By Johnnie Godwin
Contributing Columnist, B&R
After graduating from seminary, I was somewhat like Paul when he cooled his heels in Athens waiting for Timothy and Silas to rejoin him from Berea (Acts 17). We were dead set on finishing up requirements for foreign mission appointment. So Phyllis and I had moved back to my hometown of Midland, Texas, for a year.
I held three jobs to get total indebtedness down to the Foreign Mission Board’s requirement. Phyllis finished up her two years minimum education beyond high school at a local college. My jobs were interim pastoring a struggling church, full-time substituting as a high school P.E. teacher, and delivering dry-cleaning after school. We had three young sons. The church did have a parsonage and some kind members. But they lacked both growth and money. I did what I could, but we knew I was temporary.
A strange thing happened: Between Sunday School and preaching an unknown woman rushed up to me. She was carrying two objects and had a look of urgency in her eyes. She gave me an envelope that had $2,500 cash in it. And she gave me a spiral-bound notebook that held the sermons of W. A. Criswell on Revelation. She said, “Take this money and preach these sermons!” Then she left — never seen before or since. The woman obviously felt she had met the church’s needs for money and preaching. She hadn’t!
About kinds of preaching. At age 27 I wasn’t any great “shakes” as a preacher or pastor. But in nine years I had gotten three degrees, six years of pastoring, a staff internship in a large church, a wife, and three sons. Though I wasn’t prideful or arrogant, I was a bit irritated that a woman had decided what I needed to preach — which came from the pastor of First Baptist Church, Dallas. I knew the woman had meant well, but I kept preaching as God’s Spirit led.
Within the year, we received a medical rejection that closed the door to our formal missionary appointment. The nature of the medical setback was mostly exhaustion from grueling years of schooling, commuting, and working. The closed door of foreign missions left me feeling like Paul must have felt when the Spirit wouldn’t allow him to go into the province of Asia. In a vision, God’s amazing maze led to Macedonia (Acts 16:6-9). My vision came in the form of a call to pastor First Baptist Church of Hewitt, Texas — just outside Waco. We said yes and spent four-plus happy years in the pastorate.
For the first time in my ministry to that point, there was no end date or other place to look for. So I needed to discover and decide what kind of preaching I would plan and carry out over the long haul. But, for now, let’s take a preaching parenthesis.
Preaching as a verb and a noun: If I were to ask all of you who read this what kind of preaching you like and feel you need, I would get all kinds of answers. But the question really boils down to two answers: namely, style of preaching and content of preaching. Some people don’t feel like they’ve been to church unless the preacher has knocked out the back wall with volume and intensity. Others like a more conversational and teaching tone to the sermons they listen to. Some preachers stay put and don’t need a wireless mic; others are roamers and wander all over the place while they preach. Preachers preach long sermons, short sermons, and somewhere in between. The verb of preaching varies as greatly as does the different personalities of preachers. God uses them all.
But the content is a different matter. Some focus on the New Testament almost to the exclusion of the Old Testament. Others reverse that focus and favor the Old Testament over the New Testament. Those who have had good homiletical training [sermon training] try to have a God-inspired, divinely balanced plan of preaching. Balanced plans of preaching vary from preaching through books of the Bible to biblical themes. Those start with the Bible and go to people’s needs and what God wants all of us to know. Understanding a church’s developmental and spiritual needs may lead a pastor to start with needs and go to the Bible for the texts that match those needs.
An aside: For those who wait till they get in the pulpit to let the Spirit lead them with what to preach, a word from Billy Graham might be appropriate: “Yes, He will fill you — with hot air.” I heard Billy say that in seminary chapel once for procrastinating preachers or those with impaired theology. Time-pressed pastors during my schooling days often referred to William Barclay’s commentary series as “The Preacher’s Saturday Night Friend.” Whatever plan a pastor uses, the pastor should indeed follow the Holy Spirit leadership and pay the price in studying, praying, and planning his sermons.
Finally, two Greek words appear most often to refer to preaching: (1) one is “euaggelizo;” the other is “kerusso.” The first means “good-newsing;” the second means “proclaiming.” The noun “kerugma” means the thing or content preached. Once, “logos” or “word” is used for preaching. I’m mostly concerned about “kerugma” — the content of preaching.
The content of preaching. Every congregation needs to hear regularly what Jesus came preaching. All of us are familiar with the Sermon on the Mount (from Matthew 5-7). We can quote the Great Commission (Matthew 28:17-20 and the other gospels and Acts). We know about being born again (John 3). But we may not remember and regularly hear what Jesus appeared on the scene preaching in his earthly ministry. How would you summarize Jesus’ preaching/teaching ministry? Well, He came on the scene preaching the kingdom of God, the gospel, and repentance (Mark 1:14-15). Any preaching plan or sermon that doesn’t somewhere include these ingredients is lacking.
The Kingdom of God essentially means the will of God (what God wills and where He provides for us to live eternally). The gospel simply means the good news that Jesus is the Messiah and fulfills all eternal plans in the Christ Event of salvation. Repentance is something we may go a whole sermon and not hear about. The basic word in the New Testament is “metanoeo.” And that means change of mind. It is the kind of change of mind that turns from and is sorry for all sin one has committed as he places faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. That change of mind produces a change of attitude and heart that receives God’s gift of saving grace and includes receiving the Holy Spirit forevermore. This is the kind of preaching every church needs all the time whatever else the texts may involve for the whole Bible.
Conclusion: If a preacher preaches and teaches like Jesus and the other apostles and New Testament elders and teachers, then that kind of preaching is right. I suppose for me the least pardonable fault in anyone’s preaching is for one to become boring. The gospel is good news with an exclamation mark! And no preacher, in style or content, should ever let that exclamation become a boring thing. Jesus painted pictures with His parables and left unending pictures of His loving and saving grace on the cross. The resurrection is unique in all the world and all the religions of the world. And now we await the return of Christ. That’s the kind of preaching churches need.
— Copyright 2015 by Johnnie C. Godwin. Write the author at johnniegodwin@comcast.net.