This morning, I asked my students to list for me the difficulties they find in systematic expository preaching, having identified the benefits yesterday. Today was the last day of the conference and I will be posting my usual daily a report at The Brands. Here’s a picture of the fantastic group I have been working with here in Khartoum, followed by their list.

1. Finding out the background to Bible passages because we don’t have any commentaries or study aids

2. Being disciplined to read the passage many times to get familiar with it.

3. It’s much more demanding in terms of time and effort and calls for sacrifices.

4. Breaking the passage down simply enough to teach my people.

5. Discovering the main theme, the big idea, of the passage.

6. Having enough time to do the preparation this approach demands.

7. Deciding how big or small a portion of Scripture to preach from.

This morning, I asked those taking part in the Preacher’s Workshop here in Khartoum, to list for me the benefits of systematic expository preaching as I have been teaching, encouraging and modelling now for three years.   I hadn’t intended to publicise the results but I was so encouraged by what I heard that I thought I would share them here.  Remember, three years ago they had never heard these terms  and  the whole idea was alien to them.  This afternoon, one of the young Pastors shared how he has recently taken his church through Galatians systematically in four months!   Believe me, it makes all the hard work involved more than worthwhile.

I have sometimes edited the words slightly for the sake of better English but left the sentiment unchanged.

1.    It gives me a process by which I can organise and plan my preaching

2.    It puts strength into my preaching

3.    It is easier for the congregation to understand as I link with the previous section and now they are eagerly anticipating the next section

4.    It helps the preacher connect with and demonstrate the oneness of God’s Word

5.    It gives me an inexhaustible supply of preaching material

6.    It keeps me in the context of the text

7.   It focusses the preacher on the text itself and stops me “beating the bush”

8.    It helps the preacher go deeper into the Word

9.    It guards against random, topical preaching which has damaged our churches

10.    My people remember the sermons better

And my favourite:

11.    It makes me preach the Book not about the Book

I am posting daily updates on my family website and have posted some photos here.

What a timely read this has been for me as I have been here in Khartoum encouraging Sudanese church workers to devote themselves to expository preaching. Daily posts from Khartoum are on my family website.

John Stott’s ‘The Preacher’s Portrait’ was first published in 1961 but I confess I only became aware of it in recent months. How I wish I had read it at the start of my ministry.

There are at least two good reasons why this book should be read by everyone involved in or even contemplating the preaching ministry.

1. Drawing his material directly from the Scriptures, as you would expect, Stott paints five graphic word pictures about the nature and role of the preacher.

a. The Steward, whose main responsibility is to the household faith, and who needs to be responsible to the householder, to the ‘goods’ he is stewarding and to the members of the household. He highlights the steward’s incentive, message, authority and discipline and I especially liked this quote on the latter, “we shall need in particular to apply ourselves to the verse or passage selected for exposition from the pulpit. We shall need strength of mind to eschew short cuts. We must spend time studying our text with painstaking thoroughness, meditating on it, worrying at it as a dog with a bone, until it yields its meaning; and sometimes this process will be accompanied by toil and tears.” One of my mantras here in the preachers’ workshop is preaching is hard work.

b. The Herald, whose focus is on the whole world not just the household of faith and whose ministry involves “historical proclamation, theological evaluation, ethical summons”. Stott quotes James Stewart who wrote, “preaching exists, not for the propagating of views, opinions and ideals, but for the proclamation of the mighty acts of God”. In a careful exposition of 2 Cor. 5:18-21, Stott draws out the implications of the role of the herald who is an ambassador for Christ.

c. The Witness, who bears witness “before the world….to the Son….by the Father….through the Holy Spirit….and the Church”. For me this was the most helpful of five very helpful chapters and is, I fear, an often neglected aspect of the preacher’s role.

d. The Father. Warning against wrong applications of a father’s role to ministry, Stott nonetheless shows from a variety of texts that the role of the preacher demands that, like a father, we need to be “understanding in our approach….gentle in our manner….simple in our teaching….earnest….an example…conscientious in our prayers.”

e. The Servant. Drawing from 1 Cor.3:5 and 1:17-2:5, Stott shows how the servant needs power for effective service and that power is to be found in the Word of God, the cross of Christ and the person and fellowship of the Holy Spirit. On the preacher’s part, experiencing such power necessitates personal holiness and humility.

