Philosophy of Sermonizing
Mood:  caffeinated
Now Playing: The Uncomfortable Pastor
While reading an old book (Jonathan Edwards by Clarence H. Faust, published by American Book Company in 1935), I became enamored by what one might call the philosophy of sermonizing.  This topic is no doubt boring to many and yet of fundamental importance.  The author in one section was discussing Edwards’ style which was not happenstance.

In reflecting on this, I suppose that several elements may come together in one’s style.  One element could be current trends.  Another may be one’s own personality.  One's education may fit in somewhere.  And still another may be one’s perception of the biblical mandate and process.  Perhaps there are other elements as well.  As I read someone else’s effort to describe Edwards’ style, I realized that this is something I consciously or unconsciously evaluate when I listen to another preacher.  And this evaluation may play some part in my acceptance or rejection of the message.

I am not here to discuss Edwards’ philosophy of sermonizing--one can read Faust’s book to get at that.  But I was thinking of my own.  What is my own?  Perhaps I have never organized it, but I certainly do have one.  So I will attempt at least partially here to put it into words.  Maybe this can be useful to someone else.

One hardly thinks about the contemporary style of preaching, simply because that is what is.  At least, growing up, how could one think of an alternative?  I believe that most of the preaching I heard growing up, as I did, in consistent church attendance, could be categorized as topical, at least to the extent that it was biblical.  It seems a shame, but from all the years of growing up I remember only one sermon series our pastor taught, and it was on the names of God.  It may have been a rich study, but I remember no details, only the fact that it was done.  But I now assume that I heard topical preaching.  I do not remember a preaching style which made consistent sense to me until I had already graduated from Bible college (and that could easily have been my problem alone).  So that was my experience growing up; if I had known at that time that there were different styles, I probably would have said it was topical and not very impactful.  Sadly much of it did not seem relevant to me.

It was not until I was in graduate school at the University of Nebraska that I attended a church whose pastor practiced expository preaching and did it well.  I had admired pastors we had in the past, but I never really grasped what their task was.  They seemed to be super-humans.  But when I heard his Bible exposition, I thought ‘That’s something I understand and could do.’  He treated the Bible as though it was true, was the absolute authority, and could be understood; and after three years under his teaching, so did I.

It seems to me that topical preaching hinges on the cleverness of the preacher, whereas expository teaching hinges on the quality of the text, and the biblical text is the best!  Of course, nothing is guaranteed in terms of the quality of the communication or the outcome, but the content of the Bible is without equal.

All this could relate to the way God made me.  He made me an analytical person.  I thoroughly enjoyed math in school, at least all I could get through high school, and have spent a good portion of life in music.  Along with that, I enjoy inspecting something that malfunctions in some way to discover and hopeful remedy its problem.  This requires attention to detail as well as logic.  So when in seminary I learned to diagram the Hebrew and Greek texts, I was hooked.  That gave me the confidence to learn and teach the content; I had looked at the details and could gain a fairly good idea of the meaning of the text.  And when the text called us to action, I had little trouble presenting it as the imperative it was.  And being God's word, all of it carries the importance of imperative.

Throughout the years of ministry I periodically returned to foundational concepts in the Bible that encouraged me to continue in the expository style, even when people tried to redirect me.  I will include some of them here.

2 Timothy 3:16-17 tells us that all Scripture is useful for a believer to be complete.  In Matthew 5:18 Jesus said that even the smallest letter or even part of a letter must be fulfilled; He was suggesting that close attention to the text of Scripture is warranted.  The love of the psalmist for the holy writings is evident in Psalm 119, that longest chapter in the Bible.  The example of teaching in the day of Nehemiah (ch. 8) certainly supports expository teaching.  The place of God’s word in creating faith and stimulating sanctification also promotes attention to the text as Romans 10:14-15 and John 17:17.  The first message preached on the first day of the Church’s existence also focused on the plain meaning of a passage from the Psalms (Acts 2).

All of these have impacted me.  The example of someone I could understand, the kind of person God has made me, and the values and even commands I see in the Bible have formed the style I have used.  That is my philosophy of sermonizing.