Video is now online of Jeff Purswell’s message “The Pastor’s Teaching,” recorded at our 2009 Pastors Conference in April.

Teaching from 2 Timothy 2:15, Jeff said, “The governing priority for the faithful pastor is devotion to the teaching of God’s Word.” One implication of this governing priority is the important connection between the pastor’s teaching and the pastor’s leadership of a church.

What follows is the video and an outline of the message (with timestamps).

The Pastor's Teaching from Sovereign Grace Ministries on Vimeo.

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Message outline:

Introduction [2:25]

“The governing priority for the faithful pastor is devotion to the teaching of God’s Word” [11:52]

Three characteristics that should mark the life of the one whose governing priority is the teaching of God’s Word:

1. Diligent labor [21:18]

2. Divine awareness [31:03]

3. Careful exposition [37:55]

“Your teaching is the primary expression of your leadership.” [44:53]

Correct meaning and clear communication [48:54]

Minimum standard requirements for rightly handling the Word:

A. Is the biblical text providing the substance for my preaching, teaching, and leadership? [51:33]

B. Am I using individual texts in a way that is consistent with their intended purpose? [53:04]

C. Am I accurately understanding and faithfully communicating the meaning of texts? [53:54]

D. Am I accurately and compellingly impressing upon people the appropriate response to texts of Scripture? [56:53]

Personal implications [58:04]

Team implications:

First, let us set out to create on our pastoral teams a company of expositors. [60:42]

Second, we must preserve the preaching of the Word as the pinnacle of our Sunday meetings. [64:46]

Third, look across the landscape of your church and ask: Is every sphere and ministry receiving regular pastoral leadership in the form of teaching? [66:00]

Conclusion [66:50]

I am no musician. I play no part in a choir or a musical team. I do love words, and as a sidebar to my job I get to participate in editing worship song lyrics. But there you reach the limits of my musical gifting.

Even so, my friend Bob Kauflin recently invited me to speak at the WorshipGod09 conference and to address an audience populated by faithful servants engaged in leading worship, singing, and serving musically in diverse ways. These are gifted people and we benefit from their example, leadership, and service each Sunday in our local churches.

But as much as I appreciate what they do, I told them the following: What you do each Sunday is important, but it’s not most important.

Musical worship is inspiring, informative, and a wonderful privilege, but there is nothing more central to Christian worship than the preaching of God’s Word. Notice I did not say preaching is a great and necessary follow-up to worship, or that preaching is an optional extra in worship. Preaching is central to worship each Sunday.

Let me illustrate this point through a few great worship services in your Bible.

Think of Mount Sinai where God rescues and gathers his people specifically. He says, “Let my people go so that they may worship me.” So in that gathering to worship, what is the climax? It is the giving of the Law.

A few books later, in Deuteronomy, the people are gathered beside the Jordan. Their wanderings are finally at an end. They are on the cusp of the Promised Land, and Moses renews the covenant with the next generation. What is at the heart, what is the substance of this gathering? It is the reiteration of the Law of Moses, and we read page after page of preaching, explanation, application, and exposition.

When Joshua brings the people finally into the land, he gathers them together (Joshua 8). What was the climax of that gathering? Was it the singing? No. He read the Law to the “assembly.” (The Hebrew term is regularly translated in the Greek as “church”—the church is the assembly, the gathering of the people of God.) Joshua read the Law to the gathered assembly. And he read it all: “there was not a word of all that Moses commanded that Joshua did not read before all the assembly of Israel, and the women, and the little ones, and the sojourners who lived among them” (Joshua 8:35). Let’s not miss a thing. Let’s not miss a word. Let’s not miss a stroke.

After the return from exile, Nehemiah gathers the people into a great assembly. What do they do? Ezra reads the Law and then explains it—he exposits it to give the sense of message.