Stott is unequivocal in his conviction that the preacher’s responsibility is to hold forth the words of God. His own personal confidence in the preached word is manifest as is the priority he gives to the preaching of the Word. “….our task as Christian preachers is not subserviently to answer all the questions which men put to us; nor to attempt to meet all the demands which are made on us; nor hesitantly to make tentative suggestions to the philosophically minded; but rather to proclaim a message which is dogmatic because it is divine.”

2. The second reason why this book is a ‘must’ for all practicing and would-be preachers is that here is a master class in exposition but especially in careful exegesis and the painting of word pictures. In Stott’s hands the words he is studying come alive with vividness and clarity as he draws out their different uses in the world of the Bible and in the Word of God.

My only complaint about the book, and it seems churlish to mention it, is Stott’s almost passing allusion to his own belief in the Gap Theory. He speaks of the Word of God that was spoken into the primeval chaos of millions of years ago. However, don’t let that passing discrepancy put you off such an excellent study.

In the goodness of the Lord the mission guest house I’m staying in here in Khartoum has Internet access in every room!  It’s a bit intermittent and slow but, as I’m able, I plan to posting a daily journal of my time here and especially the Preachers’s Workshops which start tomorrow, on our family website.    Rather than two posts a day on two sites I’ll keep this up until I return home and it would be so encouraging if you were able to follow events here and pray.

I am taking advantage of the Internet facilities in the air-conditioned lounge at Doha International Airport, Qatar, on my way to Khartoum to post this latest book review.

In pursuit of my goal of reading one preaching related book a week I am currently reading books about preachers in order to learn about preaching from their example.

Alister McGrath’s biography of James Packer, ‘To Know and Serve God’ has been a fascinating and enlightening read on a number of fronts but, I must confess, not very strong on Packer as a preacher. In fact only some three of more than 300 pages focus on this aspect of Packer’s ministry, something which I found disappointing.

What it did bring out was that his first sermon as an Anglican Curate was on Matthew 5:3 and led the young daughter of his Vicar to comment, “He’s a better preacher than Daddy, isn’t he?” The Vicar’s main encouragements to the developing preacher were that he needed to lighten up a little.

Packer’s long ministry provides a running commentary for some of the most significant developments in evangelicalism in the second half of the 20th century in UK and, to a certain extent in North America, and McGrath has structured his record of Packer’s life by providing a chronological record of the significant milestones in his ministry and their links with wider happenings on the church scene. He records the painful process leading to the establishment of Trinity College in Bristol in the 70s and his engagements with such issues as the Keswick holiness teaching and the burgeoning charismatic movement. Indeed it strikes me that given Packer’s significant involvement in so much that happened through the years reading his life is a necessary companion to any account of the period.

Packer is, of course, better known as a theologian or, as McGrath prefers to call him, a theologiser, than a preacher, and I found some of his recorded views and statements invaluable and memorable. Take, for example, his summing up of the uniqueness of Christianity, “Christianity is a religion of revelation received; all other faiths are religions of revelation rejected.” Or his definition of the importance of inerrancy, “total trustworthiness as a result of entire truthfulness”; or infallibility, “complete reliability, neither misled or misleading”.

McGrath’s style of writing is hugely readable and engaging and he writes with enormous sympathy for his subject. Indeed, my main criticism of the biography would be that it is, if anything, rather uncritical of his subject. Without exception he jumps to Packer’s defence in the various controversies he got involved in and most notably in what was perhaps the most controversial issue of all, the ‘Evangelicals and Catholics Together’ paper of 1994. McGrath, sometimes quoting Packer but sometimes writing on his own behalf, is, at times for my liking, too broad in his terminology, including Roman Catholics more than once in his definition of Christian denominations on a par with Protestants. Packer himself defended his unpopular stand by maintaining that the “slide into secularism and paganism that is so much a mark of current culture” necessitated an “alliance of all who love the Bible and its Christ”. He spoke of those who, in McGrath’s words, ” trust and love the Lord Jesus Christ on both sides of the Reformation” knowing “that they are united in him, making some kind of collaboration entirely proper.”

Personally, I would have liked to see McGrath make a much clearer defence of the distinctions between those on either side of the Reformation, something he could easily have done without in any way diminishing his obvious and perfectly understandable respect of Packer. Having said that, this is a great account of a great and influential servant of God of our times and necessary reading for anyone who really wants to understand those times.

