Years ago as a young preacher boy (I embrace the term!), I sat under a young Mark Minnick as he taught a number of us “Pulpit Speech,” a Junior level speech class. The men in that class are well fixed in my memory, some of them among my closest friends to this day. One even teaches the art of preaching in another college and others have served in various ministries around the world. It is a blessing to be a co-worker with them.
The class taught us various forms of preaching, the chiefest one being expository preaching. You will hear many men today extol the value of expository preaching in our churches. My own preaching is usually expository. I personally think expository preaching is easier than properly done topical preaching. It is certainly easier to follow an expositional method through a book of the Bible as you plan your preaching calendar. Some extol expository preaching as if it is the only worthy method. All others are inferior and unacceptable, to hear some talk. I can’t quite go that far.
I’ve been thinking about preaching and preaching styles a bit, as I am now preaching my way through the book of Acts. Among other things, Acts is a record of the first Christian preaching. Baptists often like to use the book of Acts as the model for church life, and we claim to be “New Testament Baptists” in virtue of following this model. We want to be as close as possible to the worship style and organizational methods we see modeled in Acts. That is, in many things, except in the preaching.
The sermons in the book of Acts are not expository sermons. Have you ever noticed that? Most of the sermons actually follow a Rabbinic Jewish style, I am told. This is particularly true of those sermons preached to Jewish audiences. Read through them at one sitting and see what I mean. Peter’s sermon on Pentecost (Acts 2), his sermon following the healing of the lame man (Acts 3), Stephen’s sermon (Acts 7), and Paul’s sermon in Antioch of Pisidia (Acts 13) all follow a Jewish pattern of picking out certain features of OT narrative history, stringing these together to make the point of the message. These sermons are Bible based, but they are not taking a text, getting all the points from that one text, and using the force of the individual passage to create the force of the sermon.
The sermons to the Gentiles take a different pattern. Peter before Cornelius (Acts 10), Paul in Athens (Acts 17), Paul’s sermon to the Ephesian Elders (Acts 20), and perhaps Paul’s testimonies to Felix (Acts 24) and to Festus and Agrippa (Acts 26) follow a different pattern. Again, they are Bible based, but they are not expositional. If we categorize them at all, I would guess we might use the term topical for these messages, but perhaps a specialist would give them a different name than that.
As much as we value expository preaching in our day (and I am not likely to change my main style/method of preaching at my age!), I wonder if we are correct in making one style the “one style to rule them all,” especially to the exclusion and disdain of others. I suspect some of the disdain of topical preaching comes from a disdain of movements in recent church history where topical preaching was often the norm. We should be careful in our disdain – if we go back in the history of preaching we will find that many well thought of preachers of the past were not expositional. C. H. Spurgeon is a notable example. Read through any five of his messages and see whether you could really classify him as an example of an expository preacher. I’ve seen an original of notes he would take into the pulpit with him. I would say that his style is either textual or topical in form, but mostly simply extemporaneous preaching on a theme suggested by a text. From his notes, it appears that he relied on a vast memory and the ready gifts God gave him.
What is Biblical preaching, then? Is it expository? Is it textual/topical? Is it extemporaneous? Is it rabbinical? I would say, “Yes,” as long as its foundation is the truths of the Bible and its authority rests on Biblical revelation, not human opinion.
It might be that we need a bit more topical preaching these days. If only to balance the steady diet of exposition we’ve offered for so many years now. A great temptation in expository preaching is to slide from preaching to teaching. We tend to lose authority and an imperative push in our preaching that way. We tend to tickle ears, entertain Christians with our “deep insight” and much explanations, but we see little spiritual development in the pews. Our hearers are deep in Bible knowledge, but weak in personal evangelism and discipleship.
Perhaps it is time for something of a change of diet. Perhaps we need to get back to the New Testament and refresh our preaching by imitating the style we find there. Regardless of the exact style we choose, we need to be sure we are proclaiming God’s challenging truth and calling people to lives of obedience to him!
Don Johnson is the pastor of Grace Baptist Church of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada.
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