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At the Reformation 21 blog Carl Trueman provides the following ‘Teaser On Preaching’, with the challenge to guess its author.

“Preachers must not be boring. To a large extent the pastor and boredom are synonymous concepts. Listeners often think that they have heard already what is being said in the pulpit. They have long since known it themselves. The fault certainly does not lie with them alone. Against boredom the only defense is again being biblical. If a sermon is biblical, it will not be boring. Holy scripture is in fact so interesting and has so much that is new and exciting to tell us that listeners cannot even think about dropping off to sleep.”

The identity of the quote provider is revealed here.

Those of you who know the Reformation 21 blog will know that the public are not included in these discussions, we read from the sidelines.
Derek Thomas weighs in here and here.

Trueman ponders the nature of reformed preaching:

If the game is simply to get from Text A to Bethlehem, what do you do with a book like Judges? Preach 200 sermons which essentially say `This judge failed; but, surprise surprise, there is a judge who didn’t fail; let’s talk about him, shall we?’ ?

As someone who is preaching Judges at the moment it is impossible to ignore the fact that the book was self-consciously written with the kingdom of David in mind. God, as king, leader and saviour of His people, is also obviously the only consistent hero and center of the accounts. As part of covenant redemptive history the book serves to prepare people for the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Sean Lucas responds to Trueman in this way:

Okay, I’ll take the bait. Carl just wrote, “If the game is simply to get from Text A to Bethlehem, what do you do with a book like Judges? Preach 200 sermons which essentially say, ‘This judge failed, but surprise, surprise, there is a judge who didn’t fail; let’s talk about him, shall we’?” My gut reaction is, well, actually, yes, that’s exactly what I’d do.
And that’s because one of the key insights of Reformed theology is our stress upon the unfolding covenant story of the Bible. What we find in the OT tells us something about God and something about ourselves–that God is a glorious Redeemer who will send a Seed who will triumph over the enemy and that we are sinners who are in deep need of God’s deliverance. And beginning with Matthew 1, we find in Jesus that he is the Seed who has come to save his people from their sins.
As a result, while I would be careful to pay attention to what the text in front of me says and means–who was Gideon, for example; what was God doing there; etc.–I would point out repeatedly that 1) God is the true deliver and judge of his people; 2) that human judges failed repeatedly and were not the promised Seed; but 3) that the Seed would come and he will be a perfect Judge and King who would come and rule forever.
If there isn’t a sense in which God serves as the main “hero” of the story in whatever text to which we come, then it really isn’t preaching. If we are simply content with delivering the content of the text in front of us without making those, dare I say it, Christ-centered connections and applications, then what we are delivering really is an OT lecture that could easily be delivered at your local synagogue.

Edit: Carl Trueman responds: ‘Don’t Disagree, But…’, in which he basically cedes Lucas’ point, but contends that many preachers don’t do as sound job of what Lucas is writing about as Lucas does.
I still think its a matter of emphasis. If a moral observation is secondary to the text, it has to applied in a secondary manner. The emphasis of the text should receive the concluding application.