And we could go on through the Bible…

Throughout salvation history, all the way into the new covenant, God’s Word is at the center of worship. The early church devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, and every church was nourished on God’s Word, all the way down to the last chapter of the last book that Paul wrote, where he tells Timothy to preach the Word “in season and out of season” (2 Timothy 4:2).

Why? Why so much preaching? Why all this talking? Because the primary way we encounter God in worship is through the preaching of the Word of God.

Think about it this way. Normally, in what we call “worship,” we spend significant time—perhaps the whole time—addressing God, singing to him, praising him, extolling him, praying to him. Wonderful! But in preaching we are no longer addressing God; he is addressing us. Nothing is more important than this moment. And this is why the most important worship leader in your church is your pastor.

That really gets to the heart of preaching. The Bible is not simply a book that we talk about. When God’s Word is faithfully preached, God is addressing us. God is speaking. We hear not merely a man’s voice. We hear the voice of God.

And when God addresses us, what is the appropriate response? We respond with glad and reverent hearts, with voices that proclaim his praise, and with lives that increasingly reflect his character.

God addresses us with a saving Word. We respond to him with faith, praise, and obedience. That is the rhythm of worship.

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Jeff Purswell serves as the Dean of the Sovereign Grace Pastors College and a pastor at Covenant Life Church in Gaithersburg, MD.

A compilation book of the messages delivered at the 2008 Together for the Gospel conference is now available. Titled Proclaiming a Cross-Centered Theology (Crossway, 2009), the new book is authored by Mark Dever, Ligon Duncan, Albert Mohler, and C.J., with contributions by Thabiti Anyabwile, John MacArthur, John Piper, and R.C. Sproul and one additional piece by Greg Gilbert.

What follows is a glimpse at the contents, a link to each original conference message audio recording, and a brief comment on each message/chapter taken from Dever’s introduction to the new book.

Chapter 1: Sound Doctrine: Essential to Faithful Pastoral Ministry (Duncan). Message audio. Dever: “Ligon Duncan begins this volume as he began that conference. He entered the lists asserting that systematic theology is a worthwhile task. Indeed, in days when the narrative form of biblical theology is attracting great (and deserved) attention, it is too often being pitted against systematic theology. Ligon defends the usefulness and necessity of systematic theology with clarity and vigor. A pastor must remember the truths in this chapter or risk losing the gospel itself” (pp. 12–13).

Chapter 2: Bearing the Image (Anyabwile). Message audio. Dever: “In his address at Together for the Gospel, Thabiti challenged us to recognize that the category of ‘race’ is irredeemable. It brings far more confusion than light, more contention than understanding, more prejudice than impartial judgment. As you turn to that chapter—perhaps the most explosive of the conference—open your mind and get ready to think” (p. 13).

Chapter 3: The Sinner Neither Willing nor Able (MacArthur). Message audio. Dever: “John MacArthur delivered a message on human depravity that was a model of clear thinking. In it, John masterfully assembled the witness of Scripture (in the very way Ligon had encouraged us the previous day) on this vital topic. John showed that a mistake here is a mistake in the foundation of understanding the nature of our problem. He laid out challenges currently facing this doctrine and concluded by calling us to be faithful to this aspect of the message, no matter how hard we may find such faithfulness” (p. 13).

Chapter 4: Improving the Gospel: Exercises in Unbiblical Theology (or) Questioning Five Common Deceits (Dever). Message audio. Dever: “The next message was mine. I had been mulling over for some time the confusion about the content of the gospel. The message came together as I reviewed notes I had made some months earlier about various issues that needed ‘addressing.’ I began to notice that each one evidenced a distortion of the gospel. With encouragement from my T4G brothers—and the Capitol Hill Baptist congregation—I worked and reworked the material until I felt I got close to saying what I wanted to say. I wanted to get evangelicals talking about what the gospel is exactly” (pp. 13–14).

