Inspirational Preaching

Inspirational Preaching (eBook edition)

Hendrickson Publishers Marketing, LLC

P. O. Box 3473

Peabody, Massachusetts 01961-3473

eBook ISBN 978-159856-922-3

Copyright © 2012 by Christianity Today International

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Due to technical issues, this eBook may not contain all of the images or diagrams in the original print edition of the work. In addition, adapting the print edition to the eBook format may require some other layout and feature changes to be made.

First eBook edition — January 2012

THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. (Italics in quoted scriptures are authors’ emphases.)

The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers.

Scripture quotations taken from the New American Standard Bible®. Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. (www.Lockman.org)

Holy Bible. New Living Translation. Copyright © 1996, 2004, 2007 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Page 47: Poetic passage from a sermon preached by C. C. Lovelace on May 29, 1929, as heard by Zora Neale Hurston at Eau Gallie in Florida. Negro, edited by Nancy Cunard (London, Wishart & Company, 1934), 50–54.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Copyright

Foreword

Introduction

1. The Supremacy of God in Preaching (John Piper)

2. The Biggest Idea in Preaching (Haddon Robinson)

3. Authentic Inspiration (John Ortberg)

4. Helping People Think Higher (Bryan Wilkerson)

5. Preaching the Wow Factor (Lee Eclov)

6. Soul-Deep Preaching (Gordon MacDonald)

7. Inspired and Inspiring (Jeffrey Arthurs)

8. Fighting for Your Congregation’s Imagination (Skye Jethani)

9. Preaching with VIM, Not Just Vigor (Bryan Wilkerson)

10. Your Text Has Feelings (Michael Quicke)

11. Allowing Emotion to Buttress Truth (Gary Fenton)

12. Tune My Heart to Sing Thy Grace: Why We Preach from the Psalms (Lee Eclov)

13. Five Veins of Deep Preaching (Scott Chapman)

14. Preacher as Advocate (John Koessler)

15. Preaching with Childlike Wonder (Matt Woodley)

16. Last Sunday You Preached Your Final Boring Sermon (Michael Quicke)

17. A Good Mystery (Richard Hansen)

18. Red-Pill Preaching (Mark Batterson)

19. Leading and Preaching (Paul Borden)

FOREWORD

Wisdom is supreme; therefore get wisdom. Though it cost all you have, get understanding. (Proverbs 4:7)

That verse certainly applies to preaching. As editor of PreachingToday.com since 1999, I have listened to many sermons, and it is sobering to consider how many ways preaching can go wrong, from bad theology to bad interpretation of texts, from extremes on one side to extremes on the other, from being a people pleaser to being a people abuser, from confusing hearers to boring them. If there is any group of people in dire need of wisdom, it is preachers.

We find that wisdom in Scripture in large measure, of course. But while the Bible is our all-sufficient source book for what we preach, and for the theology of preaching and the character of the preacher, it is not a preaching manual. For much of what we need to know about preaching in our generation, in our geography, we need wisdom from one another.

We need the insights of those who have preached for fifty years, who have seen fads come and go, who have made mistakes themselves, and who can keep us from repeating them. We need the new perspective of young preachers who understand where the culture is going in ways that veteran preachers may not.

We need to hear from contemporary preachers who have read the wisdom of the church collected over hundreds of years on the subjects of preaching, pastoring, the care of the soul, theology, interpretation, sermon application, human nature, communication. We need to hear the wisdom of other tribes within the church, for each denomination or movement develops its own way of preaching, with its particular strengths and weaknesses.

In this book series, you will find a breadth of such wisdom. Since 1999, PreachingToday.com has published articles each month from outstanding practitioners on the essentials of preaching. This series of books with Hendrickson will draw from that bank vault of wisdom, bringing you timeless wisdom for contemporary preaching with the goal of equipping you for the most important work in the world, the proclamation of the glorious gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.

And week by week, through the ups and downs, ins and outs of their lives, your congregation will be glad they have come to the house of the Lord to hear you preach. In your voice, your flock will hear the voice of the Chief Shepherd, the Overseer of their souls.

Let it be, O Lord, by your grace!

—Craig Brian Larson, editor of PreachingToday.com

INTRODUCTION

When I was a fumbling, insecure young seminarian, I often wondered if I would ever make it in the pastoral ministry. I had some raw promise, but on most days I felt like quitting seminary and going back to the business world.

Then I met Doc. His real name was Dr. C. Philip Hinerman, the senior pastor of Park Avenue United Methodist Church in Minneapolis. Park was one of the first churches in the United States to forge a deep unity across racial and socioeconomic lines. During my four years at Park, Doc befriended me, serving as my mentor, spiritual father, and preaching model. Doc had an irrepressible (and what I considered a naïve) belief that God would do great things through my life and my preaching. On numerous occasions, as Doc spotted me in the distance, he would sweep his arm in the air and proclaim, Hail, Mathew Woodley, the great one! At first I would look behind me to see if there was another Mathew Woodley on my tail. But there wasn’t; Doc really did call me the great one. Then I thought that he must be teasing me, but he meant it.

