Great Preacher

I am hoping the title of this post might attract some attention in the same way that the person it talks about caught my attention

.

I was flicking channels on TV the other night and came across a shopping channel featuring a juicer type thing and decided to watch for a couple of minutes as I have been thinking about increasing fruit and veg intake.

I ended up watching almost an hour because the second person in the presentation was to coin his own words ‘evangelical’ about this particular product. He said he had bought one at Christmas and stared using it in the New Year and had used it every day since – he said he was feeling the benefits in lots of ways and there had been some weight loss which he thought was due his change in diet.

He was so excited about the product and I could see where the evangelical comment had come from as he talked with a high degree of zeal and fervour about this marvellous product, and it got me thinking.

I thought to myself is this what is missing in much of the preaching in our churches – we don’t always seem to grasp what a marvellous product (I know you might not like that description but it works for this) we have – the Son of God, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, and yet much of the preaching I hear is so lack lustre and almost apologetic.

I am keenly aware that my fiercest critic is my wife and I am thankful for that because I think she helps to keep me sharp in my preaching but I am also grateful that like the guy selling the juicer I firmly believe in the product I am encouraging people to try in the same way he believed in the juicer.

I think that all too often we are very wishy washy in our faith and our preaching and are frightened of offending someone – it didn't seem to bother Jesus!

And the best preacher is……..

In the previous post I raised the question that Robert Johnson had put over on facebook. He did get a number of replies and the names there were some I would have expected to find.

I think while it was an interesting question in itself it does prompt another question in my mind and that is ‘what makes a good preacher’? I suppose this might be as subjective as the previous question but I would be interested to see what people think on this one – I might even pop it on facebook as it will the hit a different audience to this page. Please feel free to offer an opinion or comment.

Interesting Question

Robert Johnson on the Facebook group 'Worldwide Christians' has posed the following question amd sparked an interesting conversation. I thought readers here might also find it interesting.

Who in your humble opinion, is the greatest preacher of all time? [and no picking the obvious 


one]




It will be interesting to see what readers think on this one so over to you

More on the previous topic

Robert commented on the previous post:-

It would be interesting to ask around about this one (I'm not sure how I'd phrase it - I wouldn't have the nerve to go asking 'Why didn't you preach on the Bible?'), but I can see a potential problem. The traditional paths for a preacher are well trodden; if you've spent a couple of decades listening to sermons, you've probably got an outline in your head for many of the well-known passages, at least.
But what if you're not comfortable with the traditional reading of the passage? Either you dream up an original exegesis - not always easy - or you talk about something else.

21 June 2011 00:14

I agree it would be interesting to pose the question and that of course it would need to be done carefully but I think there is more to this topic than just asking the questions.

I think that Robert makes a good point about the well known passages and there is a degree here of familiarity breeding contempt. I suspect  that some of the problem is the almost slavish use in some places of the lectionary in one form or another. I am not sure the use of the lectionary is the good thing some people would have us believe, especially as it only covers a small amount of the Bible in total.

I would like most people expect preachers to speak on certain topics on certain Sundays – Easter on Easter Sunday, Pentecost on Pentecost Sunday, Trinity on Trinity Sunday and so on but I do think we could be a little more imaginative and less bound by the lectionary during the rest of the year. At one church we attended I did a series on the first line of a hymn taking one word each week and expounding on that word (The line was ‘Come,let us all unite and Sing’).

One of the things I do occasionally is try to look at a passage rom a totally different perspective and an example of this is that on Palm Sunday I looked at the events from the perspective of the donkey. During the weeks following Easter Sunday I took the theme ‘That was the week that was’ and looked at the week from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday through the eyes of the characters involved – I examined how it must have felt for them and the roller coaster of emotions that they went through.

I received some very  positive comments on these services and people said they had never thought about the stories very much outside the traditional approach. At Christmas I may look at the story and again take a view from the stable – how did the animals feel, what might they have thought about it all? Perhaps we could take it from the shepherds viewpoint – imagine how they must have felt – how impressed they had been to go off and leave their sheep, after all it was not something they would do and yet we often write them off to some extent.

I believe it is possible to take a different approach and still get the gospel message across and the grounding and knowledge of exegesis can be helpful in ensuring that we stay of track.