Preaching & Preachers, Chapter 9: The Preparation of the Preacher

Chapter 9 of Martyn Lloyd-Jones classic book Preaching & Preachers is on the Preparation of the preacher. This is a wonderful chapter with lots of practical advise. The preacher is always preparing in one way or the other. the burden of the message is always on the heart. The whole of our lives are involved in this great work, so the preacher needs to prepare his own soul before he begins to prepare his message. Here are the ways in which MLJ suggests that the preacher prepare himself: 

1. The preacher must prepare himself
1. Don't simply prepare sermons
2. Prepare your own soul
2. The preacher must pray
3. The preacher must read his Bible
1. Read it through at least once a year
2. Read and study one book in particular (apart from sermon preparation)
3. Don't limit your Bible reading to finding sermon material, read for your own soul
4. The preacher must have a balance reading plan including:
1. Devotional reading
2. Puritians, or reading sermons
3. Theological works 
4. Church history
5. Christian biographies, especially of great preachers 
6. Apologetic works
7. General reading for the relief of the mind

MLJ ends the chapter warning against getting your sermons from sermon books. Even when you get ideas from other sources, they need to be digested into your own mind and soul. Then, you preach them in your own words with your own thoughts. You aren't a recording device, repeating what someone else wrote. He closed with a shout-out to music. If it makes you happy and prepares you to think, listen to good music. 

Preaching & Preachers, Chapter 8 The Character of the Message

Lloyd-Jones begins by saying that the pew doesn't control what is preached, but the preacher must be mindful of who he is preaching to and the situation in the church. Preach to the people God has given you, not the people you wish you had. It is wrong to assume that everyone listening to a sermon on Sunday is a Christian, even if they say that they are. Even if you are preaching to Christians, we still need the gospel. Those pretenders will resent hearing the simple gospel again and not abide with it, wanting something else.

"...a number of people seem to go to a place of worship and to a service in order to go home! Their main idea seems to be to get out and to get home. Why do they go at all?"

He said the difficulty with the apostles was not to round everyone up and try to get them to come to church, but their problem was trying to get everyone to go home.

The chapter winds down with some opinions on the authority in the pulpit, and the aesthetics of the preachers attire, the building, and the pulpit.

Preaching and Preachers, Chapter 7: The Congregation

In chapter 7, Lloyd-Jones deals with the congregation in our preaching. Does the congregation dictate what we preach? Do we adapt the message to suitable for the people we are preaching to? Does a preacher who ministers to construction workers, need to be a construction worker to get a fair hearing?

 It's remarkable how he predicted what would happen, churches marketing toward certain sectors, trying to appeal to their hobbies and interests and designing churches and messages to suit their needs. Many of the modern Bible translations have that idea in mind; people can't understand "thee's and thou's" and if we could just a English translation that spoke their language, then they would believe. But look around the English speaking world, who has more translations of the Bible than any other people in history, and you'll see that theory proven wrong. It isn't that they don't understand the words, it is they don't understand the gospel. Our job is explain and teach and pray the Holy Spirit will give men life so they can understand. "These terms [justification, sanctification, glorification,] are peculiar and special to the Gospel. It is our business as preachers to show that our gospel is essentially different and that we are not talking about ordinary matters."

The case is made that Millennials, are some special generation that is so very unlike any generation before and if preachers are going to reach them, then they will have to adapt. This is nothing new. If a 20 something expects the church to change for him because he is too sophisticated to hear the gospel in the ordinary means, then the gospel is exactly what he needs to humble him. 2,000 years of preaching God's word, and we have now come to a generation of people that need a special way of communication, just for them, because they are superior to every other generation?

Of course, you can go to far the other direction, as Lloyd-Jones points out. We can be slaves to tradition. We can act, dress, and talk like we are living in the 1950's and if anyone steps out of that line, they are living in sin. It is the gospel, the message that is the dividing line. We can be stumbling blocks with our traditions, but we cannot budge on the essentials of gospel preaching and Biblical exposition of the truth.