I am unlikely to be able to post much over the next two weeks as I am going to be in Khartoum, Sudan, working with the Africa Inland Church there; the main focus being an annual Preachers’ Workshop that I will have the great privilege of leading for the third year in a row. Internet access will be very limited if available at all and time will also be very limited so I may not get the chance to post anything. I would covet the prayers of my many blog friends and I look forward to sharing with you how God has been at work after I return home on Monday 6th August.

Dr Grogan has graciously pointed out a serious typo in my ‘Preacher’s Choice’ post.   He is in fact only in his early 80s and not, as I mistakenly said, his early 90s.  Sincerest apologies

The Preacher’s Choice

I am particularly delighted this week to bring you the choice of Dr Geoffrey Grogan, who was the greatly loved and respected Principal of the Bible Institute in Glasgow during my student days there. Having taught at the London Bible College as well for several years he has had a massive input into the lives of countless Christian workers over the years and, as I can personally testify, continues to impact many of them through his prayers. Dr Grogan is the author of numerous books and now in his early 80s continues to write.

I have found it difficult to select the ten books which have most influenced me. Some virtually chose themselves, but others that mean much to me clamoured for admission but had to be excluded. Here is my eventual choice, arranged in roughly the order of my first reading of them, with concentration mostly on those which influenced me before the age of forty (the exception is Knowing God):

1. C. S. Lewis Beyond Personality (now incorporated in Mere Christianity). I read this one day in 1945 and that evening, by God’s grace, put my trust in Christ. I had been reared in a distinctly liberal church, but through other influences my heart had been deeply moved towards Christ. God used this book to remove some major obstacles to faith for me.

2. Ruth Paxson, The Wealth, Walk and Warfare of the Christian. This made me realise that a Bible book that can be read in twenty minutes (The Epistle to the Ephesians) actually contains riches beyond plumbing and showed me that my whole life should be one long practical exploration and communication of all that God has stored up in Christ for His people.

3. J. Ernest Rattenbury, The Evangelical Doctrines of Charles Wesley`s Hymns. This made me aware of the great theological and devotional riches of great hymns, led me to feed on them, and made me for ever impatient of any hymns or worship songs which lack biblical substance.

4. A. J. Gossip, In the Secret Place of the Most High . Here I learned what a privilege prayer is. I was especially helped by the chapter entitled, “On thinking magnificently about God.”

5. Andrew Murray, Abide in Christ . I had long been fascinated and challenged by John 15 and Romans 6 and this book took me deeply into them. Some readers have found it to induce too much introspection, but it was what I needed at the time.

6. James Denney, The Death of Christ. Over against the inadequacies of the Moral Influence view on which I had been reared, this showed me how seriously God takes sin and how decisively and in what a costly manner He has dealt with it at the cross.

7. Edmund Clowney, Preachng and Biblical Theology. This made me realise how indispensable biblical theology is to a preaching ministry and gave me a life-long interest in it.

8. Oswald T. Allis, Prophecy and the Church. Soon after I was converted I was strongly influenced by dispensationalists. I was never completely comfortable with this point of view, and I found this book’s criticisms of it totally compelling.

9. C. H. Dodd, According to the Scriptures. Some will be surprised to find one of Dodd’s books listed. I find his views on wrath and propitiation and his extreme realised eschatology unacceptable, but gladly acknowledge that I found this book, on the New Testament use of the Old Testament, wholly positive and helpful.

10. J. I.Packer, Knowing God. Among many other things, this book confirmed my belief that the doctrine of adoption is badly neglected to the impoverishment of God’s people.

Thank you for asking me to do this. It has proved an interesting exercise

I have been collecting arguments for an expository style of preaching and I thought I would share them with you here over the next few weeks. I would love to add your reasons as well if you would send them to me. For myself? I am not sure I can add to such comprehensive coverage, but who knows…..?

The first set of arguments comes from Peter Adam, Principal of Ridley College, Melbourne, Australia, and is courtesy of the Biblical Theology Briefings

1. Preaching through the books of the Bible, verse by verse, chapter by chapter, respects and reflects God’s authorship. God did not gives us a book of quotable quotes, nor a dictionary of useful texts, nor an anthology of inspiring ideas. When God caused the Scriptures to be written the medium that he used was that of books of the Bible. If that was good enough for the author it should be good enough for the preacher.