Chapter 5: The Curse Motif of the Atonement (Sproul). Message audio. Dever: “R.C. Sproul brought to the conference what many felt was the most devotionally rich meditation on the sacrifice of Christ. And he did it by meditating upon the curse motif in the Old Testament! In his own inimitable conversational style, with wide learning and profound biblical understanding, R.C. took us on a tour of Old Testament practices, verbally painting scenes before our eyes. Again and again, as we stared into the depth of those practices, we began to see the cross of Christ more and more clearly until, well, let me simply encourage you to read what I heard many call ‘the best I've ever heard R.C.’ And, I promise—it's not R.C. you'll be glorifying when you're done” (p. 14).

Chapter 6: Why They Hate It So: The Denial of Substitutionary Atonement in Recent Theology (Mohler). Message audio. Dever: “This conference in many ways was birthed out of our concern that the atonement is being misconceived and mistaught in too many evangelical books and churches. It was Al who decided to wade into the sea of literature and explain to us what has happened. With a mastery of the literature that is both exceptional and yet typical of our well-read friend, he led us to see the lines of misunderstanding—of attack—that have been laid down against Christ's death being in the place of sinners. His conference message, now here in print, should serve as a guide to the literature and, even more fundamentally, to thinking carefully about the atoning work of Christ” (p. 14).

Chapter 7: How Does the Supremacy of Christ Create Radical Christian Sacrifice? A Meditation on the Book of Hebrews (Piper). Message audio. Dever: “The last day of the conference, John Piper brought the cross into our own lives and ministries. He posed the question, ‘How does the supremacy of Christ create radical Christian sacrifice?’ Looking through the last few chapters of Hebrews, John called for us to live radical lives so as to have radical ministries. He called us to be God's men. He called us to be certain that in such a ministry suffering will come” (p. 15).

Chapter 8: Sustaining the Pastor's Soul (Mahaney). Message audio. Dever: “The final message was once again given by the conference pastor C.J. Mahaney. C.J. preached a wonderful message titled ‘Sustaining the Pastor's Soul.’ He presented Paul as an example of one who suffered without complaint and served with obvious joy, regardless of the circumstances. And he called us to be ‘happy pastors,’ too. What was it he repeatedly said? ‘How striking that the one with the most responsibility was the one with the most joy.’….Even though this message appears as the book's last chapter, if you're a pastor and feeling particularly pressed, let me suggest that you begin there” (pp. 15–16).

Proclaiming a Cross-Centered Theology is a follow-up to the first volume, Preaching the Cross (Crossway, 2007), which developed out of the messages delivered at the 2006 T4G conference.

Last Friday evening C.J. Mahaney spoke at the God Exposed conference organized by 9Marks and hosted at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.

C.J.’s text: 2 Timothy 4:1-5. His title: “Expository Faithfulness.” His audience: 360 pastors and seminary students.

For 80 minutes he encouraged the men to labor to be found (1) faithful to the message, (2) faithful to their respective ministries, and (3) faithful to their Savior.

The MP3 of his message can be downloaded here. The video recording is available on Vimeo. Or you can watch it here:

Conference Audio

Audio recordings for all six of the God Exposed sessions are now available at the SEBTS website. Where applicable the Q&A sessions have added to the end of the preceding message recordings.

(1) Mark Dever, “The Power of God’s Word” (Mark 4:26-34). Listen/download.

(2) Daniel L. Akin, “The Preacher on Preaching” (Ecclesiastes 12:9-14). Listen/download.

(3) Michael McKinley, “The Centrality of the Word” (Luke 10:38-42). Listen/download.

(4) C.J. Mahaney, “Expository Faithfulness” (2 Timothy 4:1-5). Listen/download.

(5) Thabiti Anyabwile, “Will It Preach? Exposition in Non-White Contexts” (Nehemiah 8). Listen/download.

(6) Mark Dever, “Expositional Preaching: A Defense and Charge.” Listen/download.

Conference Recap

The conference was covered by Melissa Lilley for the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina. Her summary can be read here. A collection of conference photographs is avaliable here.

