I’ve lived in Thailand for about five years and have heard a fair share of preaching in Thai churches.  I’ve heard local pastors in small congregations, specially invited preachers at large evangelistic events, and top church leaders at national gatherings.  And while there are some fine godly men preaching good Biblical sermons, the majority of preaching that I’ve heard in Thai churches has been very disappointing.  It’s not that they don’t use the Bible.  They do.  It is not that they are preaching blatant heresy.  They are not.  More often than not, I find sermons to be disappointing not because of what is there, but what is not there.

There is often not a serious effort to understand the context of a particular passage of Scripture but preachers seize upon a certain verse or phrase that stands out to them.  And whatever that verse or phrase reminds them of becomes the main point of the sermon.  Instead of explaining and applying what’s actually there in the Bible, the preacher’s own ideas are super-imposed over the text and filled in with their own experiences, and with general knowledge from their theology classes at Bible school.  Instead of diving into the deep pool of the Word of God, preachers use a particular verse or phrase as a springboard to get where they want to go, ignoring what is actually in the text that they are supposedly explaining.  So, at the end of the sermon, listeners may have gained some tips for living or some encouraging thoughts, but they have not understood the Bible any better than before.  I am not against good advice or motivational thoughts but the point of preaching from the Bible is to understand what God has revealed in the Bible and what it means for us.  

Don’t get me wrong.  What I long for isn’t an atomistic dissection of Scripture that turns the sermon into an academic commentary on the Bible.  And I am not after a certain preaching style as the only right way to preach.  Whether a sermon has three points, five points, or one point is immaterial.  What I long for is preaching that deals with the main point of a passage of Scripture, and shows how it relates to both the rest of Scripture and to the listener’s lives.  Haddon Robinson, well-known preacher and teacher of preachers, defines biblical preaching as, “the communication of a biblical concept, derived from and transmitted through a historical, grammatical, and literary study of a passage in its context, which the Holy Spirit first applies to the personality and experience of the preacher, then through the preacher, applies to the hearers.” (Haddon W. Robinson, Biblical Preaching, 2nd ed., Grand Rapids: Baker, 2001, p. 21.)  In other words, biblical preaching happens when a preacher can tell his listeners of the heights and depths of the greatness of God and His truth that is found in Scripture because the preacher has first taken the time to let those great truths work upon his own heart.  The end result is what John Piper calls “expository exultation”.

In contrast to the above definitions of biblical preaching, I once heard a pastor preaching about John the Baptist from John 1, but I didn’t learn much about John the Baptist from his sermon.  He used the passage as a springboard to tell the church about his own ideas for evangelism in the coming year.  He opened the text, read the text, observed that John the Baptist pointed people to Jesus, and then went on to talk about how we as a church can point people to Jesus.  To make the points that he made, the Bible was hardly necessary.  But the story of John the Baptist provided a quick and convenient illustration and springboard to launch into explaining his own ideas.  The pastor’s ideas were fine but if anybody in the congregation didn’t know who John the Baptist was, or what his role was in God’s plan of redemption, then they didn’t get any help from this sermon.  And the tragedy here is that God’s people (and any visitors) missed out on what God wants to tell them in the pages of Scripture.

Of course, unbiblical preaching is hardly unique to Thailand.  My own home country of the United States does more than its fair share of damage when it comes to preachers spouting off a lot of hot air instead of feeding the sheep.  In terms of charisma and polished speaking ability, some of these unbiblical preachers may even get high marks and be very enjoyable to listen to.  But when it comes to content, there is a serious problem - in Thailand, in the United States, and around the world.

In this series of posts (of which this is the first), we’ll be taking a look at...

Unbiblical Preaching - Part 1: Missing the Point
Unbiblical Preaching - Part 2: Moralistic Preaching
Unbiblical Preaching - Part 3: Allegorical Preaching
Unbiblical Preaching - Part 4: Gnostic Preaching
Unbiblical Preaching - Part 5: Consequences
Unbiblical Preaching - Part 6: Sources

Unbiblical Preaching - Part 7: Solutions

Stay tuned.

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Preach it!

Hey Karl

You raise some good and interesting points. I have to agree with you that a lot of sermons we hear, both in Thailand and in the West, are a lot like candy floss - pretty, sweet, full of air but without much nutritional value.

Its interesting to view Paul's take on preaching. In1 Corinthians 1:17 he says that Christ sent him to preach the gospel - not with wisdom and eloquence, less the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. In v23 he says, "we preach Christ crucified". In 2 Cor. 4:5 "we preach Jesus Christ as Lord", and so on. If you do a word search of the word "preach" in the New Testament you will see that Paul almost always uses it as "preach the gospel, preach Jesus, preach Christ". His focus in preaching clearly is always Jesus - Jesus is the gospel. He is the Good News. It would be an interesting exercise to count how many times the name of Jesus is mentioned in sermons these days. In much of the preaching I have heard in my life, the focus has been more on the individual - how to be a better Christian, how to live victoriously, how to be a better evangelist, how to tithe more, how to become more faithful in your Bible reading, etc. In my experience these sermons leave people feeling fairly amped after the service, but in time it turns to feelings of guilt and failure. Many Christians beat themselves up over the fact that they fall short of the lofty standards as preached from pulpits every Sunday.

Sadly, Jesus isn't preached very much at all and the consequence is that many Christians have a rather anaemic view of Christ. And yet we're told in Col 1:19 that the fullness of God dwells in Christ. As such, Jesus as a topic of our preaching can never be exhausted and there are depths there that we will never be able to plumb in our lifetimes.

The problem as I see it is that as long as we depend on the same preacher to bring us our message week after week, we're bound to get short-changed, irrespective of how well educated and trained that preacher is, or how good his intentions are. We will always be hearing his view of Christ (if he even preaches Christ) filtered through his theological bias and through his life experiences. It was Phillip Melangthon who said to Luther, "we preach best that which we need most to learn." That certainly was my experience in preaching - it was the things that I was grappling with, or had grappled with, and the areas that God was challenging me in that I brought to the pulpit. I was preaching from the richness of my personal experience.

We may get very good, theologically sound, deeply meaningful sermons from good preachers, but we're still only getting it from one person's perspective and we're losing out on the richness of Christ who is working in the lives of everybody in the group/ecclesia who is pursuing him. We're also missing out on the full and varied illumination of the Spirit, who resides in all of us in the same measure. It is for this reason that I believe open participatory meetings are far more effective to really understand and fall in love with Jesus, too experience his richness and diversity and to taste his grace and glory. That happens when brothers and sisters in Christ, created in the image of the triune God, come together as the Body of Christ. He is then expressed through them jointly and the richness of ministry experienced by all in community, far exceeds the richness of the pulpit ministry of one man. I believe this is why Paul suggests the kind of ministry we see in 1 Cor 14:24-26 where we see everybody prophesying, and some are giving words of instruction and revelation.

Sadly, somewhere in the mists of time past, the sermon by a preacher become the primary means of communicating God's Word to his people and it became the main form of ministry when the believers gather (worship leaders will argue and say that the "worship" part of the service is actually the main form of ministry).

The subject of your post is "Unbiblical preaching" and I agree with the points you raised. I would go further though and say that most preaching, even good preaching, is unbiblical - its not the content of the sermon, but the concept of the sermon as the mainstay of church experience and main fare of all the church has to offer, that is flawed.

Shalom.

Nick Bekker , August 18, 2010

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