By
Warren Wiersbe
Warren W. Wiersbe is a well known international Bible
conference teacher with a heart for missions and is a former pastor of
Moody Church in Chicago. He served for ten years as General Director and
Bible Teacher for Back to the Bible. Dr. Wiersbe is author of more than
80 books, including the best-selling "BE" series. He is known as a
"pastors' pastor," and his speaking,writing and radio ministries have
brought new understanding of the truths of God's Word to people around
the world.
“It doesn’t make sense!” said my pastor friend.
We were lingering over lunch and discussing the Bible conference I was
conducting in his church. I’d just commented that the church was having a
strong influence on the students and staff of the nearby university.
“What doesn’t make sense?” I asked.
“Where you and I are serving,” he replied.
“You’re going to have to explain.”
“Look, I’m really a country preacher with a minimum of academic
training, yet I’m ministering to a university crowd. You write
commentaries, and you read more books in a month than I do in a year,
yet your congregation is primarily blue-collar and nonprofessional. It
doesn’t make sense.”
The subject then changed, but I have pondered his observation many
times in the intervening years. I’ve concluded it’s a good thing God
didn’t put me on his “Pastor Placement Committee” because I would have
really messed things up.
I’d never have sent rustic Amos to the affluent court of the king; I’d
have given him a quiet country church somewhere. And I’d never have
commissioned Saul of Tarsus, that “Hebrew of the Hebrews,” to be a
missionary to the Gentiles; I’d have put him in charge of Jewish
evangelism in Jerusalem.
Al l of which brings me to the point of this article: If God has called
you to preach, then who you are, what you are, and where you are also
must be a part of God’s plan. You do not preach in spite of this, but
because of this.
Why is it, then, that so many preachers do not enjoy preaching? Why do
some busy themselves in minor matters when they should be studying and
meditating? Why do others creep out of the pulpit after delivering their
sermon, overwhelmed with a sense of failure and guilt?
The Difference a Witness Makes
Without pausing to take a poll, I think I can suggest an answer: They are preaching
in spite of themselves instead of preaching
because of themselves. They
either leave themselves out of their preaching or fight themselves
during their preparation and delivery; this leaves them without energy
or enthusiasm for the task. Instead of thanking God for what they do
have, they complain about what they don’t have; this leaves them in no
condition to herald the Word of God.
One
Christianity Today/Gallup Poll showed that ministers
believe preaching is the number one priority of their ministries, but
it’s also the one thing they feel least capable of doing well. What
causes this insecure attitude toward preaching?
For one thing, we’ve forgotten what preaching really is. Phillips
Brooks said it best: “Preaching is the communicating of divine truth
through human personality. The divine truth never changes; the human
personality constantly changes—and this is what makes the message new
and unique.”
No two preachers can preach the same message because no two preachers are the same. In fact, no
one
preacher can preach the same message twice if he is living and growing
at all. The human personality is a vital part of the preaching ministry.
Recently I made an intensive study of all the Greek verbs used in the
New Testament to describe the communicating of the Word of God. The
three most important words are:
euangelizomai, “to tell the good news”;
kerysso, “to proclaim like a herald”; and
martyreo,
“to bear witness.” All three are important in our pulpit ministry.
We’re telling the good news with the authority of a royal herald, but
the message is a part of our lives. Unlike the herald, who only shouted
what was given to him, we’re sharing what is personal and real to us.
The messenger is a part of the message because the messenger is a
witness.
God prepares the person who prepares the message. Martin Luther said
that prayer, meditation, and temptation made a preacher. Prayer and
meditation will give you a sermon, but only temptation—the daily
experience of life—can transform that sermon into a message. It’s the
difference between the recipe and the meal.
I had an experience at a denominational conference that brought this
truth home to me. During the session at which I was to speak, a very
capable ladies’ trio sang. It was an uptempo number, the message of
which did not quite fit my theme, but, of course, they had no way of
knowing exactly what I would preach about. I was glad my message did not
immediately follow their number because I didn’t feel the congregation
was prepared.
Just before I spoke, a pastor in a wheelchair rolled to the center of
the platform and gave a brief testimony about his ministry. Then he
sang, to very simple accompaniment, “No One Ever Cared for Me Like
Jesus.” The effect was overwhelming. The man was not singing a song; he
was ministering a word from God. But he had paid a price to minister. In
suffering, he became a part of the message.
