Senior Pastor John Neufeld introduced three of our guest speakers: David Short, rector of St John's (Shaughnessy) Anglican Church in Vancouver, BC; R. Kent Hughes, Senior Pastor Emeritus at College Church in Wheaton, IL; and Bruce Ware, Associate Dean and Professor of Christian Theology at Southern Baptist Theological Serminary. They along with Pastor Neufeld are answering questions about expositional preaching. Our questioner is Stephen Kroeker, the pastor of Manitou Mennonite Brethren Church in Manitou, Manitoba.
1. How would you define expositional preaching? What is and what isn’t?
Hughes: It's not simply a running commentary where pastor goes through verse by verse and connects the thoughts together, which is characterized as very boring. It's also not an exegetical discourse where the pastor indulges in mere wordplay. It's also not coming with presuppositions and imposing them on the text: imposition, as opposed to exposition. It's also not a place where the preacher looks at the text, approaches it existentially, and relates whatever thoughts bubble into his mind.
Expositional preaching is when the preacher reads the text within the context of the book he is reading, and knows it well enough that he knows what the theme of that passage is; and then uses the structure of that text as a hint for the symmetry and structure of the sermon. Also, relating that passage into its place in the whole history of salvation and its relationship to Jesus Christ. Then applying the text to his own life. And finally standing in the power of the Holy Spirit and delivering the Word of God.
Pastor Neufeld then asked R. Kent Hughes, many pastors know how to exegete a text, but they don't know how to apply. Hughes' reply is that the text is an application in its original context, to its original audience. So if the pastor understands what the original context was, then the application will emerge. Expositional preaching is a dynamic and passionate process and should ideally come from within the heart.
2. Why the big emphasis on expositional preaching? (Especially if we allow that a doctrinal message can also be faithful to scripture and profoundly deep/meaty)
Hughes: There are places for topical, textual sermons. But Scripture was given by the Holy Spirit. The text is sovereign. The text rules. He wants to stand behind the text, not in front of it, as so many do today. The Word of God is totally sufficient.
Neufeld: Expositional preaching takes twice as long to prepare, but he never wonders, "What am I going to preach this week?" The Holy Spirit determines what to preach by what has been ordained in Scripture (my paraphrase). He does not preach the things that occur to him, but the things that occur in the text.
Short: Expositional preaching delivers our congregations from our own hobby horses. If we preach Luke 20, we need to have first preached Luke 19. What is more relevant to us than Scripture? If we work on any particular passage and determine what God means in this passage, application will emerge.
Hughes: The Word of God is radical. Example: Dr. Ware's explorations of Daniel 4 and Isaiah 40 earlier in the morning (see notes here). By treating those texts in their context, the audience was electrified.
Ware: Expositional preaching determines that we preach the whole counsel of God—even the unfashionable things like hell and judgement. ...Unless you're a very clever expositional preacher who can dance around things like that. No methodology is a guarantee of anything. You have to have the heart, the desire, the make the emphases that God makes, and the applications that He wants people to receive.
It's possible to do topical exegetical sermons, e.g., on atonement, Christology, or exclusivity of the Gospel. On these topics, one can approach Scripture almost as if were the testimony of the witnesses. What are Ezekiel, Isaiah, or Paul saying about God on the witness stand? You'd better be faithful to the text, though.
3. Why has God chosen preaching? What’s the unique feature that sets it apart from other forms of communication? Certainly preaching is not the only form of communication used in the New Testament, we see God using conversation to radically transform lives as well.
Short: Scripture doesn't distinguish between preaching to one and preaching to many. The relationship of God to the world is through His Word. God made us from dust and breath. As human beings we are constituted both externally and internally to respond to the Word of God. When Satan comes along, he assails the reliability of the Word of God.
Rev. Short referred us to 2 Peter 1. We have apostolic witnesses. Peter cites the Transfiguration to back up his testimony. This is ambiguous, however: we know from Luke that Peter didn't really understand the Transfiguration at the time it happened. But it was through the Word of God that we was made to understand it.
4. What elements of preaching must always be there, and what elements can and need to change as the audience/context changes? (If we are committed to expositional preaching, but our preaching seems ineffective, what might we look to change about our preaching?)
Hughes: We have to understand that the Holy Spirit, when He authored the text, had a future audience (as well as a present audience) in mind. He begins with the Word of God and what it says, with confidence that its principles will communicate today.
Short: If you read Augustine's or Chrysostom's or Bernard of Clairvaux's or Calvin's sermons today, you could preach and apply them to a contemporary congregation with very few changes.
Ware: Cultural diversity is huge, but what is bigger is common humanity that spans time and cultures. Far too much emphasis is put on cultural relativity, and not nearly enough emphasis is put on common humanity. We all struggle with the same things. Consider Jeremiah 9:23—that is just as relevant to us today as it was in Jeremiah's time.
Neufeld: Congregants should be able to go home, read the passage one has just preached on, and be able to say, "Yes, that's what he just said."
Hughes cited Twain (a non-believer) who said, "It's not what I don't understand about the Bible that bothers me; it's what I do understand." Scripture is comprehensible.
Short: There's some idea that we can gain some kind of special insight by understanding how to make Scripture relevant to contemporary culture, but Scripture doesn't need that. (My paraphrase.)
5. As Canadian pastors, we are greatly influenced by American pastors, theologians and authors. What is unique about the Canadian situation? And, should that affect our ministry, or is the need in both countries the same?