Welcome back to my interview with Billy Raies, senior pastor of Christian Life Center in Midland, Texas. You can read part one here.

Billy, if you could study under any theologian in church history (excluding those men in Scripture) who would it be and why?

Charles Spurgeon.

When I read Lectures to My Students I found myself wanting to enroll in his Pastors College. I wanted to learn how to examine each text and find in it a short cut to Christ and the cross. I so appreciate his courage to stand up for the gospel in the Downgrade Controversy, including his resignation and then censure from the Baptist Union. It would have been something to watch the life of a man who stayed true to biblical conviction and Christ-centered preaching even though there was not necessarily an immediate “reward” for taking such a stand. How awesome it would have been to observe a man who lived for the glory of God and not the approval of man. Providential history would vindicate the righteousness of his stand, but Spurgeon would not live to see it.

There would be so much to learn from a man who truly believed that the Lord was his inheritance and that honoring him was its own reward. His example motivates me to learn more about how sound doctrine should mold my demeanor. I long for a greater display of joy and grace during times of trial. Dear Mr. Spurgeon’s life has helped me much in that pursuit.

What single piece of counsel (or constructive criticism) has most improved your preaching?

Please allow me to use the dinner table to illustrate the most constructive criticism that I have received about my preaching.

Do you know how you feel when you have overeaten? Each course of the meal may have been fantastic, but there was just too much of it. The result is that you are left feeling lethargic—definitely not energized to turn the world upside down. Others have helped me to see that one of my biggest problems in serving God’s Word to our church is that I just try to serve too much of it in one sitting. (In fact, too often, just the appetizer, or introduction, has been a meal in itself in either being too long or too extensive a review of the prior message, or an introduction layered on top of another introduction!)

One of the best reminders to help me avoid this error was provided by Jeff Purswell who said,

…we can misconstrue the preaching task as primarily or exclusively one of data transfer…the goal of preaching is not informational, it’s transformational. Your goal is not downloading data to your people, but exposing them to the text so the text can transform their lives.

Thank you so much Jeff!

This has helped me pray that folks would leave our services satisfied in God, hungry for more, and strengthened to do his will.

What books on preaching, or examples of it, have you found most influential in your own preaching?

The Supremacy of God in Preaching by John Piper. It always brings fresh inspiration to communicate God’s Word with the precision, passion, and prayerfulness that the text demands and deserves.

Bryan Chapell’s Christ-Centered Preaching has been very helpful in framing the structure and focus of the sermon.

The one sermon that has most influenced my sermons is Mike Bullmore’s “The Functional Centrality of the Gospel.” This message wonderfully envisioned me to see the need for my sermons to contain not only the saving aspects of the gospel, but also the sustaining, day-to-day applications of the gospel.

What single bit of counsel has made the most significant difference in your effective use of time?

Arrrghhh! Oh to be more skilled in the effective use of time! I was very much helped when I first entered vocational ministry in hearing a pastor say, “In all of your praying, don’t forget that the best posture for administrating the church is upon your knees. There should be a proportional relationship between prayer and the number of items on your to-do list. Don’t minimize your prayer time when your projects are demanding that you maximize their time.”

Simple thoughts such as “if you are going to add a new responsibility, you need to either drop, delegate, or delay an existing responsibility” and “do the tasks that most intimidate your soul early in the morning after prayer” have been helpful.

C.J., I would encourage everyone to read your posts on biblical productivity (time management, procrastination, etc.) as they are outstanding.

Thanks for the encouragement, Billy. I appreciate it.

Please join me next time for the third and final part of my interview with my friend Billy Raies.

As the book of Song of Solomon is a unique gift for married couples, the book of Proverbs is a unique gift for parents and children. For preachers looking to use the summer months to preach this unique book, here are a few tools that may be useful.

Preaching Proverbs in Calvary’s Shadow

It can be difficult to balance the call to obedience with the cross-centered life. Yet that is what William Arnot accomplishes in the final chapter of his old commentary on Proverbs, Laws from Heaven for Life on Earth (published in 1873). The final chapter, “Faith and Obedience—Work and Rest,” models this balance well and I commend it to you.

