Reflections from Andrew Heard’s Growth and Change (Matthias Media, 2024)
PART 2 of 2: Growth and Change and how we preach
Heard raises a valid concern—that a “just be faithful” ministry mindset for preachers and church leaders might excuse some preachers for sermons that are poorly prepared and regularly fail to connect with the lives, hearts and wills of their congregations.
To address this in ministry more broadly, Heard points to the creational norms expressed in wisdom literature which operate outside and inside the church. For example, a farmer with goals (like producing a certain quality and quantity of crop) could normally be expected to be more successful than the farmer haphazardly sowing seed without regard to normal cause and effect principles. If a church is prayerful, welcoming and hospitable with a pastor who works hard to preach exegetically faithful, engaging sermons, these factors are far from irrelevant for predicting that church’s growth. While remembering God is God, and growth is always to be credited to Him more than to any formula, Heard asserts that in God’s harvest field, certain “inputs” generally, and somewhat predictably, lead to certain “outputs”.
Considering the narrower topic of preaching, God in His wisdom instituted preaching to be a chief and effective vehicle for leaders of His churches to convey truth. Truth proclaimed, heralded, preached, seems to reach hearts in ways that lectures or discussion cannot match. Heard writes,
we live in a time where many churches have shifted away from preaching, moving instead to discussion groups as the primary vehicle for communicating the gospel to a community that has become suspicious of authoritarian proclamations. But such a shift shapes the very message we communicate: it moves us away from an authoritative declaration from God (through human “ambassadors”; see 2 Cor 5:20) that calls for joyful, humble submission and obedience. Instead, it turns our message into one of “self-discovery”, one that is open for debate. (p. 99)
While arguing that clear goals will help us to shape our methods, and to assess those methods’ effectiveness, Heard touches on a question that has long interested me. That is, to what extent does how we say something influence the degree to which people hear and believe it? Consider a persuasive preacher you’ve heard like Billy Graham; how much did their manner of speaking add persuasiveness to their words?
Anecdotally, during my years as an SMBC lecturer, I’d often give feedback to students’ sermons. If their exegesis was sound but their sermon wasn’t compelling, if their manner was without passion or any contagious conviction, I’d ask them to persuade me with the line, “Your house is burning down!”
If what we’re saying is true and important, then we want to work hard to ensure how we are expressing it is not detracting from it’s believability, importance, and the church’s response to it. We don’t want to becoming fake or contrived, but we do want to be aware that how we say things, how we preach, will normally influence it’s effectiveness. How often and to what degree does the Spirit work with such creation realities as passionate expression and transparent conviction?
Heard observes, with a healthy degree of exegetical caution, that in Acts 14:1 Paul and Barnabas entered a synagogue at Iconium and
‘spoke in such a way that a great number of both Jews and Greeks believed’. This verse ties the output (the number of people who believed) to the input (the manner in which the evangelists spoke). In other words, the way Paul and Barnabas spoke is described as making a difference to the output produced. (p. 112)
God can speak through a donkey or through stones if He desires. Eloquence isn’t where the power lies. And yet, one can almost hear the power of conviction in the words of Jesus, or in Peter’s sermons. We can be rightly moved by the power of poetry in the psalms, or by the rhetoric and tone of the prophets. In our everyday experience, some communication moves our hearts much more effectively than others; and some preachers have a more compelling presence than others, quite natural to a few of them, and quite effectively learned and cultivated by most others.
If theological colleges tend to help us primarily with what we preach, it will be our ongoing work beyond college, inseparable from the Spirit’s work, to not only continue developing in what we preach, but also pursuing increasing effectiveness in how we preach.
Heard’s broader point is that the apostles were interested not only in what they did, but also in the effectiveness of what they did, in results such as unified, mature churches. When Jesus gives the command to make disciples there is not only a task in view, but a result. It can be sobering at first perhaps, but then empowering, to realise as preachers and as church leaders that ‘What we do, and the way we do it, makes a difference—for better or worse.’ (p.120)
Heard challenges us to question our own practices in light of this:
we must take some responsibility for not just our inputs [what we do], but also for our outputs [what our ministry produces]—in some fashion and to some extent. It is simply wrong to say we have no responsibility for outputs. And in some contexts and situations, we will have to admit that at least part of the reason for the lack of impact and the lack of gospel fruit is our failures. It might be that we have failed to ask, or we have failed to plant and water, or we have failed to apply wisdom, or we have failed to work hard, or we have failed to be pastorally sensitive, or we have failed to preach effectively. (p. 120)
Heard calls for preaching that not only informs people but effectively leads to change, to transformation, to the outputs we rightly dream about.
But will unbelievers have adequate opportunity in our churches to “decide for Christ” if we never have something like a clear call to repentance, something akin to an altar call?
If we’re wanting serious-minded, sacrificial, grace-inspired disciples, is our current preaching effectively leading people there?
Heard says our preaching should involve:
vision setting, or a kind of Bible teaching that builds a fire in the belly such that a person wants to devote themselves fully to the work of the Lord (see 1 Cor 15:58). This is the kind of preaching that does something more than merely explain the Bible passage (as fundamental as that is).
Effective preaching is what the Expository Preaching Trust exists to encourage. And so I encourage you, dear servant of Christ, to keep praying and working on your preaching—with the Lord Jesus as the why you preach, may you keep working hard with what you preach and how you preach. In your strains and trials, may you delight in Jesus and the privilege of serving Him – your gentle, humble, sacrificial Saviour who gives rest to His servants. Isn’t it a marvel the Lord uses even us, and even our preaching, for such a glorious task!
David Burge is minister of Drummoyne Presbyterian Church and Chairman of the Expository Preaching Trust