Different Kinds of Preachers
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Why does Jesus and Paul emphasize listening to and praying for preachers?
Welcome again to Things Unseen, where this week we've been reflecting on the subject of preaching. It's important because Jesus urged us to take heed both how we hear and what we hear. But it's also very important because we need to heed Paul's appeal in Ephesians chapter six verses eighteen to twenty. Right after he's teaching on the Christian spiritual armor, he urges the Ephesians to pray for preachers and to pray for their preaching. When students begin courses on preaching at seminary or theological college, their teachers often give them a preaching grid by which they can assess each other as they listen. We ask questions like, was the main point clear? Were the illustrations appropriate and helpful?
Was the introduction attention grabbing? Was the conclusion well handled?
How do preaching grids help students and what are their drawbacks?
Was the length of the sermon appropriate? I hope my just mentioning this will help you imagine the ordeal a student can go through if he doesn't think more highly about himself than he ought to. Who is really sufficient for these things? Now, I have to confess that my own theological education didn't include any teaching on preaching, and we were never given a preaching grid. Actually, I used to think that preaching grids were probably evil inventions of American professors of preaching to make their students feel completely inadequate. And perhaps they were. But in some ways that's important. But they also do have a practical point. They provide a framework of reference for students and help them to see what's important, and perhaps help them to correct some of their mistakes.
What danger does a single‑style preaching model pose to a preacher’s gifts?
On the other hand, and this may just be a personal view, but I've sometimes felt that when a teacher of preaching insists on his students following his own pattern, perhaps saying no, John, we do it this way. The great danger is that everyone gets squeezed into the same mould. and then some will end up like David wearing Saul's armour. It just doesn't fit. And the sad thing is that it can squash the gifts that a young preacher actually has by insisting that he uses gifts that he doesn't have. And I think I've sometimes seen that happen. and it can take years for a man to untangle his true preaching self. Actually, I'm convinced that Ezekiel could never have preached one of Isaiah's sermons, or Paul preached the sermons of the Apostle John.
How can we avoid the cult of the “favorite” or “best” preacher in today’s media age?
Phillips Brooks was surely right and biblical when he said that preaching was characterized by truth coming through personality. And I think this is something that helps us avoid the cult of preacher personality. which is probably as bad, if not worse, today than it was among the Corinthians. After all they only had Peter and Paul and Apollos to compare. But we've got YouTube and Vimeo and a multitude of other ways we can listen to endless numbers of preachers. I've even seen lists of the ten best preachers and so on. And you often hear people say my favourite preacher is so and so. So how can we avoid that cult of the favourite or the best preacher? Here's something I found very helpful when I first read it as a teenager.
What does John Newton’s answer reveal about why different preachers speak to us at different times?
In one of his letters, our old friend John Newton, whom we met before in these podcasts, answers a question that he'd been asked: Why is it that one man's preaching helps me more than another's? How can we answer that question without, as it were, creating a league table of preachers? And Newton's answer is to say this: Remember that God shapes individual men not only with different gifts, but with different burdens, emphases, and personal characteristics. And you too have your own particular needs. And so it shouldn't surprise us that one man's ministry may be especially helpful to me at a particular time. or another man's preaching minister to me in a special way. Sameness would mean everyone was wearing Saul's armour, and it doesn't fit everybody.
It's not a one-size-fits-all. So instead of comparing, we should rejoice in the fact that there are different shapes and sizes and hues and burdens in different men's preaching.
What personal lessons did Sinclair Ferguson learn from hearing many renowned biblical preachers?
Comparisons are odious. But thanksgiving for each is altogether appropriate.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
Why does Jesus and Paul emphasize listening to and praying for preachers?
0:07–1:01
2
How do preaching grids help students and what are their drawbacks?
1:01–1:53
3
What danger does a single‑style preaching model pose to a preacher’s gifts?
1:53–2:47
4
How can we avoid the cult of the “favorite” or “best” preacher in today’s media age?
2:47–3:40
5
What does John Newton’s answer reveal about why different preachers speak to us at different times?
3:40–4:51
6
What personal lessons did Sinclair Ferguson learn from hearing many renowned biblical preachers?
4:51–6:06