You can read or download the entire commentary for free online. But you can download the isolated chapter I mention as a PDF here (0.9MB).

Thematic Structures

Of importance to the preacher of Proverbs is getting a handle on a few recurring themes and character developments featured in the book (i.e. wisdom, folly, discernment, understanding, knowledge). Derek Kidner’s excellent commentary will certainly help here.

I also recommend a newer commentary on Proverbs by John A. Kitchen (Mentor, 2006). In the appendix of his commentary, Kitchen has written a very useful systemization and summary of the path of the righteous and the path of the fool (pp. 727–736). Kitchen uses three graphics to distinguish the two paths and the several steps along the way.

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The explanations behind these charts are developed in the commentary appendix. And the editors of Christian Focus have granted us permission to post the entire appendix here as a downloadable PDF (2.4MB).

Summer Series Outline

Due to its structure, the book of Proverbs is difficult to preach expositionally from beginning to end. The book lends itself to topical exposition, a feature that makes it a suitable text for preaching during the summer months.

Sovereign Grace Church in Fairfax, Virginia, is using the summer to preach a ten-week series on Proverbs. The pastors have divided the first nine chapters by topic (I was honored to participate in the series by preaching the second message).

FEAR GOD (1:1-7)
LISTEN (1:20-33)
SEEK (2:4)
TRUST (3:5)
GUARD (4:23)
DRINK (5:15)
GO (6:6-8)
KEEP (7:1-2)
HEAR (8:1, 32)
CHOOSE (9:6)

The church printed full-color bookmarks to outline the series and, as you will see, to capture the series as an opportunity to encourage and equip the church to interpret the book of Proverbs for themselves. Here is the graphic they used for the series:

Well done.

So these are a few tools of note as you preach Proverbs, or as you consider a future series in the book. I hope you find them helpful.

The arrival of summer brings summer vacations. And this leads to the pastor’s dilemma: what to preach on when church is not consistently assembled.

Should the pastor continue his expositional series throughout the summer months or not? Some pastors find it profitable to postpone lengthy, momentum-building, expositional series during the summer months. I agree. From my pastoral experience I have found it wise to pause and wait until the church gathers together in the fall to resume.

And that leaves us with the summer.

These weeks can be used to benefit the church, your soul, and your pastoral team. These months provide senior pastors with a good opportunity to delegate preaching duties (whether to your pastoral team or with guest preachers). And this delegation, in turn, provides the senior pastor with the flexibility and freedom to vacation with his family, and to enjoy a personal retreat in order to care for his own soul and prepare for the fall preaching series.

And these weeks of summer provide the pastor with the opportunity to plan messages that did not fit in a particular expositional series. Here are just a few ideas for summer preaching series, ideas that may lead you to think of other series options:

Topical Series. One summer at Covenant Life we taught a series titled “Sanctifying the Ordinary.” We covered the topics of sleep, work, eating, and leisure. A more recent series, “Don’t Waste Your…,” was not preached during the summer, but it very well could have been. These two topical series on everyday life, and others like it, are suited for the summer months.

Selected Psalms. Select ten favorite Psalms and teach them individually over the summer months. The Psalms provide a natural division for a standalone sermon.

The Parables of Jesus. The synoptic Gospels contain at least 30 parables, more than enough for a pastor to select ten to assemble a summer preaching series of individual messages that work as standalones.

Selected Proverbs. The topical character of the book of Proverbs lends itself to this type of summer series. One church is currently preaching through a series on Proverbs. They divided their series into standalone messages titled “Fear God” (1:1-7), “Listen” (1:20-33), “Seek” (2:4), “Trust” (3:5), “Guard” (4:23), “Drink” (5:15), “Go” (6:6-8), “Keep” (7:1-2), “Hear” (8:1, 32), and “Choose” (9:6). Next time I’ll provide more information on how this series has been assembled and presented, including how the pastors are using the series to equip their church to interpret the Proverbs themselves.

