Training Preachers

An excerpt from my seminar at the annual Evangelical Ministry Assembly in London.

NB, this was to encourage people with an existing strong foundation of biblical exegesis to go further with their preaching training. It is not intended to suggest a replacement for the crucial task of training in Bible knowledge and Bible preaching. 

I find it so much easier to prioritise skills and activities in Christian leadership than to deliberately work at my heart. To watch doctrine more closely than life. For those of us who train others it is similarly easy to allow activity and skill to outweigh concentration on life and heart because it is easier to measure. We think it is much easier to teach someone to preach Isaiah than how to be a preacher who exemplifies humility and a spirit of forgiveness.

For the first years I ran preaching trainings they were almost exclusively dedicated to expository accuracy and skill. Because that is the result we want to produce, right? Accurate word handling is, of course, absolutely crucial. But with the eyes of hindsight I am shocked at what we didn’t teach our preachers. What we simply assumed.

We didn’t teach them:

• How to fast and pray over their preparation, worshipping over the Bible
• That understanding is for the purpose of close application to life which in turn is for the purpose of adoration
• How to have hearts that are steadfast in pursuing happiness in God
• How to be disciples who walk in repentance and faith when the subtle traps that are peculiar to preachers emerge to trip them up
• How to not put themselves on pedastals and to avoid the cover up that accompanies thinking that our job depends on an appearance of sinlessness
• How to lead out a heart of forgiveness
• How to marvel and wonder and adore. I taught that the Bible was for spiritual education rather than gospel transformation by the power of the Holy Spirit
• Most importantly I didn't prioritise training them in godly character

These days whenever I am training preachers and leaders we begin everything with how to live in the love of God, how to receive his grace, the importance of humble character and servanthood. These foundations subsequently undergird everything else we teach, all the way through, like letters running through a stick of rock. We want to train people to be preachers who are full of the Galatians 5 fruit of the Spirit, who radiate love.

You might think “well can you train in that?” Yes, you can because 2 Tim 3:16 says the word trains us in righteousness and Titus 2:12 says that grace teaches us to say “no” to all ungodliness.

I have a nasty suspicion that it led to John 5:39 Bible reading rather than Acts 17 Bible reading. “you diligently study the scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life.” Rather than “receiving the message with great eagerness and examining the scriptures every day to see whether it is true.”

Here is the heart of the problem: we had taken a great means of grace and a critical support for life and faith and the crucial tool of our ministry – Bible understanding – and had turned it into the end, rather than the means to the end. We told ourselves we were mature Christians because we were educated rather than because we delighted ourselves in the Lord. We turned our devotions into comprehension exercises.

We thought we were good preachers because of knowledge and technique. Lack of knowledge and technique do not a good preacher make. However, knowledge and technique alone do not a good preacher make because they tempt us to do ministry in our own strength. When God says “not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit.” We had stepped out of a God-centred spirituality into a man-centred one. When you train yourself and others to preach, can I ask whether you spend more time on your skills or on your love?

2 Peter 1 says that if we are growing in godly character this prevents us from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. All preachers note well: we can have knowledge of God that is true but is ineffective and unproductive if we are not growing in Spirit-filled character.

Comments

[Steve Palf]

Hi Marcus

Thanks for this really helpful post. I agree totally that 'knowledge and technique alone do not a good preacher make because they tempt us to do ministry in our own strength'.

Having been involved in some of the Preaching Persuasively conferences that you might (or might not - you're much older than me Marcus:-) ) be referring to I think it's probably worth saying that I did learn some of those other lessons even when they weren't the focus of the content of the teaching because I knew my teachers well enough and they were open enough to share their lives with me. I'm sure there was plenty of youthful arrogance and an unhelpful pride in narrowly defined 'good sermons' but I always understood that the eagerness to handle the text properly was coming from a desire to hear God clearly in order that we might know and love him well. In fact as you point out it's hearing the gospel of grace clearly in the Bible which teaches the warm hearted godliness that we all long for.

At the end of the waffle I'm not sure what I'm saying. Maybe just that because we're always learning stuff in the Christian life it's easy to look back at training we did before and think it wasn't effective or useful, but we should be cautious about that because God uses his word (even when badly handled or taught with wrong emphasis) to produce fruits of godliness in his people - even ones which aren't as fully developed in the teachers as they might be.

Keep up the good work Marcus!
Steve

[Marcus]

Hi Steve

I hope you didn't think I said that the trainings weren't helpful or useful. We were doing our best and we DID help people get into the Bible. Just that with hindsight and distance it is easier to see what we didn't do as well as what we did. Some of the trainings were good but were good but incomplete.

But it was all we knew how to do so of course we THOUGHT they were sufficient. The danger of that was that we could stop learning outside of the preaching skill set we already knew how to produce. After all it is very difficult to feel able to teach areas that you are unaware of! I ran Preaching Persuasively for a number of years here at our place, and it was in that context that some of these lessons were learned. At the end I don't think our exegetical and expository work were worse off as a result of building in these other things - I think they were better because of the express context of love, grace and application in which they took place.

I like your last comment Steve. I agree that God produces fruit in and through people who don't get things right all the time. Because it is him who produces the fruit and the agency he uses to do it isn't us being correct, so much as us having hearts that are for him. The disciples were basically incorrect a lot of the time. They still didn't know who Jesus really was by the time they got to the upper room after 3 years with him!

Warm best wishes. Hope everything is going well for you

[John Allister]

I completely agree, Marcus. So much of the preaching training I have come across hardly mentions prayer or godliness. See, for example, my comments on Haddon Robinson's Expository Preaching.

[Anonymous]

Hi Marcus

I think you make a very interesting point that is worthy of consideration for not only preachers, but for all christians in general. Particularly, as you so rightly point out, that there is a very strong need to ensure that those who are expounding the word of God are, themselves, able also to 'hear it' and act accordingly.

You tell us that "These days whenever your training preachers and leaders that you begin everything with how to live in the love of God, how to receive his grace, the importance of humble character and servanthood". And you go on to say that "These foundations subsequently undergird everything else we teach, all the way through, like letters running through a stick of rock". You say you want to train people to be preachers who are "full of the Galatians 5 fruit of the Spirit, who radiate love".

This is biblically the correct approach to being 'In christ' and one would assume that this process is automatic. However, like you, I have also spent many years encouraging people to get up close and personal with God rather like Jacob who wrestled with the Angel and as a result gained fundamental insight into a personal revelation of God and his love for example:' Whom the Lord Loves He Chastens be zealous therefore and repent' To be a son of God is to walk humbly in his presence daily not just on Sundays and to recognise God at work in our own hearts through the person of The Holy Ghost.

Another point I would like to add is that people (Christians) are so used to being imitators of the word that they tend to utilize other peoples personal experiences to the extent that they remain shallow in their christian experience over time and never actually have any Biblical experiences of their own and therefore do not develop that closeness that you yourself have also alluded to.

My prayer for the church and for preachers is that they may ALL come to a true knowledge of Jesus Christ in their daily walk and that they will not neglect these things lest they fall foul of favouritism, popularity, fame or Pharasaism which is ungodly.

May God truly Bless You in continuing this work.