In the latest issue of online theological journal Themelios, Sinclair Ferguson ponders over four decades of pulpit ministry and provides a reflective Ten Commandments For Preachers.
Christians would do well to encourage these qualities in their preachers, and, of course, in themselves.
The outline:
1. Know your Bible better.
2. Be a man of prayer.
3. Do not lose sight of Christ.
4. Be deeply trinitarian.
5. Use your imagination.
6. Speak much of sin and grace.
7. Use the “plain style.”
8. Find your own voice.
9. Learn how to transition.
10. Love your people.
Here’s a couple of examples of Ferguson’s winsome and very practical encouragement.
3. Don’t Lose Sight of Christ
Me? Yes, me. This is an important principle in too many dimensions fully to expound here. One must suffice. Know and therefore preach “Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor 2:2). That is a text far easier to preach as the first sermon in a ministry than it is to preach as the final sermon.
What do I mean? Perhaps the point can be put sharply, even provocatively, in this way: systematic exposition did not die on the cross for us; nor did biblical theology, nor even systematic theology or hermeneutics or whatever else we deem important as those who handle the exposition of Scripture. I have heard all of these in preaching . . . without a center in the person of the Lord Jesus.
Paradoxically not even the systematic preaching through one of the Gospels guarantees Christ-crucified centered preaching. Too often preaching on the Gospels takes what I whimsically think of as the “Find Waldo Approach.” The underlying question in the sermon is “Where are you to be found in this story?” (are you Martha or Mary, James and John, Peter, the grateful leper . . . ?). The question “Where, who and what is Jesus in this story?” tends to be marginalized.
The truth is it is far easier to preach about Mary, Martha, James, John, or Peter than it is about Christ. It is far easier to preach even about the darkness of sin and the human heart than to preach Christ. Plus my bookshelves are groaning with literature on Mary, Martha . . . the good life, the family life, the Spirit-filled life, the parenting life, the damaged-self life . . . but most of us have only a few inches of shelf-space on the person and work of Christ himself.
Am I absolutely at my best when talking about him or about us?
9. Learn How to Transition
There is a short (two pages) but wonderful “must-read” section for preachers in the Westminster Assembly’s Directory for the Public Worship of God. Inter alia the Divines state that the preacher “In exhorting to duties . . . is, as he seeth cause, to teach also the means that help to the performance of them.” In contemporary speech this means that our preaching will answer the “how to?” question. This perhaps requires further explanation.
Many of us are weary of the pandemic of “how-to-ness” we find in much contemporary preaching. It is often little better than psychology (however helpful) with a little Christian polish; it is largely imperative without indicative, and in the last analysis becomes self- and success-oriented rather than sin- and grace-oriented. But there is a Reformed and, more importantly, biblical, emphasis on teaching how to transition from the old ways to the new way, from patterns of sin to patterns of holiness. It is not enough to stress the necessity, nor even the possibility, of this. We must teach people how this happens.
Years ago I took one of our sons for coaching from an old friend who had become a highly regarded teaching professional. My son was not, as they say, “getting on to the next level.” I could see that but no longer had (if I ever had!) the golfing savoir faire to help. Enter my friend, and within the space of one coaching session, the improvement in ball-striking was both visible and audible (there is something about the sound of a perfectly struck drive—or home run for that matter!).
This is, in part, what we are called to effect in our handling of the Scriptures—not “this is wrong . . . this is right” but by our preaching to enable and effect the transition.
But how? For all its criticism of the pragmatism of evangelicalism, Reformed preaching is not always skilled in this area. Many are stronger on doctrine than on exegesis and often stronger on soul-searching than on spiritual up-building. We need to learn how to expound the Scriptures in such a way that the very exposition empowers in our hearers the transitions from the old patterns of life in Adam to the new patterns of life in Christ.
How do we do this? To begin with by expounding the Scriptures in a way that makes clear that the indicatives of grace ground the imperatives of faith and obedience and also effect them. This we must learn to do in a way that brings out of the text how the text itself teaches how transformation takes place and how the power of the truth itself sanctifies (cf. John 17:17).
This usually demands that we stay down in the text longer, more inquisitively than we sometimes do, asking the text, “Show me how your indicatives effect your imperatives.” Such study often yields the surprising (?) result: depth-study of Scripture means that we are not left scurrying to the Christian bookshop or the journal on counseling in order to find out how the gospel changes lives. No, we have learned that the Scriptures themselves teach us the answer to the “What?” questions and also the answer to the “How to?” question.
Do we—far less our congregations—know “how to”? Have we told them they need to do it, but left them to their own devices rather than model it in our preaching?
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