The experiences we preachers go through are not accidents; they are
appointments. They do not interrupt our studies; they are an essential
part of our studies. Our personalities, our physical equipment, and even
our handicaps are all part of the kind of ministry God wants us to
have. He wants us to be witnesses as well as heralds.
The apostles knew this: “For we cannot help speaking about what we have
seen and heard” (Acts 4:20). This was a part of Paul’s commission: “You
will be his witness to all men of what you have seen and heard” (Acts
22:15). Instead of minimizing or condemning what we are, we must use
what we are to bear witness to Christ. It is this that makes the message
our message and not the echo of another’s.
The Myth of “The Great Sermon”
It’s easy to imitate these days. Not only do we have books of sermons,
but we have radio and television ministries and CDs by the thousands.
One man models himself after Spurgeon, another after A. W. Tozer; and
both congregations suffer.
Alexander Whyte of Edinburgh had an assistant who took the second
service for the aging pastor. Whyte was a surgical preacher who
ruthlessly dealt with man’s sin and then faithfully proclaimed God’s
saving grace. But his assistant was a man of different temperament, who
tried to move the gospel message out of the operating room into the
banqueting hall.
During one period of his ministry, however, the assistant tried Whyte’s
approach, without Whyte’s success. The experiment stopped when Whyte
said to him, “Preach your own message.” That counsel is needed today.
Every profession has its occupational hazards, and in the ministry it
is the passion to preach “great sermons.” Fant and Pinson, in
20 Centuries of Great Preaching, came
to the startling conclusion that “great preaching is relevant
preaching.” By “relevant,” they mean preaching that meets the needs of
the people in their times, preaching that shows the preacher cares and
wants to help.
If this is true, then there are thousands of “great sermons” preached
each Lord’s Day, preached by those whose names will never be printed in
homiletics books but are written in the loving hearts of their people.
Listen again to Phillips Brooks:
The notion of a great sermon, either constantly or occasionally
haunting the preacher, is fatal. It hampers…the freedom of utterance.
Many a true and helpful word which your people need, and which you ought
to say to them, will seem unworthy of the dignity of your great
discourse… . Never tolerate any idea of the dignity of a sermon which
will keep you from saying anything in it which you ought to say, or
which your people ought to hear.
Preaching Christ, Not Myself
Let me add another reason for insecure feelings about our preaching. In
our desire to be humble servants of God, we have a tendency to suppress
our personalities lest we should preach ourselves and not Christ. It is
good to heed Paul’s warning in 2 Corinthians 4:5: “For we do not preach
ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for
Jesus’ sake.” But we must not misinterpret it and thereby attempt the
impossible. Paul’s personality, and even some of his personal
experiences, are written into the warp and woof of his letters; yet
Jesus Christ is glorified from start to finish.
During the past twenty years, I have been immersed in studying the
lives of famous preachers of the past. Most of these ministered during
the Victorian Era in Great Britain, a time when the pulpits were filled
with superstars. If there’s one thing I learned from these men, it’s
this: God has his own ways of training and preparing his servants, but
he wants all of them to be themselves. God has put variety into the
universe, and he has put variety into the church.
If your personality doesn’t shine through your preaching, you’re only a
robot. You could be replaced by a CD player and perhaps nobody would
know the difference.
Do not confuse the art and the science of preaching. Homiletics is the
science of preaching, and it has basic laws and principles that every
preacher ought to study and practice. Once you’ve learned how to obey
these principles, then you can adapt them, modify them, and tailor them
to your own personality.
In my conference ministry, I often share the platform with gifted speakers whose preaching leaves me saying to myself,
What’s the use? I’ll never learn how to preach like that! Then the Lord has to remind me he never called me “to preach like that.” He called me to preach the way I preach!
The science of preaching is one thing; the art of preaching—style,
delivery, approach, and all those other almost indefinable ingredients
that make up one’s personality—is something else. One preacher uses
humor and hits the target; another attempts it and shoots himself.
The essence of what I am saying is this: You must know yourself, accept
yourself, be yourself, and develop yourself—your best self—if preaching
is to be most effective.
Never imitate another preacher, but learn from him everything you can.
Never complain about yourself or your circumstances, but find out why
God made things that way and use what he has given you in a positive
way. What you think are obstacles may turn out to be opportunities. Stay
long enough in one church to discover who you are, what kind of
ministry God has given you, and how he plans to train you for ministries
yet to come. After all, he is always preparing us for what he already
has prepared for us—if we let him.
