By: T. David Gordon
Let me say right out of the gate that I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It should be mandatory reading both for men training for the ministry and men already there. It is among the most important books of its kind to be written in our modern era.
I have read many books on preaching (e.g., Preaching and
Preachers by Martyn Lloyd-Jones literally changed my life and ministry),
but this one is unique. Though barely 100 pages, it directly confronts the lack
of good preaching that characterizes the Church today and provides reasons why
this has occurred. Gordon claims, in fact, that of all the sermons he’s heard
in the last 25 years, only 15% had a discernible point and that of these less
than 10% based their point on the text that was read. While some readers would
immediately scream, “Oh, that’s just anecdotal evidence!” such evidence cannot
be avoided (or ignored) here; trends must be observed and reported on, and that
is what Gordon is doing. (A. W. Tozer, for instance, did the same thing in his
day.) Besides, this would still be a sad condition if the first percentage
where “only” 50 and the second was any number.
Gordon also reports something he has encountered about 100
times and which I too have heard uncounted times in my own almost 40 years of
ministry, namely, church members who verify that their pastor doesn’t preach
very well. When asked, “What do you think of your minister,” the reply is
usually, “Well, he’s not a good preacher, but . . .” (22). The answer I have
heard repeatedly is, “Well, he’s not a very good preacher, but he has a
pastor’s heart,” which of course totally ignores the one specific requirement
of a pastor as far as his job description is concerned: he must be a
skilled teacher (1 Tim. 3:2; cf. Acts 20:27–31). This is non-negotiable.
The first fundamental reason for this breakdown in
preaching, Gordon insists, is that men can’t read, that is, they can’t read texts
(chapter 2). “There is a profound difference between reading information and
reading texts,” he writes, “reading a text is a laboriously slow process” (42).
Many ministers “read the Bible the same way they read everything else . . . for
its most overt content . . . but they don’t raise question about how the
passage is constructed” (46, emphasis Gordon’s). Why? Because our
electronic media culture has trained them to do this. Gordon should know of
what he speaks, since in addition to being currently professor of religion and
Greek and Grove City College, he has also taught in the humanities and media
culture.
The second reason, Gordon contends, is that neither can men
write anymore (chapter 3). While we once had a culture that was demonstrably
“articulate, thoughtful, and well-composed” in its writing (67), look at where
we are today. (If I may interject, Facebook, Twitter, IMing, and texting are
graphic examples; that is, of course, in my humble opinion—oh, I meant to type
IMHO.)
I especially appreciated Gordon’s emphasis on the great 19th-century
theologian Robert L. Dabney and his classic book on homiletics, Sacred
Rhetoric: or a Course of Lectures on Preaching (1870). In it Dabney
delineates “The Seven Requisites of Preaching,” of which Gordon comments:
“These seven requisites (not excellencies, but requisites) are seven minimal
requirements that Dabney believed (and his reviewers agreed) were essential to
every sermon. None of these categories is subjective; each is perfectly
susceptible of objective evaluation.” Gordon then goes on to list and briefly
summarize them: textual fidelity; unity; evangelical tone; instructiveness;
movement; point; and order (23–28). As he also observes, and which is again
demonstrably true, these are “manifestly absent” in most pulpits today.
A final problem in preaching today, Gordon submits in
chapter 4, is that preaching is often not Christ-centered, having been replaced
by four flawed alternatives: moralism, how-to, introspection, and social
gospel/so-called culture war. He also
adds a brief note on “the contemporaneist/emergent alternative, which is to
dispense with expository preaching altogether, since it is regarded by them as
passé” (79[f11]). None of this truly feeds God’s people (74), which again is
the pastor’s function.
I do have some criticisms of the book, and while they are
minor I think they are worth noting. First, as a former professor at
Gordon-Conwell Seminary for 13 years, Gordon insists that the fault of all this
does not lie at the doorstep of our seminaries (34–41). Granted, there
are many good men in our seminaries, such as Gordon-Conwell’s own Haddon
Robinson and others elsewhere. But I humbly submit that this is simply not true
across the board. First, I have heard men fresh our of good seminaries who are not good preachers. Second, I have also many times over the years been able to know where a
man went to school just by hearing him preach (and that often was not a good
thing). I would also submit that even if a school teaches homiletics
flawlessly, it still must assume part of the responsibility if it goes ahead
and graduates a man who can’t preach. Second, I am also a bit
troubled about Gordon’s suggestion that churches should perform an “annual
review” of the pastor using “carefully designed survey questions” or even by
phone calls (97–99). This simply is not biblical and is a non-issue if a man is
truly anointed of God. Third, I just cringed when in reference to when
writing “one begins a sentence, partway through realizes that it cannot be
successfully completed, and therefore begins again” Gordon dubbed this with the
“inelegant” term “sentence f---” (39). Sorry, but I think that comes from the
very culture he criticizes. A wordsmith (which Gordon clearly is) can do better
than that.
Minor criticisms aside, this is an extremely important and
pertinent book for our day. I recommend it highly.
NOTE: My next post will review Gordon’s second book: Why
Johnny Can't Sing Hymns: How Pop Culture Rewrote the Hymnal.
