What makes for great preaching? I’m increasingly coming to believe beauty is in the eye of the beholder — or hearer, in this case.
Here are a few things I’ve learned with the “wisdom” of age:
- There are a lot of mediocre preachers out there who are really good pastors and take great care of the flock. Nothing wrong with that. Saints be praised.
- There are quite a few megachurch pastors who are, in reality, bad preachers. They get by on charisma, cleverness or with the support of a tremendous staff and creative programming.
- Great and thoughtful preaching will not fill a church like it did a century ago, as much as I wish it would and think it should.
- Those who claim to care most about proclamation as the central part of worship often are poor practitioners of what they say they value. An older pastor friend with no horse in any denomination’s political race recently told me of watching broadcasts of a particular well-known seminary’s chapel service and being utterly underwhelmed by the preaching on display there.
- There are many fine preachers who are toiling in small vineyards where they receive little notice but go about the sacred task with academic rigor and oratory aplomb week after week.
- You can win a preaching award in seminary and still not be fit for ministry.
- There is a big difference between “preaching” and “teaching,” and what many Bible church and nondenominational pastors are doing today should not be called “preaching.”
- It is harder to craft a good 20-minute sermon than a blathering 45-minute monologue. That’s why there are so many blathering 45-minute monologues.
- And finally, this most important thing: What you consider “good preaching” and what I consider “good preaching” may not be the same thing.
I’ve been thinking about that last point quite a lot lately, as our church — for the first time in 33 years — has elected a pastor search committee. Our beloved senior pastor, George Mason, is retiring. His predecessor, Bruce McIver, was our pastor 30 years. And funny story: Bruce served on the pastor search that one day met without him and recommended him as the next pastor. Unusual, but it seemed to work out OK.
Do the math, and you’ll see that our church has experienced only two pastor search committees in the last 63 years!
In my previous life as associate pastor at Wilshire, I would have been more engaged in this transitional work, but now I’m just a member in the pew trying hard to keep my mouth shut. I’m getting better at that, learning to be like a child who should be “seen but not heard.”
“Don’t believe someone when they tell you so-and-so is a ‘great preacher.’ Listen for yourself.”
But recently, the pastor search committee asked for congregational input and I did my churchly duty. I recommended some candidate names, as requested, and offered one primary bit of advice: Don’t believe someone when they tell you so-and-so is a “great preacher.” Listen for yourself. And don’t just listen to one or two sermons; listen to 15 or 20.
Because here’s the other secret: Almost any preacher can work up what we used to call a “sugar stick sermon” that will wow the crowds — just like some recording artists become “one-hit wonders.” The sugar stick sermon used to be the bread and butter of a lot of evangelists, who only had to develop a handful of sermons they could trot out place after place after place. The internet has made that harder to pull off today.
And now, finally, there’s a point to this diatribe — actually two points.
The first point is that preaching is vitally important to a church, but in some congregations it may not be the most important thing, even though it is in my congregation and many others.
To quote my colleague and pastor George Mason, there are four areas in which a pastor may excel: Preaching/teaching, pastoral care, administration, and community or denominational service. We might sometimes throw in a fifth: fundraising.
George’s observation, with which I concur, is that no pastor can excel simultaneously at more than two of those four things. And what matters most in your congregation needs to match the skill set of the pastor you call. Most of the time, preaching is going to be one of those two skill sets, but in certain circumstances other needs may press forward.
“What matters most in your congregation needs to match the skill set of the pastor you call.”
Churches are notorious for calling pastors to “correct” the deficiencies of the previous pastor. The result is a pendulum that keeps swinging wildly and detrimentally to the health of the church. Figure out what matters most to your congregation across time, then call a pastor who has the skill set to do that.
The second point is that preaching great sermons week after week after week takes not only skill but time and intentionality. The best preachers I know spend hours every week in study and preparation. That’s another reason no pastor is likely to excel at preaching and pastoral care and administration and community relations all at the same time.
And here’s another important note for lay leaders to understand: Much of the essential sermon preparation cannot happen sitting in a church office. It happens as a preacher reads widely, for sure. But it also happens as a preacher lives in a community, hears and observes the stories of others, sits and meditates or prays, and allows the Spirit to speak. It happens by visiting hospitals and museums, hearing concerts, attending community gatherings, living in nature, reading the newspaper, observing human nature. Please do not expect your pastor to sit in an office all day and be a great preacher.
“Much of the essential sermon preparation cannot happen sitting in a church office.”
Likewise, great preachers are afforded helpful feedback from others who know more about preaching than the dear saint who walks by the pastor every Sunday and declares, “Great sermon, pastor!” Whether that feedback comes through professional coaching or through friendship networks or peer review groups, the effect is to sharpen the skills.
Apart from such coaching or peer review, most pastors get no meaningful help in “editing” their preaching styles and content once they leave seminary. And to quote a beloved mentor of mine: “Everybody needs an editor.”
Some of the best advice I ever was given about preaching is this: Does the message you are preaching have any specific relevance to the congregation that will hear it in the time when they will hear it? Great preaching doesn’t merely expound on grand theological ideas without application, nor does it center on after-dinner stories that are fun to hear but melt away like cotton candy.
Great preaching offers a word of the Lord for a specific people in a specific place at a specific time. And great preaching, like great wisdom, is harder to come by than most people can imagine.
One last thought: Great preaching is shaped by being engaged in pastoral care, church administration and community relations. No pastor may be able to do all four of those things well, but when practiced together, they have the power to make every sermon better.
Mark Wingfield serves as executive director and publisher of Baptist News Global. For 16 and a half years, he was associate pastor at Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas.
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