Preaching & Preachers: The Preacher, part 3

Lloyd-Jones turns his eyes to the training of the preacher. His view of the training of a preacher goes as follows:

1. Life. Going from college to seminary to the church without earning a living or living life makes a man full of theory, but little experience.
2. General education and training of the mind. 
3. Knowledge of the whole Bible.
4. Study of theology
5. Study of church history
6. Homiletics

Interesting, Lloyd-Jones not only dislikes homiletics, but actually refers to such  books on the "art or craft of the sermon" as prostitution and near an abomination. I'm not sure why that is. Homiletic books simply give the rules of speaking. Lloyd-Jones was a brilliant man, and a skilled medical doctor before he became a pastor. He was trained to be logical and was a skilled thinker. This would have played into his ability to outline and logically think through a text of Scripture. That is all decent homiletics books will do, they will teach you the rules of logical thinking and public speaking. Like it or not, there are guidelines and rules to effective speaking. A gifted speaker might not know the first thing about grammar, but if he will follow the rules of grammar, even if it is instinctive. A natural muscian who plays by ear still follows the rules and laws of music, whether he realizes it or not. The same with delivering a message. There are certain rules and laws of logical and effective speech, and if a man doesn't know them instinctively, then he needs to learn them. Lloyd-Jones perhaps was a natural or learned them from his medical career, but he indeed, followed the laws. For the opposite view on the need of homiletics, see the introduction in Sacred Rhetoric Or a Course of Lectures on Preaching by RL Dabney. It is a fine discussion on the difference between art and artifice.

Finally, I found this quote to be very true to my own heart and expresses how I often feel.

"I remember reading somewhere about the French novelist Anatole France that he used to say whenever he felt tiered an jaded with a tendency to be depressed and downcast, 'I never go into the country for a change of air and a holiday, I always instead go to the eighteenth century.' I have often said exactly the same thing, but not in the same sense in which he meant it, of course. When I get discouraged and over-tired and weary I also invariably go to the eighteenth century. I have never found George Whitfield to fail me. Go to the eighteenth century! In other words, read the stories of the great tides and movements of the Spirit experienced in that century. It is the most exhilarating experience, the finest tonic you will ever know. For a preacher is absolutely invaluable; their is nothing to compare with it. The more he learns in this way about the history of the Church the better preacher he will be."

Preaching & Preachers: The Preacher, part 2

Chapter 6 of Lloyd-Jones book Preaching & Preachers deals with the preacher himself. The second section deals with how a church can know if a man is called to preach. It is the churches responsibility, after all, to train, ordain, and send out preachers, so there must be some way to know if a man can be a preacher. The man must:

1. Filled with the Spirit
2. Have a godly character
3. Have wisdom
4. Have patience and forbearance 
5. Have an understanding of people and human nature
6. He must have the mental ability 
7. He must have the gift of speech

Preaching & Preachers: The Act of Preaching part 2

Update: I haven't forgotten about or given up on this project. I hit my head in a pretty nasty fall a few months ago and have developed post-concussion syndrome. Not to get into too much about it, but I'm having difficulty writing. I have sermons and writing assignments that I have to complete first and at times, takes me much longer than it usually does. I appreciate the patience, and sorry for the delay and if the posts don't come as regularly as I had hoped.

We continue our series of reading through M.D.Loyd-Jones classic Preaching and Preachers. This chapter presents 11 elements of preaching that Lloyd Jones considers vital to the act of preaching. We covered the first four last time.

1. Action
2. Authority 
3. Freedom
4. Receiving from the Congregation
5. Seriousness
6. Zeal
7. Warmth
8. Rapport
9. Urgency
10. Pathos
11. Power

Seriousness - The preacher is dealing with the souls of men. Matters of eternal consequence. This is no laughing matter and preaching is no joke. You can be full of passion and be serious. Whatever the delivery style, the people must know that he knows, believes, and means what he says. Lloyd-Jones cautions that serious does not mean boring. 

Zeal -  "If [the preacher] has not been gripped nobody else will be." The preacher must be consumed with the truth and anxious to deliver it. He wants others to hear and believe what has consumed his heart in the study of Scripture. The preacher must be involved, he must be a witness of what he preaches, not just an advocate relating true things, being detached from the congregation and the truths presented. 

Warmth - The preacher needs to feel the truths that he speaks. He gives example of Paul and Whitefield who wept over souls. Very convicting section. 

Rapport - He doesn't give much thought to this section, but this is a very important truth. The truth doesn't change based upon who you are preaching to, but the way you preach it might change. Preach to those the Lord has given you, not those you WISH the Lord has given you. 

