Preaching.5
So then, what is the preacher’s job?
One guy at our church was famous for saying, when he saw a brother or sister in the faith, “The Jesus in me sees the Jesus in you and says, Hello Jesus!” That sums up preaching.
The preachers job is to find out what Jesus is doing in people and say something about it. That is why a preacher must have a relationship with the people he is preaching to. If he does not, it would be like a fly fisherman loading up his bag, tying a fly, driving to Montana, casting his line in the water, pulling up a big ole’ stick and saying, “Whew! Imagine that”, because he has no dam blabbed idea what a fish looks like. We can’t be fishers of men until we learn to be men and know what they look like. But when we know the struggles of the people, the dirt, the skinny, the jokes, the laughter, the frustrations, those are all things Jesus is desperately dying to teach the people about. So when we preach, we first find what Jesus is doing in people, then have the guts to say something about it.
Practical preaching for the sake of practical preaching is a sin. But practical preaching because the preacher knows that is what Jesus is doing and that is what He told you to talk about is obedience. The difference cannot be told except by the preacher. That is why some of the biggest churches in the world get bigger while the smaller churches in the world keep getting smaller. When people can make their consumeristic choices between some message that is going to be safe and contain something that can help them live better over a very unsafe message that was born out of obedience, they will make the same choice every single time. Not because they are bad, but because Western consumerism is branded into their brain. Buy the best product out there. The problem with prophetic preaching is it is rarely the best product on the market. At least not in their minds because “best” equals “feels or tastes best”. Best does not mean any more “Best” in terms of the truest. Prophetic preaching can be a message of hope like Jonah or a message of wrath like Isaiah. Our job is to be what God has called us to be, no more no less
Here is what I think. I think that God can put a Jonah and a Isaiah in the same city. What? Wouldn’t God want the whole city to hear about salvation or their coming destruction. God has a way of putting more than one preacher in the same city because it will be Jesus inside of them who will draw the hearer to where they need to go. We must stop focusing on how to get people into our doors and focus on what Jesus is telling us to say and he will do the job of drawing people (The Apostle John…”I draw people through the Father”). The magnetism of the Holy Spirit works and we should let it.
Jeff Richard Young wrote:
Dear A.J.,
I read your whole series and appreciated some of what you had to say. I thank God for your willingness to teach college students.
I must take issue with your main statement in this post, however. You wrote:
“The preachers job is to find out what Jesus is doing in people and say something about it.”
Say something about it? How about, “apply the Word of God to it” or something like that. Maybe you assume your readers understand you to be saying that, but I’m not sure we all do.
How about this definition of preaching:
(Nehemiah 8:8) They read from the Book of the Law of God, making it clear and giving the meaning so that the people could understand what was being read.
Preaching is reading the scriptures, explaining what they mean, and applying them to the lives of the listeners.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, and I pray God continues to develop us all as preachers of the Word.
Love in Christ,
Jeff
P.S. My parents taught me not to say, “piss off,” or even “pee in the bushes” in polite company, and I believe you would be better served not to do so, either.
Posted on 11-Apr-07 at 2:56 pm | Permalink
Zach Caulley wrote:
A.J.,
I appreciate very much what you had to say. I agree with Jeff in that when a Pastor stops preaching from the word he puts himself at huge risk of straying from what God wants him to teach,and from the truth of the Lord. We know the Bible to be one hundred percent truth, and to not include it in a sermon is to risk the truth of your sermon. But I also have the luxury of knowing you AJ and attending your College groups, so I know that you do base your sermons off the Bible, and include the Word in your preaching while finding a way to make it applicable and real to college students, many of whom sit in lectures and are told that the bible is a hoax, or that it is a historical book with nothing applicable or holy in it.
I think most of all, I appreciated you saying that it is not up to the pastor to bring people to church. His only job is to preach what the Lord puts on his heart, and let the Lord draw the people to the message they need to hear. In other words, Christ’s church is stronger because he puts different messages on the hearts of different people. I think this is a message that not only speaks to preachers, but to everyone. Do what the Lord tells you, and let the Lord draw people to you.
Posted on 12-Apr-07 at 9:52 am | Permalink