A Philosophy of Preaching
A personal word from Steven Smith
Nearly twenty years ago I wrote a book called Dying to Preach. Its argument is simple: every preacher who is dying to preach must die in order to preach. Die to self, to performance, to the need to be impressive.
This philosophy grew out of my dissertation, and out of a desire to put a name to my own struggle with insecurity and pride. These are struggles for preachers because they are struggles for Christians. Pride says I am more than enough. Insecurity wonders whether I am enough. Surrender is the enemy of both, because both fall under the weight of the cross.
Death is where the text comes alive
Maybe the best preaching verse in the Bible is 2 Corinthians 4:12, where Paul describes his ministry as working death in him but life in them. That is the pattern of Christian ministry, and it is the pattern of preaching. Something in the preacher has to die so that something in the people can live.
This is not a technique. It is a posture, and I think of it as surrender in four directions.
Surrender to God. This is the personal choice to abide in Christ. But it is more. It is surrender to what God has said preaching is. The sermon is not ours. We are stewards of a gift we did not create, called to a task we did not choose for ourselves. That frees us from having to carry it as if everything depended on us.
Surrender to the text. The preacher’s job is to re-present the substance, structure, and spirit of the passage, not to bend it toward what we already wanted to say. When we submit to the text, it starts to shape us before it ever shapes the sermon.
Surrender to the needs of people. Their need to hear the text is more important than my need to preach it. Surrender means letting their need, not our reputation, decide what matters on Sunday.
Surrender to the task of preaching. Preaching is hard work, week after week. Surrender means accepting the labor gladly, and refusing the shortcuts that would make the work easier but the preacher smaller.
Taken together, these surrenders describe the preaching I want to give my life to: Presence-Centered, dependent on the presence of God; Text-Driven; and People-Focused.
This is my passion, and frankly, part of my own struggle. I always struggle with preaching. When I live to preach, I struggle alone. When I die to preach, I follow the pattern of Jesus, who always brings life from death.
Finding the ceiling
Every preacher has a ceiling. Not a limit on what God can do, but a place where our preaching has stopped growing. Sometimes it is a habit we can’t hear in ourselves. Sometimes it is a weakness in how we handle the text. Sometimes it is fear.
It takes humility to see the ceiling, and most of us can’t see it alone. That is where a mentor helps. Not by handing you a formula, and never by writing your sermon, but by helping you find the ceiling and lift it, so the gifts you steward are used to their full potential.
Freedom to preach
The irony is that this is when we preach best. When the self-imposed pressure falls away, we stop preaching to prove something. The text lives in us, our people are encouraged, and preaching becomes what it was meant to be: a joy, not a weight.
That is what I want for every pastor I work with.
The book
If you want to go further, Dying to Preach (Kregel) lays out the full argument. View on Amazon
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Get in touchSteven W. Smith