Urgency - We never know if this is the last message we will ever preach, or those listening to us will ever hear another message before heading off into eternity. Now is the time, today is the day. Be urgent in your preaching. 

Pathos - The whole point of preaching is to persuade people to follow and believe. Why are you preaching if you are not trying to persuade? Richard Cecil said "To love to preach is one thing, to love those to whom we preach is quite another". Pathos comes from a love of God's people and a love of God's truth. When these two are combined, you will have pathos. MLJ stresses that truth does not produce just intellectual insight, but there is emotion when understanding the truth. 

Power - There must be power or it isn't preaching because preaching declaring the living Word of God. You must have light and heat.

In this chapter, we get his famous definition of preaching. "What is preaching? Logic on fire! Eloquent reason!" 

Preaching and Preachers: Chapter 1, The Primacy of Preaching

What is the job of the church? What should we be doing? Preaching and Preachers, chapter 1, The Primacy of Preaching, Lloyd-Jones makes the Scriptural case that the primary task of the church is preaching.

"…the work of preaching is the highest and greatest and the most glorious calling to which anyone can ever be called." And that "…the most urgent need in the Christian church today is true preaching; and as it is the greatest and most urgent need in the Church, it is obviously the greatest need of the world also."

But, if this is true, why has preaching suffered a downward spiral in so many churches? Why is there a decline in great preaching? Lloyd Jones says the problem is threefold:

1.       Decline in the belief of the authority of Scripture

2.       Men want to be 'pulpiteers' rather than preachers

3.       Men don't understand what a sermon is.

Great preaching, or great speaking for that matter, depends on great themes. He says that as preachers relinquish confidence when men drift from the authority of the Bible, they forfeit power in their preaching. They begin to "suggest" rather than proclaim. Style is more important than substance, and sermon is a dirty word. I've noticed this among the big-named evangelicals giving "talks" at their conferences. Sermons might offend and preaching is foolish, so they'll "talk".  He also pointed to "personal counseling" as a result of bad preaching. That people believe that they need  more personal attention and that their problems cannot be dealt with from the pulpit. What I think he means, is that people think that their problems are so unique that a sermon could never address their problems. For example, they are not covetous, but their desire for things has its root in some story from their childhood and how much they were hugged as a toddler. Whereas a sermon on covetousness and a call to repentance would not make the people unique snowflakes, but categorize them as sinners among sinners. Thus, the rise of personal counseling for their unique and special "issues". Sometimes (often?) the answer is: You are sinning. Stop it.

The second section of the chapter deals with the positive; preaching must be the most important thing. Not politics, not social justice, not trending topics, but preaching. He provides many examples of Jesus leaving crowds who wanted their needs fulfilled, but going to the next place to preach and teach. His miracles were signs, but not the primary purpose. He moves from our Lord's example to the apostles example in the book of Acts, showing that preaching was their mission and anything else was a distraction that would sidetrack them. The same is throughout the history of God's people.

"What is it that always heralds the dawn of a Reformation or Revival? It is renewed preaching."

Preaching and Preachers, the preface.

I'm planning on working my way through Lloyd-Jones Preaching and Preachers  again. I'm always trying to read through some book on preaching and I like to read through the classics over and again. This time, I'm going to try to post a few thoughts on each chapter. If you have never read it, here is your chance to grab a copy and read along with me.

In the preface, Lloyd-Jones makes the case why we should listen to him. The book was originally a series of lectures given to Westminster Seminary. It's the fruit of 44 years experience in the ministry. It's always good to sit and listen to experienced men give wisdom from what they have learned. I know it is hip to read the latest ministry book written by the new cool rising star pastor who reinvented the wheel. But how about we sit and listen to men who have walked with God faithfully for decades and learn from them?

"Some may object to my dogmatic assertions; but I don not apologize for them. Every preacher should believe strongly in his own method; and if I cannot persuade all the rightness of mine, I can at least stimulate them to think and consider other possibilities. I can say quite honestly that I would not cross the road to listen to myself preaching, and the preacher whom I have enjoyed most have been very different in their method and style. But my business is not to describe them but to state what I believe to be right, however imperfectly I have put my own precepts into practice."

I think this is an important point. I have strong opinions on preaching; but if you preach, you should have strong opinions on preaching as well and should be able to defend them or at least give a reason why. Preaching is important enough to care about and important enough to want to be better than we are right now.