’s Word.”[7] Notice how Dever recognizes the church’s affirmation of this important task. If the church doesn’t also buy into this conviction, then the whole process of preaching will break down eventually. Pastor, you need to lead the congregation in this regard. Both you and your people need to be equally committed to the ministry of preaching God’s Word and you may need to teach them that. Preach on the subject of preaching. From time to time, you might include the following quotes in your church bulletin, or reference them in your sermons on the subject of preaching:

Word and worship belong indissolubly to each other. All worship is an intelligent and loving response to the revelation of God, because it is the adoration of His name. Therefore acceptable worship is impossible without preaching. For preaching is making known the Name of the Lord, and worship is praising the Name of the Lord made known. Far from being an alien intrusion into worship, the reading and preaching of the word are actually indispensable to it. The two cannot be divorced. Indeed, it is their unnatural divorce which accounts for the low level of so much contemporary worship. Our worship is poor because our knowledge of God is poor, and our knowledge of God is poor because our preaching is poor. But when the Word of God is expounded in its fullness, and the congregation begin to glimpse the glory of the living God, they bow down in solemn awe and joyful wonder before His throne. It is preaching which accomplishes this, the proclamation of the Word of God in the power of the Spirit of God. That is why preaching is unique and irreplaceable.[8]

One of the first steps to a recovery of authentic Christian preaching is to stop saying, “I prefer expository preaching.” Rather, we should define exactly what we mean when we say “preach.” What we mean is, very simply, reading the text and explaining it—reproving, rebuking, exhorting, and patiently teaching directly from the text of Scripture. If you are not doing that, then you are not preaching.[9]

Preaching is therefore always a matter of life and death. The people in our churches depend for their very lives on the ministry of the Word; therefore our preaching had better be nothing less—and nothing other—than the exposition of the Bible. Nothing else will do.[10]

Expository preaching is therefore inescapably bound to the serious work of exegesis. If the preacher is to explain the text, he must first study the text and devote the hours of study and research necessary to understand it.[11]

Tell your congregation you’re going to put away your “butter knives and plastic utensils.”[12] Tell them you’re going to wield something sharper than a two-edged sword. “For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Heb 4:12).

If you and your congregation are devoted to hearing God’s voice in the sermon event, you’ll all contend for its practice in the local church, and you’ll not be willing to replace it with trendy, ineffective substitutes.

Next week, we’ll see that in order to maximize the impact of your preaching ministry, you must not only be committed to exposition, but you must also be willing to make the necessary preparations.  Catch you next week for “Preach with a Plan.”

---

[1] A. Duane Litfin, “Theological Presuppositions and Preaching: An Evangelical Perspective” (Ph.D. diss., Purdue University, 1973), 169–170.

[2] John R. W. Stott, Between Two Worlds: The Art of Preaching in the Twentieth Century (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing, 1998), 125–26.

[3] Mark Dever, What Is a Healthy Church? (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2007), 64.

[4] Ibid., 65.

[5] Lance Quinn, “Epilogue: The Listener’s Responsibility,” in John MacArthur, Jr. and The Master’s Seminary Faculty, Rediscovering Expository Preaching (Dallas, TX: Word Publishing, 1992), 354.

[6] Mark Dever and Paul Alexander, The Deliberate Church: Building Your Ministry on the Gospel (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2005), 33.

[7] Ibid.

[8] John Stott, Between Two Worlds, 82–83.

[9] R. Albert Mohler, He Is Not Silent: Preaching in a Postmodern World (Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2008), 52.

[10] Ibid., 63.

[11] Ibid., 66.

[12] A phrase coined by Steve Lawson in a sermon entitled The Preacher’s Invincible Weapon (Hebrews 4:12–13) preached March 7, 2008 at Shepherds’ Conference, Grace Community Church, Sun Valley, CA.