A Love for Preaching

After some time away to attend the EFCA Leadership Conference and visit family, I have the opportunity to write about one of the chief reasons I love the Puritans: their preaching.

During a class in seminary on preaching narrative, the professor challenged us to try something. (I would be remiss if I did not at this point thank Dr. Mike Bullmore for his instruction and feedback during my time at TEDS.) He observed that narratives tend to have a unifying idea or ideas woven throughout the text. So he challenged us in our preaching for that class to retell the story, highlighting the key elements that help us to see the point the author wants to make. Then after telling the story, draw out that main unifying idea. If you've told the story properly, the congregation should say "of course" when you state the main idea. Then offer points of application based on that main idea and conclude.

I tried. I failed -- it is still the worst experience with preaching I have ever had. But what he said made sense to me. I just needed more exposure to how such preaching looks.

Enter the sermons of Robert Murray M'Cheyne, an early 19th century pastor and preacher that were recommended to me by my pastor at the time. I discovered that the structure of text-doctrine-use was the basic structure his sermons. And then I discovered that he had learned at the feet of the Puritans. So I went further back in time and discovered the preaching of men such as Jonathan Edwards and Thomas Watson. And then I worked my way forward and discovered more disciples of the Puritans in C.H. Spurgeon and D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones. I discovered preaching that was both deeply theological and intensely practical to the soul that seeks to know itself and the Lord more clearly. I discovered preaching that was both logical and passionate.

The Puritans did not think much of dividing the head and the heart. Their preaching laid out the Scripture and reasoned through its implications, and also cut to the quick and pierced the heart. Here I have found the richest of treasure and had my soul ministered to. The church would be much richer if we rediscovered the preaching of the Puritans.