Doc brought the same spirit into his preaching. No matter where he started in the Bible, Doc would take all of us—saints and sinners, the saved and unsaved, blacks and whites, rich and poor—on a journey straight to the cross. I’ll never forget the sermon he preached on the life of Ahithophel, the adviser to David’s son Absalom who committed suicide after Absalom rejected his counsel (2 Sam. 17:1–23). It’s a tragic and apparently hopeless story. But somehow as soon as Doc finished preaching on that obscure Old Testament antihero, people started streaming toward the front of the church to repent and trust Jesus. I should have stopped to analyze Doc’s homiletical approach, but I was rushing to the altar to receive prayer for myself.

Doc inspired people. By the time he finished a sermon, we didn’t have to follow Jesus; we wanted to follow Jesus. Every week Doc fanned the flames in our hearts, and every week sitting under Doc’s preaching made us love Jesus with a little bit more intensity.

There’s something special about the preachers who have inspired us. Like Doc, in one sense, they’re utterly infectious. Of course in Doc’s case, to borrow a phrase from C. S. Lewis, this is the good infection. When we’re around inspirational preachers, we catch something from them. We catch their passion for a specific biblical text or theme. We catch their love for God. We catch a spiritual reality in their lives—namely, that they know and feel the beauty of the gospel.

Of course we aren’t just catching a feeling from these preachers. Somehow they combine deep passion with biblical exposition, so by the time they finish a sermon, our minds have been informed and our wills have been quickened. Perhaps in some small way, inspirational preachers give us a dose of what those first disciples said about our Lord on that dusty road to Emmaus: Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us? (Luke 24:32).

The short introductions I’ve written for each chapter explain how each author in this book possesses a Doc-like spirit. Ultimately the ability to inspire people through preaching flows from one thing: leading people into the presence of Christ. In this sense inspirational preachers don’t belong to some elite group. You don’t have to twist yourself into some mold of hyperenergetic, caffeine-charged, ultraextroverted superpreachers. As Gordon MacDonald shares in this book, A soul-deep sermon can come from the lips of a simple, stammering, uneducated person, or from the heart and mind of a Rhodes scholar. This book provides hope for all kinds of preachers with all kinds of personality types.

So what does it take to become an inspirational preacher like Doc? First, this book often mentions the word vision. Everyone has a vision for life, something that captures that person and serves as a map for life. Thus, Skye Jethani urges us to ask, what vision has captured the imagination of our people? Inspirational preachers gently assault our incomplete visions and invite us into an alternative vision: life in and through Jesus Christ. That’s what Doc did for me. Doc possessed a massive intellect and a quick wit, but he always gave us a clear and compelling vision of Christ—his glory, love, beauty, and power. In the first chapter of this book, John Piper urges us to do the same thing by making the supremacy of God the goal of our preaching.

People never outgrow this need to hear and see a compelling vision of Christ. As Bryan Wilkerson reminds us, life has a tendency to beat people down. Like a hiker on a trail, Wilkerson writes, after a while our eyes drift downward. We begin to look at the ground in front of us, and walking gets tedious and tiresome. Inspirational preaching gets people to lift their eyes and look farther down the trail, to enjoy the sights around them, and to think about where they’re going.

You’ll notice that throughout this book the authors will contrast inspirational preaching with informational preaching. They aren’t opposed to providing clear content and how-to’s; they just believe that inspiration must precede information. As John Ortberg says, it’s about changing people’s interior maps not just changing their temporary behavior. In other words, good preaching should certainly instruct and exhort and challenge, but all of that flows from a transformed heart, a vision rooted in Christ.

Second, inspirational preaching creates and corrects desire. It gives people the want-to they need to follow Christ. By lifting up Christ and his kingdom, it woos people into a whole new set of desires. This represents classic Christian spiritual formation. Earlier followers of Jesus often said that desires aren’t bad; they’re merely disordered. They’re unruly, like a bunch of wild six-year-olds who refuse to stand in line, pushing and shoving each other. In the same way, our desires, which are good, just need to learn to line up and behave.

Inspirational preaching taps into our hearts and gently expands our desire for the right things. At one point in the film As Good as It Gets, a neurotic and self-centered writer played by Jack Nicholson turns to a female friend and says, You make me want to be a better man. That’s exactly where this preaching leads: People who truly understand the gospel want to be better men and women. It arouses what Jesus called a hunger and thirst for righteousness (Matt. 5:6).

John Koessler reminds preachers that people won’t hunger and thirst for goodness if we stand over them in condemnation. Instead, God arouses good desires only as we stand with and for our people. Yes, we can and should preach prophetically. By all means, speak the truth in love, as Paul tells us. But in the end, do your people know that you love them? Are you on their side? Are they certain that you’re their advocate rather than their judge and critic?

Third, the authors in this book call for integrity. In other words, they remind preachers that they had better practice what they preach. There’s nothing less inspiring than preachers who don’t live what they say from the pulpit. To state it more positively, when the message is alive and growing within us, it inspires our people to do the same. Or as Jeffrey Arthurs simply states: A reservoir can dispense only what it has taken in.

So inspiration begins by asking the Holy Spirit to examine my heart: Does the good