During the summer months, attendance fluctuates. But don’t see this as discouraging; instead, capture it as a unique opportunity to serve the church—and your own soul.

Welcome back to my interview with Pete Greasley, senior pastor of Christchurch in Newport, Wales. You can read part one here.

Pete, if you could study under any theologian in church history (excluding those men in Scripture) who would it be and why?

Hmm; probably Calvin because of his extensive grasp of seemingly everything in a way it hadn’t been understood since the apostles!

Also, although he’s not really a hard line theologian, I would have loved the opportunity to hang at the Bird and Baby in Oxford with Lewis and the rest of the Inklings, just to hear how they processed and thought through the tough questions. (I’ve spent some time there with my friend Jeff Purswell and we tried to recreate the scene…but unfortunately there was only one great mind in the room; and it wasn’t mine!)

What single piece of counsel (or constructive criticism) has most improved your preaching?

My wife Jenny: ‘When you’ve said what you need to say, shut up!’

Also three quotes from Mr. Spurgeon:

“It is better to fail attempting the right subject, than to succeed in the wrong; and the right subject is Jesus Christ and Him crucified. To even attempt that subject is a noble thing in itself.”

“I am content to live and die as a mere repeater of scriptural teaching, as a person who has thought out nothing and invented nothing, as one who never thought invention to be any part of his calling, but who concluded that he was simply to be a mouth for God to the people, mourning that anything of his own should come between.”

“I always feel that I have not done my duty as a preacher of the gospel if I go out of this pulpit without having clearly set before sinners the gospel. I sometimes think that you have so often and so long heard me tell this story, that you will get weary of it; but I cannot help it if you do—I had better weary you than be false to my charge.”

What books on preaching, or examples of it, have you found most influential in your own preaching?

Christ-Centered Preaching by Bryan Chapell

The Sacred Anointing: The Preaching of Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones by Tony Sargent

Preach the Word: Essays on Expository Preaching edited by Leland Ryken and Todd Wilson

I like to listen to our friend Mike Bullmore every week online. I’m trying to learn substance with brevity; he’s a great example that I want to imitate.

What single bit of counsel has made the most significant difference in your effective use of time?

When I started work at 16, my father, knowing me to be the laziest boy he’d ever come across, bought me a wall plaque to take with me into work. It just said in bold letters “DO IT NOW!” It’s been helpful advice, though not always heeded!

What single bit of counsel has made the most significant difference in your leadership?

No single piece of counsel comes to mind, but I think a message that you, C.J., brought a number of years ago from 1 Corinthians 1 on Paul’s confidence in the grace of God towards the Corinthians [“Grace and the Adventure of Leadership”], probably impacted me and has remained with me more than anything else of which I’m aware in terms of leadership. If Paul can give thanks for them and have confidence in God’s grace towards them, then I can do the same.

Join me next time for the third and final part of my interview with my friend, Pete Greasley.

Welcome back to my interview with author and speaker Randy Alcorn. You can read part one here.

Randy, apart from Scripture, what book do you most frequently re-read and why?

I do re-read some books, though there aren’t many I read more than two or three times. I’ve read Tozer’s The Knowledge of the Holy several times, as I have Lewis’s Space Trilogy and The Chronicles of Narnia, as well as Mere Christianity and The Screwtape Letters. Another favorite is Francis Schaeffer’s He Is There and He Is Not Silent. I’ve also gone back to Piper’s Desiring God and Bridges' The Joy of Fearing God.  

When you finish a book, what system have you developed in order to remember and reference that book in the future?

