A Practical Theology of Preaching

Photo by Mitchell Leach on Unsplash

A couple of years ago in the spring, during time alone with the Lord, I was enraptured by the beauty of the earth. I brought my binoculars to watch the birds, even though listening to them alone would have been enough. I gazed upon the splendor of the blue sky (with an occasional, foregrounded, and frothy cloud) and the vividness of the wildflowers. I thought about the devout and serious call to study God’s world and thereby glorify him. I even pondered what it would have been like to have pursued a career in the physical sciences—in particular, ornithology or astrophysics. Then, while speaking with the Lord, it hit me: As a preacher, I have been called to honor the Triune God through the serious and devout study of God’s word. 

Just as God the Father endowed the world with his rational designs (logoi) to direct humans to himself through the divine Logos (cf. Torstein Tollefsen, The Christocentric Cosmology of St. Maximus the Confessor, 2008, 2), so also God the Holy Spirit has inspired the word to guide humanity to the Father through the same Logos, Jesus Christ (John 16:13-15; Rom 5:1-5; 2 Tim 3:16; 2 Peter 1:20-21; cf. Acts 1:16; 3:18). Another way of saying this last point is that the word of God in Scripture leads us to the Word of God who became flesh in Jesus Christ. 

I begin by emphasizing Jesus/ the eternal Logos because humans, when they are found in him by the Holy Spirit, have freedom from sin and access to eternal happiness with God the Father (Romans 5–8). And preachers, first and foremost, should be people who have experienced this great salvation in Jesus Christ. Like St. Paul, they should exult in the grace they have received from God and, accordingly, seek to give him his due praise through everything that they do, especially through preaching (cf. 1 Cor 15:10-11). They should be so full of the Holy Spirit that they, through patient submission and grateful worship, rightly interpret and powerfully proclaim his inspired word to lead all people to the Father through life with Jesus Christ. I am only one such beneficiary of the gospel. The Triune God has called me to testify as a witness of his saving work in Jesus Christ. In this sense, I join myriad faithful biblical and historical preacher-witnesses, with whom I share a common salvation in Christ’s church and whom I will now consider in order to clarify my practical theology of preaching. 

Preaching with the Biblical Witnesses 

What it means to be a faithful preacher should be derived in a significant capacity from examples in Scripture itself (cf. James 5:10-11). Further, while preaching could and should be considered through a wide range of biblical terms, I will limit the scope of my ruminations in this article to the book of Acts and the verb kērussō (“I proclaim” or “I preach”), where we find perhaps the strongest model for preaching. 

The saints in Acts who preached were witnesses to the things they had experienced concerning Jesus Christ. The paradigmatic passage undergirding this assessment is Acts 10:34-43, where Peter unleashes a sermon at the house of Cornelius, and the Gentiles receive the Holy Spirit. 

The content of Peter’s preaching is Jesus Christ. That is to say, what he, as an eyewitness, had experienced concerning Jesus constituted the preaching event, especially when these things were poured forth in Spirit-guided words appropriate to the cultural setting. From this paradigmatic passage, we follow other preaching events in Acts and discover much of the same. The content or object of Philip’s preaching in Samaria is the Christ or Messiah (Acts 8:5). Not long after Saul’s/Paul’s pivotal moment with the risen Christ on the way to Damascus, he preaches Jesus in the synagogues with a unique focus on Jesus’s relationship to God the Father (Acts 9:20; cf. 19:13). In Acts 20:25 and 28:31, moreover, we find that Paul preaches the kingdom of God with particular attention to the Lord Jesus Christ and what Paul, as a testifying witness, had received from him (Acts 20:24). In addition to their status as witnesses, the paradigmatic preachers in Acts were full of the Holy Spirit and thus enabled to employ his inspired word—the Old Testament at this point—in order to point all people to Jesus Christ and the events surrounding his life, death, and resurrection (Acts 4:19-31; 13:16-41; cf. Luke 24:27).  

Therefore, although preachers today may not have duplicate, Acts-like empirical experiences of Jesus Christ, we can rightly say that we are like the biblical witnesses insofar as we have experienced a great salvation in Jesus Christ about which we testify and insofar as our preaching or testifying must center on Scripture/ the word. For it is Scripture that reveals and guides us to the saving truth about Jesus concerning his pre-existence as the divine Son with the Father and the Spirit, as well as his life, death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and appointment as the Judge of all humankind.

Preaching with the Church’s Historical Witnesses 

Like the biblical preachers in Acts, the Triune God has called today’s preachers to testify as witnesses of his saving work in Jesus Christ through the word. However, we also stand in continuity and communion with other preachers in the history of the church who have testified about Jesus through Scripture. I will cite a few examples of Christian thinkers who have been influential to me, in the hope that their insights might benefit others as well.    

