Editor’s note: This interview with Walter C. Kaiser Jr. was conducted while he was serving as president of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, South Hamilton, Massachusetts, United States.
Tom Dombrowski (TD): During your years of teaching and leading in theological education, what would you note as the biggest changes and developments you witnessed?
Walter Kaiser (WK): The biggest change I have seen is in the proclamation of the Word of God. Furthermore, there is an attempt to move away from actually teaching the biblical materials and talking about the Bible, going paragraph after paragraph and strophe after strophe, laying out for God’s people, “This is what He said.” I’m a great fan of expository preaching, which is that method where the actual content of the message and the shape of the message are really dictated by the biblical context itself. That keeps us away from doing a sort of pop psychology, which could be no different than a motivational speech for leaders.
TD: What do you believe has been the catalyst for these developments?
WK: I think it’s been an attempt to meet the needs of people where they are; therefore there has been an attempt to settle for sort of popular questions: How can I be what I want to be? How do I know what God’s plan for me is? How can I be a better leader? All of these are proper questions, but that’s not the whole counsel of God.
Amos 8:11, 12 has impressed me very, very much. He writes, “I will send a famine, not a famine of food and water, but a famine for hearing the Word of God” [paraphrase]. Although there are some beautiful exceptions, we’re in one of the largest drought periods we’ve ever been in for hearing the Word of God.
TD: Is that due to training or is it just the culture we live in, that it’s just so hard to listen in our world?
WK: I’m not sure. Many have told me, “Thanks for your training. I know what you’ve taught us, but we really feel we need to go this way because that’s how we can get the new seekers into the house of God, and keep them.” I think preaching has been reduced to what is the lowest common denominator everyone will accept and at which no one will take offense.
TD: In your book, Preaching and Teaching From the Old Testament: A Guide for the Church, you wrote about how “the church has made great strides forward based on aspects of the church growth movement and has learned from some of the mega-church groups how to attract the younger generations back into the house of God,” yet you go on to say, “the largest challenge that remains is how those same churches can develop a new appetite for the hearing and doing of the Word of God.”* What role does seminary education play in helping pastors to respond to the challenge of helping the church develop a new appetite for hearing and living the Word of God?
WK: I think once a person comes to really hear genuine expository preaching, they never go back to a substitute. You can have imitation ice cream, then have real ice cream. Once you’ve had real ice cream, you ignore the imitation.
We should be seeker sensitive, using the word seeker for the new convert who’s coming in, but I don’t think we should be seeker controlled in the way in which we form the message and develop the plan for teaching God’s people.
TD: You’ve been a seminary president. Did you try to address this challenge in your leadership position?
WK: Over the years, I have tried to emphasize the preaching courses. I have also been trying to fill a need that we have in evangelical theology by developing a PhD program in preaching.
I also attempted to make the whole faculty aware of expository preaching and therefore introduced the practice of the president’s Wednesday chapel—this will be my eighteenth semester in which I have gone through a different book each semester and tried to exhibit what expository preaching is all about.
TD: What role should preaching play in the overall body life of the congregation?
WK: Preaching is not the total end-all to serve God. It seems to me the whole program of the church must be thought through entirely—from the total worship experience to the preaching experience to the discipleship experience. And I think there is a continuum through all of those. Unfortunately, what we have are culture wars with about five generations at the same time, all wanting a different form of music. What we have done is break up our congregations in terms of age areas, what we lose is the concept of body in which the younger members minister to the older and the older ones minister to those who are younger. The other thing is pastors are concerned about music conflicts. They have turned the music over to worship teams who have a knowledge of guitar and basic piano. But the concept of what worship is—how that is ingrained with the preaching experience and how to get not only praise elements, but lament elements and prayer elements and the whole of the spread of what’s involved in genuine worship—is brand new. Therefore, it seems to me that pastors have got to be pastors and shepherds of the flock, even in the worship experience.
TD: What contribution does expository preaching make to foster church growth?
WK: Expository preaching really helps because, as Deuteronomy 8 says, men and women don’t live by bread alone, but “ ‘by every word that proceeds from the mouth’ ” of God [v. 3, NKJV]. So, if you’re going to talk about life, you’re going to talk about growth. Growth and life can’t come unless you’re being fed. And God’s people have got to be given a new experience with a new portion of God’s Word. Both the minister and those ministered to have got to grow.
TD: How can ministers use expository preaching in an evangelistic context when topical preaching would appear to be more the standard approach?
WK: You can use both as you have key passages to explain. My complaint with topical preaching is that it’s just hit and miss, and people don’t know the context. So many people are biblically illiterate today, that a mere allusion to a reference won’t do it; therefore, we’ve got to take them to it. I know I’m overbalanced on expository preaching. I say, “People should preach topically, once every five years,” and then I pause, then say, “Repent and come back to expository preaching.”
I taught a doctor of ministry class at another seminary where there were thirty in the class, seventeen different denominations, and I spoke in the first hour on what is expository preaching. In the lunch line, I heard one of the individuals say, “You know, I think I’m going to like this course.” There’s enough depravity in my soul that my ears perked up, and so the next thing I heard, I couldn’t believe. He said, “This suppository preaching is brand new.” He actually used that word, so I knew I had a big job ahead of me. There’s a man who needed a lot of preparation.
But at any rate, I think that you can do it. John 3 with Nicodemus, is a great expository chapter for that. Also, Acts 17 with Paul on Mars Hill is a great evangelistic message. Even coming at it from 1 Thessalonians 1 in which Paul talks about when he went to Thessalonica, what happened there, and that, as a result of their accepting the Lord, the Word of God was trumpeted forth from there all over Asia. So, in a way, Paul says, “You’ve kind of stolen my thunder, by the time I get there everyone knows what I’ve said.” So I think there are expository passages, but in my saner moments, there are topical ways of doing it.
TD: What would you say to a young ministerial student or someone new in the ministry about how to be more effective in their pulpit ministry?
WK: I can’t do it any better than Paul did with Timothy, 2 Timothy 4:2, “Preach the Word” (NIV). It’s not that this is a mantra or something magical. It is as 1 Thessalonians 1:4, 5 almost is in a formulaic way; the Word of God plus the ministry of the Holy Spirit to that Word equals the power of God. And for the power that we’re all looking for in the church and the ministry today, I would say if we’re going to trust God at all, we ought to trust the God who has spoken from heaven. What else do we have to say?
