BOTH in the world and in the church today most preaching is considered trivial and irrelevant. The general level of preaching is at dangerously low ebb and as someone said not long ago, "Preaching is stagnating." The gap between the pulpit and the pew is so wide that it is not strange to find many people today thinking of preaching as something of the past. According to Paul Harvey, prominent American radio commentator, America has never had so many churches, and yet most of them are empty. America has never had so many preachers and yet most of them are ignored. Could it be that the basic cause for this tragic condition is the lack of a vital theology of preaching?
The following open letter to the World Council of Churches and the National Council of Churches reminding the leaders of the role of the church today appeared in the New York Times:
The church has been commissioned "to go out into the world" not to preach sociology but salvation; not economics but evangelism; not reform but redemption; not culture but conversion; not progress but pardon; not the new social order but the new birth; not resuscitation but resurrection; not a new organization but a new creation; not democracy but the gospel; not civilization but Christ. We are ambassadors not diplomats.1
This letter, signed by thousands of lay men, presents in perspective the dilemma prominent today as to the proper role of the church, the preacher, and the message. In the development of a practical theology of preaching three principal reasons for the decline in its effectiveness stand out.
1. "The sense of human peril" that should instill a sense of urgency on the part of the ministry seems to be waning.2
2. "The clergy's loss of confidence in the power of the spoken Word." 3
3. The clergy's attempt to use the church as a springboard of authority and power in influencing the social, economic, and political issues.
Let us consider these in reverse order. First, the clergy's attempt to use the church as a power structure. This pitfall has weakened the ethos of the ministry, causing the people to lose confidence in the church, the preacher, and his message. My Bible tells me that we are to be in the world but not of the world. When Jesus Christ was on earth, He could have jumped on the bandwagon and condemned the Roman oppressors and used His influence to move His believers, as a power structure, to coordinate the social, economic, and political issues of His day. But He refrained from doing this, for His mission was to reveal the Father and to bring hope and eternal salvation to a lost world.
The great majority of people today come to church to hear the Word of God. Entertainment is plentiful today; the news media are vast. People are busy, and time is valuable. They do not need to go to church to be entertained, to hear news commentaries, or lectures on the social, political, or economic situation of the nation and the world. Thinking men and women today resent the minister who uses his pulpit as a springboard to expound his views. They soon lose respect for the messenger and his message as they see him taking advantage of his position of influence in this way.
"The great menace to Christian preaching today is the tendency to dwell only on the things of this world. It looks as if in many places the gospel would be pushed out of the pulpit by the so-called application of Christianity to social problems. The true preacher must preach not only to the times but to the eternities. When he preaches to the eternities he is preaching to the times." 4 In other words the minister's main task is not to condone or condemn the social issues which prevail to day, but his task is to get to the root and the source of these evils and confront the times with the eternal principles of the gospel as found in the Bible.
Pitfall number two suggests the basic cause for the decline of preaching "The clergy's loss of confidence in the spoken Word." Most preachers today have a limited concept as to the integral part that the spoken Word has in God's revelation to man. The ministry today needs to grasp a higher concept of preaching. As ministers we need to understand that "preaching is not a natural activity, nor a joint action by two collaborators. It is the exercise of a sovereign power on the part of God and obedience on the part of man." 5 Preaching is in essence the Word of God which He Himself has spoken. Nevertheless, it has the dual elements of the human and the divine. The task of the minister is to be an ambassador to bear the message of the King of heaven. He is the human instrument; God is the source of His message.
Today's minister needs to approach the pulpit believing that God through His Spirit is speaking to the people through him. In his preaching "there must be a note of 'good news' that is 'proclaimed with authority' by a 'herald sent by God' who 'asserts something' 'openly, fearlessly,' and 'fully' in order to 'strengthen, challenge, and exhort' others to Jesus Christ. Such a theology will tap the deep wells of faith for the drought of our twentieth century preaching, will convict us in our lethargy, and will challenge us to action." 6 Finally, consider pitfall number one "the sense of peril," the sense of urgency. It is well to remember that we live in a condemned world of sorrow, pain, and death where every minute there are souls dying without hope and salvation. As the judgment is taking place and the time of the end nears, we need to rekindle the sense of urgency that moved men like Richard Baxter, the famous Puritan preacher, to say, "Preach as never sure to preach again as a dying man to a dying world." "With this passion for souls we should mount our pulpits with the awful feeling that under God's appointment we are dealing with men in terms of life and death." 7
Surely the gap between the pulpit and the pew need not exist if God's messengers know and preach the King and His mes sage. They can confront this generation with the authority, the power, and the answer of Him who said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life."
1. Thompson Kerr, Ph.D., representative of Clergymen's Committee of New York, "An Open Letter to WCC and NCC," New York Times, Nov. 18, 1968; p. 12.
2. Kyle Haselden, The Urgency of Preaching (New York, Harper & Row), 1963, p. 35.
3. Ibid.
4. Clarence Macartney, "Suggestions to Students of Homiletics," The Ministry, Washington, D.C., July, 1968, p. 9.
5. Karl Earth, The Preaching of the Gospel, Philadelphia, Westminster Press, 1963, p. 16.
6. Paul Eppinger, "Be Occupied With Preaching," Christianity Today, June 9, 1967, p. 14.
7. Haselden, op. cit., p. 19.