Like Irenaeus of Lyons (130-202 AD), we have been entrusted with all the “members of the body of truth” (i.e., Scripture) to preach what is true about Jesus and so strengthen the church’s faith in him (Irenaeus, On the Apostolic Preaching 1; cf. Against Heresies, 1.8.1). Like Gregory of Nazianzus (329-390 AD), we have been called to preach the truth about Jesus “with fatherly compassion” and so protect Christians against false teachings that would decimate faith in the saving activity of the Holy Trinity (Gregory of Nazianzus, Orations 27.2). Like Martin Luther, we have been commissioned to preach the word by preaching Christ, for the preaching of Christ through the word is the “chief holy possession” of the church (Stephen J. Nichols, Martin Luther: A Guided Tour of His Life and Thought, 2002, 204, 216). Like Ellsworth Kalas (1923-2015), we are invariably tasked with preaching Christ through the word from a place of deep love for him in our souls (Preaching from the Soul, 2003, 33), for such preaching is compelling and offers genuine hope in Jesus to anyone who hears. 

Evident in all these comparisons is that today’s preachers are talking about the same God of Scripture who is drawing all things to himself in Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit. Therefore, we need not feel compelled to innovate or revolutionize as preachers. Rather, we participate in the life of the church and the communion of saints by giving glory to the same God who acted on behalf of the faithful ones before us. In other words, as preachers we are responsible for carrying a theological witness that is faithful to how God in Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit has operated in the life of the church and the world throughout salvation history.  

Carrying the Common Theological Witness of the Church

Thus, the primary criterion I want to put forward in terms of being a faithful preacher in contemporary society is that of common or consistent theological witness. Are we as preachers bearing witness to the same Triune God who moved among the Israelites in Egypt, the apostles in Acts, and the saints of church history? If I am to know who I am as a preacher of the word, I must be faithful to who God is, especially as revealed in the same word.

In my judgment, the “how to” of satisfying this theological criterion of faithfulness to God’s character in the preacher’s witness is best understood in terms of pneumatology. The modern preacher whose life is in Christ is full of the Holy Spirit who inspired Scripture. Consequently, he or she is gifted by the Spirit to speak the fullness of Christ through the word to the glory of God the Father (cf. Michael Pasquarello, Christian Preaching: A Trinitarian Theology of Proclamation, 2006, 31). The preacher thus participates in a divine knowledge of the Triune God and is, however mysteriously, inhabited by him (John 14:16-23; 17:3; cf. 1 Cor 2:1ff.). 

As a preacher full of the Spirit, then, the word is in me. By the Spirit, moreover, I have the love of the Father (Rom 5:5). And through the Spirit, I have the mind of Christ (1 Cor 2:16), which “has absorbed biblical truths and Christian presuppositions so thoroughly that it is able to view every issue from a Christian perspective and so reach a Christian judgment about it” (John Stott, Between Two Worlds: The Challenge of Preaching Today, 1982, 170). God’s nature and character—who he is—should be so fixed within me that I always speak from his perspective vis-à-vis any contemporary issue. Thus, I may consistently carry the historic, orthodox, and Trinitarian theological witness of the church by the Holy Spirit, who welcomes the love of the Father and the mind of Christ into my being. Through the word, I may preach and bear witness to God’s saving work in Jesus Christ from a place of profound closeness to him.

A Faithfully Practical Preacher

Given the above ontological considerations, I am now prepared to list two practical items concerning what it looks like to be a faithful preacher today. 

First, if God is in us, allowing us to be faithful witnesses to his character through Scripture, then what we are to preach should become such a part of us that we can proclaim it enthusiastically without reading from notes. This remark requires a great deal of biblical study, memorization, and time in the means of grace to know and be known by God. Taking such an approach to preaching comes with immense difficulties. I struggle to find the time for these moments.

However, preachers are called to do hard things. Otherwise, they would not have to depend on the grace of God and his inward witness in their hearts for fruitfulness in their efforts. To be clear, preaching from a manuscript is not wrong, and it does not necessitate a person not being united in love with the Holy Trinity. Nevertheless, the appearance could be that the manuscript-preacher lacks the kind of worshipful intimacy with the Lord that would generate or make possible a “note-less” conversation about him.  

Secondly, the preacher’s closeness to the Triune God conveys a sweet simplicity about the good news that he or she preaches: “I once was lost, but now I am found.” I once was without God in the world on account of my sin. But now, through Christ, I know God, and he dwells in me. As such, the practical process of preaching should be all about cutting, revising, and simplifying (while not being simplistic). Like my first consideration, this one is tough for me to fulfill. I get excited about the minute details. Nevertheless, it is generally incumbent upon me to boil preaching down to the problem of the human condition in Adam and the salvific solution for it in Jesus Christ (cf. Eugene L. Lowry on ambiguity and resolution in The Homiletical Plot: The Sermon as Narrative Art Form, 2001, 31). 

Conclusion

As a preacher of the word, the Triune God has called us to testify as witnesses of his saving work in Jesus Christ. By the Holy Spirit, we can become preachers whose hearts are the home of the Father and Son and thus who exist and function in continuity with the biblical, historical, and theological witness of the church. From this place of communion with the Triune God, we may preach salvation to sinners through the simple gospel without relying extensively on notes or manuscripts. From this same intimate relationship, we may know how Christ has located us in the church for its edification and therefore remain faithful to our callings. May we always worship and glorify Almighty God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.   

Benjamin J. Aich is an ordained elder in the Global Methodist Church and a Ph.D. student in Biblical Studies (NT) at Asbury Theological Seminary.