In his message at the National Conference, Francis Chan highlighted the importance of loving the people to whom he preaches. He mentioned seven questions that he asks himself in preparing to preach. Here are the seven questions:

1. Am I worried about what people think of my message or what God thinks? (Teach with fear)
2. Do I genuinely love these people? (Teach with love)
3. Am I accurately presenting this passage? (Teach with accuracy)
4. Am I depending on the Holy Spirit’s power or my own cleverness? (Teach with power)
5. Have I applied this message to my own life? (Teach with integrity)
6. Will this message draw attention to me or to God? (Teach with humility)
7. Do the people really need this message? (Teach with urgency)

HT: Andrew Jacobson via the Desiring God blog.

Jonathan Leeman recently wrote on Word Ministry and Deed Ministry on the 9Marks Blog. Much of the content is from his upcoming book Reverberation: How God’s Word Gives Light, Freedom, and Action to His People. Here are quotes from Part 1

What’s needed, I think, is a conception of the whole that allows for distinctions or different emphases to be made. We must recognize that words and deeds are both necessary for mission or missions, but that they play different roles and are necessary in different ways. The Word declares what God has done. The good deed provides evidence for it.

This doesn’t sound as neat and tidy as “either/or” or “both/and.” But remember, this is a complex subject, and striking the right balance may require a solution with more nuance. We don’t want an either/or, but nor do we want a both/and which smothers all distinctions and emphases. We want a both/and with differing emphases.

When we speak of the word being “central”—a term which I take from D. A. Carson—we acknowledge that the Word is of utmost importance; it’s the highest peak in the landscape. But the metaphor of “central” allow for there to be other features on the landscape. It connects the central thing with everything else.

Word ministry really is the most important. It’s the highest mountain. But that mountain is resting upon everything surrounding it. The Scripture makes it manifestly clear that our deeds should adorn our doctrine for the sake of witness.

Here are quotes from Part 2

Are good works necessary for the Word and Spirit to give new life? Certainly not! The last chapter and the first half of this chapter, hopefully, have dispensed with that idea. People get saved listening to hypocritical preachers and anonymous radio preachers. You can proclaim the gospel without deeds, but you cannot proclaim the gospel without words.

But aren’t good deeds necessary for preserving the public reputation of the church and its Lord? For demonstrating that he means what he says? For demonstrating that we have integrity? Generally speaking, yes! Listen to how one biblical minister advises another: “Show yourself in all respects to be a model of good works, and in your teaching show integrity, dignity, and sound speech that cannot be condemned, so that an opponent may be put to shame, having nothing evil to say about us” (Titus 2:7-8).

The gospel Word creates gospel life in an individual and in a church. When that individual and church then turn to minister to others, their word and life should be integrated—have integrity. In one sense, there are not two things (two wings) but one thing with two distinct parts—a faithful witness in word and deed. Also—and this is very important—the two distinct parts are doing distinct things, unlike two wings. The Word is doing things that the deed cannot do: it’s pointing to an invisible God who has sent his Son to die on the cross; it’s calling all to repentance; it’s freeing the enslaved; and it’s giving life to the dead. The deed is then doing something the Word cannot do: it’s demonstrating or picturing the effects of this gospel Word. It’s testifying to its life-changing power. The Word is the main character; the deed is the supporting character.

To summarize: are deeds “necessary” for raising the dead and freeing the enslaved? From the standpoint of the Spirit’s work, no. From the standpoint of Christianity’s public credibility, generally yes. The Spirit’s work will produce evidence in our deeds. And every good deed becomes one more witness who testifies on behalf of the gospel’s truth and power.

