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.