2. Expository Preaching reflects God’s respect for human authors. One of the most beautiful features of the Bible is the way in which God causes his truth to be written and yet does not over-ride the individual writer, but respects their place in history, their vocabulary, their spoken and literary style. If God is so careful to respect the human authors of the Scriptures we should endeavour to do the same by reading, studying, preaching and teaching their books in the order in the way in they wrote them.

3. Expository Preaching respects the historical context of each part of the Bible. The Bible is not a set of timeless truths removed from historical context, but each book of the Bible is firmly rooted in history, and the perspective of its human author. We do most justice to this historical context when we preach texts in their context, that is in the writing in which they occur.

4. Expository Preaching respects the context of salvation history. The unfolding drama of salvation is brought to us within salvation history; and each text, verse, chapter and book has its place within that salvation history. The best way to preach these books is to link them to their place in salvation history, not to extract from them trans-historical, theological, pastoral or devotional themes.

5. Expository Preaching should help us to unfold the deep Biblical Theology of the Bible, the content and message of God’s unfolding revelation, and seeing every part of the Bible in the light of the gospel of Christ, and the message of the whole Bible.

6. Expository Preaching preserves Biblical shape and balance. It gives the same focus and concentration that God gives in the Bible. Other people’s topical preaching inevitably misses this balance. It is more difficult to see the same imbalance in our own topical preaching!

7. Expository Preaching ensures that we preach on difficult topics, verses and books. I would not choose to preach from the text ‘I hate divorce’ unless forced to do so by a sermon series on Malachi. I would not choose to preach on Romans 9-11, but preaching my way right through Romans forces me to do so. Lectionaries are no help, because modern lectionaries seem to go out of their way to avoid difficult topics, even cutting poems and stories in half to avoid embarrassment. Expository Preaching will at least make us preach on the difficult parts of the Bible.

8. Expository Preaching saves time in preparation and presentation. Preachers need to do a lot of work in preparing their sermons and finding the historical context, and need to convey the context of verses in which they preach in the sermon as well. If we move from text to text as we move from sermon to sermon, or if we move from text to text within sermons, we will be less and less inclined to give the context of those texts and more and more inclined to take them out of context. [Of course ‘the text’ is actually the whole book: only preachers think of ’the text’ as a short extract!]

9. Expository Preaching provides a good model of exegesis. We ought to preach and teach the Bible in a way in which we hope people will read it. People should pick up good models of using the Scripture from us. We do not want to encourage people to flip through the Bible, picking out verses that look encouraging or inviting. If we want people to read the Bible as it is written, that’s the way we should preach it.

10. In Expository Preaching each sermon forms part of a divine sequence. The sequence is that of the writer of the book of the Bible. Following this sequence means that our teaching and their learning is cumulative as each sermon prepares the way for the next, and each sermon summarises the message of the last and shows its sequence in biblical thought.

11. Expository Preaching makes sense! Even the most convinced post-modernists among us still read books from beginning to end. This is because it’s a remarkably sensible way of reading a book. Why would we adopt a different model in our reading and teaching of the Scriptures?

12. Expository Preaching teaches people the Bible. Its assumption is that the Bible is relevant and effective as it comes from the mouth of God. It assumes that the information in the Bible is important for us; that these things were ‘written for our learning’.

13. Expository Preaching provides an accessible, useable and safe model of Bible teaching and preaching. If one of our tasks is to encourage lay people in ministry, then the best thing to do is to provide them with a model of teaching which they can use at any level. It is not good to encourage people to flip through the Bible, taking their favourite verses out of context. It is a good work to show the people a model of Bible teaching that they can use to their benefit and the benefit of those who learn from them.

14. Expository Preaching helps people to avoid repeating their ten favourite themes. Every preacher has ten sermons. The difficulty comes for the preacher and the congregation when they are repeated for the tenth time. Of course, no method can stop the determined preacher from mounting a hobby horse and riding it to death!

15. Expository Preaching follows God’s syllabus for us. One helpful way of viewing the Bible is to see it as God’s syllabus. In it God lays out the way of salvation and what human beings need to learn in order to turn to Jesus Christ in faith and obedience. The Bible is the syllabus that God has provided – why would we replace it with another of our own invention?

A brief browse round the web this week:

Desiring God..and Calvin…encourage us to read more and The Blazing Centre has some excellent reading recommendations as well.

Talking of books, here’s a fascinating resource I came across this week though costwise it may be of more use to my North American friends

Great idea for a coffee cup! ….. and another

Sermons with scaffolding