Neufeld: Evangelical pastors are not invited into the national discussion forums. Our voice is not invited, sought, or to the most part even heard, in the nation as a whole. We live in a time very much like the New Testament era, in a pagan culture with no coherent centre. Nevertheless, this culture still claims the authority
Are all the great authors and writers in the US? We claim D.A. Carson as our own, being born in Canada. There are and have been many great Canadian pastors and theologians.
Ware: Southern Baptist Theological Seminary has three up-and-coming Canadian theologians on its staff, one of whom has written a book on belivers' baptism (it was a gentle jab at the evangelical Anglican on our panel).
Short: Some observations on local cultural differences. E.g., he lives in Shaughnessy, where many residents are caught up in keeping up with the Joneses (to paraphrase). Canadians generally have an over-rosy view of human nature, overly positive, self-righteous about our peacekeeping role in the world, etc. As a consequence, the "clarity passages" in the Bible are very difficult to deal with.
6. How do you preach/lead in such a way that the church remains focused on Jesus and is not you as pastor? (or How do you preach in a compelling way that makes people say, "Wow. Isn’t Jesus amazing!" and not, "Wow. That pastor is really something else!")
Short: Lazy preachers are the ones who congregations think well of. If you study Scripture, the text always points to Jesus Christ. If we're lazy in our study or preparation, we'll throw a couple of ideas together with some heartrending stories, and then that's when people walk away thinking, "Isn't that pastor amazing?"
As pastors, we have to be humble, and show evidence to our congregations of progressing of growing in our walk with God (to paraphrase).
Hughes: You've got to stand behind the Bible, and everything you do (in preaching) has to serve the Word. When Hughes started out as a pastor, he loaded the text with a lot of illustrations. Over the years, he has moved away from this practice, since illustration can detract from or overpower the text. Because the text is sovereign, he wants the illustrations he uses (sparingly) to serve the text. They are only to be used judiciously when the time is right.
7. How do you preach to a multicultural audience? Sometimes it seems hard enough to communicate an ancient story to a contemporary mono-cultural audience...
Neufeld: Our sermons are simultaneously translated into seven different languages. The translators get a sermon manuscript ahead of time, so they have time to prepare. Other-language believers and
Many congregants are first-generation Canadians, many of them or Chinese or Korean origin, and are highly receptive to the Gospel. Those who have grown up in this culture are often more resistent to the Gospel—it takes eight or nine times to hear the Gospel before one repents and is saved (to paraphrase).
Amazingly, the Holy Spirit anticipated issues that we might not even have expecte. For example, he preached a sermon series on 1 Corinthians regarding meat sacrifices to idols, and got a lot of emails afterwards from Chinese Canadian believers who are struggling with this very issue in their families today.
8. How do you preach to both believers and unbelievers at the same time? In your ministry, do you focus on one over the other?
Neufeld: You can be encouraging the faith of both the believer and the non-believer. So many say you have to be "seeker-sensitive" to reach the lost, but genuine, bona fide non-believers out there want the truth straight up. Tell it the way it's written, and the Holy Spirit will regenerate those whom God calls.
Of course people will be offended. We have many non-believers coming here each weekend. There are some who are offended and leave, but there has never been a weekend when someone hasn't come to Christ.
9. What do you do to ensure that you are not preaching on talent alone, but are relying on the Holy Spirit? (Both in the process of studying and in preaching.)
Hughes: Martyn Lloyd-Jones said that a pastor can be pleased with the sermon he's prepared, without any dependence on the Holy Spirit, and effects a false passion, which is a very seductive thing. It's a matter of constant repentance and dependence upon God and submission to His Word.
Neufeld: He was preaching from Philemon on reconciliation. He thought he had it all worked out, but something happened the day before to convict him of the truths in that letter. He trusts that the Holy Spirit will awaken him on whatever he's preaching on.
Ware: The self-suffiency of God. When he first encountered this doctrine, he was transformed. Everything we have is a gift of God, and anything we have to contribute is His doing and by His grace. Do we struggle? Yes, we are still sinners. But Ware is grateful to God for His mercy in revealing His self-sufficiency to him early in his life.
Short: This is delicate, but if we rely on our gifts and not on the Spirit, we have a ministry that is shallow, and God will deal with us. He will not allow that to continue.
Hughes: The gift of gab and a great presence in front of people can be a great disability. God's strength is perfected in weakness.
10. How does biblical theology fit in, if we are only to “say what the text says”? How do you preach a single passage within the context of the meta-narrative of Scripture?
Short: The sermons one hears in evangelical churches tend to take a text and use it as a springboard to talk about other things. E.g., preaching on God's call of and promise to Abraham in Genesis 12, and interpreting
Exodus is about the death and resurrection of Jesus. Every time you preach on Exodus, you need to preach on the death and resurrection of Jesus. Jesus said that all Scriptures bear witness to Him. When we preach on Zechariah, Hebrews, or Leviticus, people need to go away with a greater understanding of who Jesus is.
Finally, to wrap up, Pastor Kroeker asked Rector Short if he could recommend any books on this subject (apart from the Bible itself, if I may expand upon what he said!). Reverent Short recommended Vaughan Roberts' book God's Big Picture: Tracing the Story-Line of the Bible (Intervarsity Press, September 2006), which is a short, readable book built upon Graeme Goldsworthy's work.
