Bully's Blog

 In the New Testament and in the early church, preaching (heralding) was something done to outsiders, persuading them to repent and believe the gospel.

“…we face a situation today in most evangelical and Reformed churches in which the reading and preaching of Scripture is the only way in which the Word is made manifest in the lives of the saints. This is a real loss for the people of God. The result is the primacy of the preacher. The preacher not only does the only really important thing in the service (preach), he also composes (if he even does that) the prayers that are prayed, and he prays them by himself. It boils down very often to worship by proxy, exactly what the Reformation fought against. Only in the Lutheran and Episcopal churches is there more than a minimum of congregational participation, because of the use of prayer books.

Since all that is left is preaching, the act of preaching takes on dimensions foreign to the Bible. Preaching has become a great rhetorical event. Sermons ought to open with a stunning introduction, proceed through three alliterating points, and conclude with a gripping application. People should be stirred, moved, etc. The full-orbed worship of Scripture, with congregational prayer, singing, and the Supper has been lost, and this leaves the people psychologically starved, so the preaching must make up for it.

The history of the church becomes the history of preachers. People leave one church and seek another on the basis of who is preaching. If one is in a church with bad preaching, there is nothing else to look forward to in going to church: no worship, no real singing of the Word, no sacrament. Everything hangs on a man, and that man is not the Lord Jesus Christ.

There is a story of a certain young preacher who was not very effective at his task. One Sunday he ascended into the pulpit to find a note that read, “Sir, we would see Jesus .“ After several weeks of this, the young man broke down and began to preach Christ in earnest. Doubtless the young man needed some such exhortation, but the request to see Jesus was erroneously directed to the pulpit. The reading and preaching of the Word is that we might hear Jesus. The Bible emphasizes the hearing of the Master’s voice, not the seeing of His face. Jesus Himself was so ordinary looking that He could, at times, disappear into the crowds. After arguing with Him for three years, the Pharisees could still not remember what He looked like — He looked like everybody else — so they had to hire Judas to lead them to Him. On the road to Emmaus, His disciples did not recognize His face, but their hearts burned when He taught them the Word. It was when He broke bread (the Lord’s Supper) that they had the experience of recognition, that they “saw” Him (Luke 24:13-32). If we would see Jesus, we need to restore the visible Word as the complement to the audible Word.

What about preaching? In the New Testament and in the early church, preaching (heralding) was something done to outsiders, persuading them to repent and believe the gospel. Preaching is recorded for us in the book of Acts, for instance. Within the church, however, what went on was teaching. The teaching elder did not stand to teach, though all stood for the reading of the Word. Rather, the teacher sat enthroned while he explained the text in simple language, without rhetoric, and made some applications. It was a family meeting. (See, for instance, Luke 4:16, 20. ) When the Gospel became established in the Roman world, the influence of Greek rhetoric began to be felt, and ministers began standing to “preach” to God’s people, delivering polished oratory for edification of the saints. Augustine, for instance, initially went to hear Ambrose preach not because he wanted to learn about the Bible, but because he wanted to improve his rhetoric and Ambrose was greatly remarked as an orator.

Because so much of the Reformation occurred within state churches, the Reformers and preachers treated the churchmembers as if they were unsaved people in need of the new birth. This was doubtless necessary at that time, but it is not the normal Biblical way to view the church. The Baptist churches to this day continue to treat their churchmembers as if they were unsaved, and so they preach to them. If the churches are healthy, however, with good doctrine and sound discipline, the elders should not treat the people as goats-in-disguise but as true sheep, and teach them. Those who are not truly converted will eventually rebel against the teaching of the Word, There is no need for rhetoric and flamboyance, for “preaching.” What is needed is simple, direct teaching. The notion that there must always be “a word to the unconverted” during a worship service is unbiblical rubbish.

All this is to say that of course the Word must be read and expounded in worship, whether the minister stands or sits enthroned. Such exposition should, however, be direct and simple, not rhetorical. Spurgeon must not be our model in this respect. Let the preacher keep the people’s noses in the Book, not their eyes on his posturing. Many of us enjoy listening to good rhetoric and brilliant “preaching,” but as often as not this kind of thing only gets in the way of simple Bible exposition and application. The Word, not the preacher, must be paramount.

James B. Jordan, The Sociology of the Church, p. 225-227.
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