As promised yesterday, here are Edward Lobb’s answers to the 10 Questions for Expositors.
1. Where do you place the importance of preaching in the grand scheme of church life?
Carefully prepared, faithful, biblical preaching is of the highest importance in church life. A church also needs to give priority to prayer, evangelism, training in discipleship and the training of new leaders and speakers, but without preaching the others will lack shape and direction. God rules and blesses his church though the preaching and teaching of His word.
2. In a paragraph, how did you discover your gifts in preaching?
Slowly, over a decade or two. People encouraged me and told me that I had a gift of clear communication of the Bible’s text and message; but I soon realised that such gift as I had needed to be worked at, hard, if it was to be of real usefulness. No gain without pain!
3. How long (on average) does it take you to prepare a sermon?
Between 10 and 15 hours for a half-hour sermon (depending on how much background reading I need to do).
4. Is it important to you that a sermon contain one major theme or idea? If so, how do you crystallise it?
Yes, I think it is vital for both the clarity and power of a sermon to have a ‘big idea’ which is clearly introduced, carefully explained and applied, and then ‘thrust home’. To crystallize it, I try to meditate long and hard on the text, always asking ‘What is the human author’s chief concern in this paragraph or section?’ If we can unearth the driving concern of the human author, we are unearthing God’s driving concern.
5. What is the most important aspect of a preacher’s style and what should he avoid?
Style: the preacher needs to be himself and not an imitator of someone else’s style (as far as possible). I think he should avoid manipulating people’s emotions, conveying the impression that he is a wonderful or important Christian, i.e. magnifying his own ministry. He should aim to be audible, unambiguous, to be gripped by his message (but so as to magnify his message rather than his being gripped by it!) He needs to be logically coherent and to have a message that cannot be mistaken or misunderstood. I like Campbell Morgan’s three priorities: truth, clarity and passion.
6. What notes, if any, do you use?
I almost always take a full script into the pulpit. I don’t say that all should do it, for some of our best preachers use very scant notes. I do it because a. I’m not confident that I can retain everything I want to say in my mind, and b. it helps me to be clear, concise and not over-wordy. Better to use 20 words clearly than 50 words unclearly.
7. What are the greatest perils that preacher must avoid?
Failure to be prayerful and utterly reliant on the Lord; an inflated view of oneself or one’s importance or abilities (anything that says ‘look at me’); failure to do sufficient hard work in preparation; failure to have confidence that the word itself will do the work for which God sent it; a lack of love for the people one is preaching to; a lack of a sense of the very great Being whose Word and Gospel we proclaim. The preacher should often be saying within himself, ‘who is sufficient for these things?’
8. How do you fight to balance preparation for preaching with other important responsibilities (eg. pastoral care, leadership responsibilities)
Try to allocate blocks of time in your diary for preparation, and then stick to them - if necessary, going to a building or room where nobody knows where you are! We mustn’t be frightened of making ourselves inaccessible for a certain number of hours per week.
9. What books on preaching, or exemplars of it, have you found most influential in your own preaching?
(For books - see here.) For exemplars, I’ve found particularly challenging and inspiring examples in John Stott, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Dick Lucas, Don Carson and John Piper (and Billy Graham for his simplicity and straightforwardness).
10. What steps do you take to nurture or encourage developing or future preachers?
I run the Cornhill Training Course! I also try to spend time with individuals, encouraging them in their preaching and seeking to pass on tips and ideas.
A Prayer of George Whitefield:
““Yea…that we shall see the great Head of the Church once more . . . raise up unto Himself certain young men whom He may use in this glorious employ. And what manner of men will they be? Men mighty in the Scriptures, their lives dominated by a sense of the greatness, the majesty and holiness of God, and their minds and hearts aglow with the great truths of the doctrines of grace. They will be men who have learned what it is to die to self, to human aims and personal ambitions; men who are willing to be ‘fools for Christ’s sake’, who will bear reproach and falsehood, who will labor and suffer, and whose supreme desire will be, not to gain earth’s accolades, but to win the Master’s approbation when they appear before His awesome judgment seat. They will be men who will preach with broken hearts and tear-filled eyes, and upon whose ministries God will grant an extraordinary effusion of the Holy Spirit, and who will witness ‘signs and wonders following’ in the transformation of multitudes of human lives.”
