Preaching – Protestant or Not?

The “worship” of the Church of Rome focuses on the mass in which the priest magically turns a wafer and wine into the body and blood of Christ. The participant then partakes in a fairly passive way of what the priest has prepared for him. The central feature of the service is the priest. The “worshipper” goes home basically unchanged and none the better for having been at “worship.”

The Protestant Reformation rescued the Word of God from the obscurity it suffered at the hands of Rome and made it once again the central feature of true Christian worship and life. However, we Protestants are in danger of returning to the centrality of a man, in this case, the preacher, at the expense of neglecting the Word of God. How so?

Part of the problem stems from the philosophy both of preacher and congregation as to what constitutes a “message” from God’s Word. When you hear a preacher talking about “getting a message” for the Lord’s Day it can reflect the mentality that borders on the prophetic, in the biblical sense of the word. It can be common to refer to someone’s preaching ministry as “prophetic.” People expect to hear messages that are not only timely, but also speak powerfully to the things around them. They want messages that confound their enemies and speak to their needy nation, as did the prophets of old.

However, the prophets of Scripture “got messages” from God because He newly revealed them to them. Their messages were revelation in the strict sense of the word. They did not so much “get” messages; rather God “gave” them to them. However, the New Testament preacher (which we all are since the ascension of Christ) is in a different situation. The canon of Scripture is closed. There is no more new revelation. There is no ministry that is “prophetic” in the strict sense of the word. The office of prophet ceased with the last of the apostles. This means that God has said all He wanted to. This also means that the Scriptures themselves are God’s message. God preaches to us in His Word.

So far, so good. But how does a preacher obscure God’s message and make himself the central feature of Christian worship? It comes back to “getting a message” for the Lord’s Day. Preacher, you already have your message – it is Scripture. You don’t have to “get” it; rather you have to study it in order to pass on what God has already said to us in the text you will preach. The text is the message; God preaches it to us. Your mission is to understand the text to the best of your ability and to “repeat” it, or to explain it to the congregation. That is all the “getting” there is (apart from the Holy Spirit’s leading as to which text to preach).

The text is the message. You don’t have to traipsing all over the Bible to pull together various threads to make a garment. The garment is fully made in the text. It may be illustrated in various biblical passages, but the thought of God is the text itself. You may need to bring in instruction from other passages and explain theological concepts used in the text, but the message itself is the text itself.

The problem comes in with the expectation of preacher and congregation. What is a “message” as far as they are concerned? Is it what God has already said in His Word, or is it what the preacher puts together from often disparate sources on a “timely” theme? Is it the plain meaning of the text or is it a compilation of timely thoughts or even good doctrinal statements that “spring” from the text? I say “spring” because a text is often a “springboard” that a preacher uses to get to the “timely thoughts” he already has in mind for his congregation. He might as well use Luke 7:40 as his text, “I have somewhat to say unto thee.”

When a preacher concocts a message from various texts or uses a passage for a purpose other than what it was inspired by the Holy Spirit to fulfill, the congregation is entirely dependent on that preacher for whatever he is going to impart. The message reflects the preacher’s own mind and not the text. There is no way the congregation could ever reread the message in the text because the message did not reflect the text. They must depend on note taking (which is not a bad practice in itself) and perhaps on a catchy alliterated outline to remember anything that is said. However, when they read the text again in their regular Bible reading what the preacher said is only a distant memory at best.

The worst thing about all this is that the congregation did not hear from God. They heard from the preacher. They might have heard truth and they might have heard some sort of helpful “ought to” for their Christian life. However, they did not hear God speak from His Word. They may have heard God speak in spite of the sermon, but they did not hear His voice through the sermon. The logic of the sermon came from the preacher’s mind, not from God’s mind.

The result of such an approach to preaching is that the central feature of the worship service is not the Word of God, but the preacher. The participant listens in a fairly passive way to what the preacher has prepared for him. The central feature of the service is the preacher. The worshipper goes home basically unchanged and perhaps none the better for having been at worship.