Accepting What We’re Not
I learned very early in my ministry that I was not an evangelist.
Although I’ve seen people come to Christ through my ministry, I’ve
always felt I was a failure when it came to evangelism.
One of the few benefits of growing older is a better perspective. Now
I’m learning that my teaching and writing ministries have enabled others
to lead people to Christ, somy labors have not been in vain. But I’ve
had my hours of discouragement and the feeling of failure.
God gives us the spiritual gifts he wants us to have; he put us in the
places he wants us to serve; and he gives the blessings he wants us to
enjoy.
I am convinced of this, but this conviction is not an excuse for
laziness or for barrenness of ministry. Knowing I am God’s man in God’s
place of ministry has encouraged me to study harder and do my best work.
When the harvests were lean, the assurance that God put me there helped
to keep me going. When the battles raged and the storms blew, my secure
refuge was “God put me here, and I will stay here until he tells me to
go.” How often I’ve remembered V. Raymond Edman’s counsel: “It is always
too soon to quit!”
It has been my experience that the young preacher in his first church
and the middle-aged preacher (in perhaps his third or fourth church) are
the most susceptible to discouragement. This is not difficult to
understand.
The young seminarian marches bravely into his first church with high
ideals, only to face the steamroller of reality and the furnace of
criticism. He waves his banners bravely for a year or so, then takes
them down quietly and makes plans to move. The middle-aged minister has
seen his ideals attacked many times, but now he realizes that time is
short and he might not attain to the top thirty of David’s mighty men.
God help the preacher who abandons his ideals! But, at the same time,
God pity the preacher who is so idealistic he fails to be realistic. A
realist is an idealist who has gone through the fire and been purified. A
skeptic is an idealist who has gone through the fire and been burned.
There is a difference.
Self-evaluation is a difficult and dangerous thing. Sometimes we’re so
close to our ministry we fail to see it. One of my students once asked
me, “Why can’t I see any spiritual growth in my life? Everybody else
tells me they can see it!” I reminded him that at Pentecost no man could
see the flame over his own head, but he could see what was burning over
his brother’s head.
A word from the Scottish preacher George Morrison has buoyed me up in
many a storm: “Men who do their best always do more though they be
haunted by the sense of failure. Be good and true, be patient; be
undaunted. Leave your usefulness for God to estimate. He will see to it
that you do not live in vain.”
Be realistic as you assess your work. Avoid comparisons. I read enough
religious publications and hear enough conversations to know that such
comparisons are the chief indoor sport of preachers, but I try not to
take them too seriously. “When they measure themselves by themselves and
compare themselves with themselves, they are not wise” (2 Cor. 10:12).
Although we are in conflict against those who preach a false gospel, we
are not in competition with any who preach the true gospel. We are only
in competition with ourselves. By the grace of God, we ought to be
better preachers and pastors today than we were a year ago.
If we are to be better pastors and preachers, we must be better
persons; and this means discipline and hard work. The “giants” I’ve
lived with these many years were all hard workers. Campbell Morgan was
in his study at six o’clock in the morning. His successor, John Henry
Jowett, was also up early and into the books. “Enter your study at an
appointed hour,” Jowett said in his lectures to the Yale divinity
students in 1911–1912, “and let that hour be as early as the earliest of
your businessmen goes to his warehouse or his office.” Spurgeon worked
hard and had to take winter holidays to regain his strength.
Obviously, we gain nothing by imperiling our health, but we lose much by pampering ourselves, and that is the greater danger.
The Gift Is Sufficient
If God has called you, then he has given you what you need to do the
job. You may not have all that others have, or all you wish you had, but
you have what God wants you to have. Accept it, be faithful to use it,
and in due time God will give you more.
Give yourself time to discover and develop your gifts. Accept nothing
as a handicap. Turn it over to God and let him make a useful tool out of
it. After all, that’s what he did with Paul’s thorn in the flesh.
Preaching it not what we do; it’s what we are. When God wants to make a
preacher, he has to make the person, because the work we do cannot be
isolated from the life we live. God prepares the person for the work and
the work for the person, and, if we permit him, he brings them together
in his providence.
God knows us better than we know ourselves. He’d never put us into a ministry where he could not build us and use us.