I underline copiously and scrawl in the margins. Sometimes I write notes in the front of the book, with page numbers. When doing research, I have a secretary who can read my hieroglyphic notations, type up my marginal notes, boldfacing, and yellow highlighting to distinguish from the text of the book I’ve underlined. Later in the research, I go through the file, copying and pasting possible citations, along with my notations. This becomes a very rough initial draft which I reorder as I go, cutting out the majority of both the citations and my notes. My original notes either disappear or get morphed, though sometimes they make their way as is into my final book. When I’m certain I want to quote from a source, I not only underline, but put an asterisk. To confirm bibliographic information later, I can search for the quote by key words.

If you could study under any theologian in church history (excluding those men in Scripture) who would it be and why?

I suppose Augustine or Calvin are obvious choices, but I would be more inclined toward Charles Spurgeon, giving honorable mention to John Newton. Some wouldn’t think of them as theologians per se, but their pastoral roles and life experiences brought a great deal to the table I would love to draw from.

What single piece of counsel (or constructive criticism) has most improved your preaching?

“It is impossible to make a balanced statement.”

You can spend all day qualifying what you’re saying and removing the punch from it. Jesus made many statements that have to be clarified by others (e.g. plucking out your eye and cutting off your hand, and hating your family). But it is a mistake to strip such statements of their power by immediately modifying them and saying what they don’t mean instead of what they do. I think we are free to make prophetic statements without always qualifying them.

What books on preaching, or examples of it, have you found most influential in your own preaching?

I don’t preach regularly, but speak on various subjects and texts from time to time, often related to writing I’ve done or am doing. It’s been many years since I’ve read a book on preaching, but I remember appreciating Stott’s Between Two Worlds. I love reading the sermons of Charles Spurgeon, though I wouldn’t recommend his preaching methodology. He was one of a kind.

Join me next time for the third part of my interview with Randy Alcorn.

Welcome back to my interview with Mike Pierson, the senior pastor of Providence Church in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania. You can read part one here.

Mike, if you could study under any theologian in church history (excluding those men in Scripture) who would it be and why?

This is a tough choice. I’d love to travel around with George Whitfield and watch him preach the gospel.

However, my one theologian would be Jonathan Edwards. I love his view of the glory of God that allowed him to make insights like:

God is glorified not only by His glory’s being seen, but by its being rejoiced in. When those that see it delight in it, God is more glorified than if they only see it. His glory is then received by the whole soul, both by the understanding and by the heart. God made the world that He might communicate, and the creature receive, His glory; and that it might [be] received both by the mind and heart. He that testifies his idea of God’s glory [doesn’t] glorify God so much as he that testifies also his…delight in it.

I would want to experience revival with him and also sit and discuss the theological underpinnings behind his responses to it. If I studied under him, I’d have to ask him to speak about 10 grade levels lower than he usually spoke.

What single piece of counsel (or constructive criticism) has most improved your preaching?

I struggled greatly with fear and unbelief in preaching. God has used so many means to deal with this sin as it relates to preaching. One story that was particularly helpful was a story of how Corrie ten Boom’s father helped her trust God in fearful situations (as told in Overcoming Fear, Worry and Anxiety by Elyse Fitzpatrick). 

Father sat down on the edge of the narrow bed. “Corrie,” he began gently, “when you go to Amsterdam, when do I give you your ticket?”

I sniffed a few times, considering this.

“Why, just before we get on the train.”

Exactly. And our wise Father in heaven knows when we’re going to need things, too. Don’t run ahead of Him, Corrie.”

God used that story to help me see the foolishness of worry leading up to the preaching event afraid that somehow God will desert me in the pulpit. Now, almost every Sunday during worship, I look at the pulpit and thank God that, not now, but when I stand in the pulpit, He will anoint me to preach His word. He has been so faithful to do this.

What books on preaching, or examples of it, have you found most influential in your own preaching?

The Sacred Anointing: The Preaching of Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones by Tony Sargent. His example is where I learned to cry out for the presence of God while I prepare and preach.

Yes, that is a very helpful book on preaching. Thanks, my friend! Join me next time for the third and final portion of my interview with Mike Pierson.