From Kevin DeYoung – Part 1 and Part 2. I’ve highlighted some great thoughts

1. Take advantage of opportunities to be taught by others. Get the most out of books, lectures, and special speakers in seminary, because soon you’ll be be doing all the putting out with few people to put it in to you.
2. Beware of closing your heart to people.
3. Be a pastor for the whole church, not just part of it (don’t be just one group’s champion).
4. Establish your priorities at the church early and clearly. I suggest: preach, pray, and people.
5. Work hard to foster deep spiritual fellowship with your closest leaders (e.g., staff, elders, deacons).
6. Don’t try to do too much too soon. Expect change to happen very slowly. Whenever possible, work for desired change by positive reinforcement, rather than by criticism.
7. While you shouldn’t attempt too much change right away, if you are forced to make a hard change or take a tough stand, do it decisively.
8. Expect people to leave your church when you come.  Be kind when they do.  Follow up, ask why they’re leaving, pray for them, then move on. Don’t let a few folks on the way out determine the plans for the rest of the church.
9. Be personal instead of academic. A conversation is usually better than a paper.
10. Beware of technology: wasting time on power points, frittering hours away on Facebook, getting bogged down in emails, doing all your pastoral communication by email instead of phone calls or personal visits.
11. If you are good at administration, don’t do too much.  If you are bad, get someone to help you immediately.
12. Plan for prayer days.
13. Learn to think in 5 year, 1 year, 6 months, and 1 month increments.  When you start out at a church you’ll feel three months behind everyone else; you need to be six months ahead.
14. Guard your day off and don’t let your work creep into your evenings at home.  You’ll be miserable and ineffective if your life becomes a rhythm-less mush.
15. Spend more time getting to know your people and less time trying to figure out the culture of your city.
16. Remember: you are not the only special person in the church. Don’t get offended if you’re not invited to a wedding or they ask the other guy to do the baptism. It’s silly to feel threatened when congregants are closer to another staff member or lay leader than they are to you.
17. Don’t minister just to keep people happy. Don’t be the pastor who does all the counseling, all the teaching, and all the praying because “that’s what people expect” and you “don’t want to let them down.” You’ll burn yourself out, stifle the gifts of others, and keep your church smaller than it needs to be.
18. Don’t compare. There are dozens of factors that make a church successful. Many of them are out of your control–most notably, God’s sovereignty.
19. Christian maturity entails more than theological acumen. Don’t assume the dudes reading Bavinck will be the most fruitful, faithful, and effective leaders. Could be, but that’s far from certain.
20. God opposes the proud but gives grace to humble. Pray this into your soul before and after every sermon.
21. Don’t be afraid to ask for help.  Get in touch with seminary profs.  Try to get a top notch speaker in once in awhile.  Make contact with churches your respect. Build a network and learn from others.
22. Keep reading.  Please keep reading.  Boldly ask for a book allowance. The rule is not absolute, but I question a man’s call to ministry if he does not like to read.
23. Man is not justified by preaching.  Some sermons are a home run. Other times you’re lucky to bunt your way on.
24. Don’t preach your issues from seminary. I can almost guarantee no one in your church doubts the Pauline authorship of Ephesians. It says “Paul” in their Bibles so they’re good to go.
25. Sometime in your first two years, preach about prayer, evangelism, giving, and the authority of Scripture.
26. Figure out what you believe about divorce and remarriage, and figure it out soon.
27. Build consensus whenever possible, but when you have to make an unpopular decision that will be unpopular don’t insist that everyone like it. Take your lumps and move on.
28. Be comfortable in your own shoes. Preach through your own personality. Learn from, but don’t try to clone, your heroes.
29. Accept the blessings God gives (and does not give) you. Some pastors have two talents. Some of five or ten. That’s just the way it is. Don’t be jealous of those with more or look down on those with fewer.
30. Develop warm relationship with other evangelical churches in your area. Pray for these churches. Direct people to their ministries when the situation fits. Be happy for their blessings. I realized early on I didn’t really want revival unless I was fine with it starting at the church down the street.
31. Pray that the Lord won’t give you success until you don’t want it anymore.
32. Don’t assume the worst about people, even if you’re suspicions are right. Better to be a little naive than a lot cynical.
33. Make time to make friends. In the long run neither you nor your church will regret the hours invested in personal relationships with other pastors, old friends from seminary, and kindred spirits in the congregation.
34. Have low expectations for people this year and high expectations for people in five years.
35. Figure out the membership class and member care. Set the bar high for both.
36. Train and evaluate potential leaders. You can endure a lot of hardship if you feel energized and supported by your closest leaders. Ministry will be a nightmare if your leadership team lacks unity and maturity.
37. Focus on the basics.  Don’t get distracted with the church website or the newsletter layout.  The pastor who works hard at his sermons, genuinely likes people, and really loves the Lord will be used by God.
38. Don’t expect the search committee to have any clue what they’re doing.
39. Love your wife. Spend time with your kids. Be very afraid if you no longer look forward to going home at the end of the day.
40. Be generous in giving credit to others and stingy in passing around the blame.
41. Learn to ignore some comments, some controversies, and, yes, some people.
42. Never use the pulpit to settle old scores. Do use it to honor faithful saints and co-laborers.
43. Tell your congregation you love them and are glad to be their pastor.
44. What your people need most from you is your own personal holiness. People want a pastor who has been with God.
45. Keep your passions in proportion.  Not everything matters as much as everything else. Keep the gospel front and center.

Here’s the method that David Murray follows to “decrease reliance on paper in the pulpit”

1. Saturation

You must be saturated in your material. This is one of the benefits of preparing nearer the time of sermon delivery. The longer the time period between preparation and preaching, the more you will have to rely on your notes. I also find that praying over my sermon, applying each point to myself really helps to embed the sermon in the heart as well as in the head.

2. Scriptural

If your text is just a pretext for some topical sermon with little connection to your text, then you will be much more reliant on notes. But if your sermon points and material flow naturally out of Scripture, then you immediately have a huge help to reducing your reliance on notes. If you blank, as we all do, then you should be able to just look at your text for prompts to get you back on track.

3. Structure

You must have a clear structure for your sermon material. It is much easier to remember five bullet points than a five line paragraph. Use the outlining/indenting feature of your Word processor and use the same lettering/spacing standard each time to train your mind to step through the process.

4. Summarize

Try to summarize your points and sub-points, cutting the words down more and more until your main points and sub-points are no more than 3-5 words, and your explanatory sentences are no more than one line long. I would recommend that you end up with no more than one page of a summary. I’ve attached a sample below from one of my sermons. I may take this into the pulpit in my pocket or inside my Bible as a “fallback” if I blank. But if I’ve properly prepared by following the other steps outlined here, then I usually don’t need to refer to it.

5. Stress

Once you have a one page summary, stress or highlight both your structure and the main word in each point and sentence. Use a highlight marker to color the main points and sub-points. This will help “photograph” the structure into your mind.

Then, using a dark pen, underline the key word in each point, sub-point and line. This word should be one which “triggers” memory of the whole point/line. Write the first letter of each trigger word in the left hand margin. You will then have a series of letters running up and down the left side of your page. Try to memorize one main-point letter and the sub-point letters. Then see if you can recall the word and phrase or sentence related to each letter. The letter should trigger a word which triggers the point (see sample below).

6. Study

This method does not advocate memorizing the sermon word for word. Instead you are remembering the key points, sub-points and “trigger” words (the skeleton). But you will need to stock your mind with a wide vocabulary so that the “trigger” word will pull in suitable other words to speak. If you don’t you will tend to start sounding “samey.” You should read widely and constantly to build up a ready vocabulary. Read outside theological books and magazines. Read a reputable newspaper or contemporary biographies. This will keep your vocabulary fresh, contemporary, and less cliched.

7. Start

The hardest step here is simply to start. It is like learning to swim for the first time without a flotation device, or learning to ride a bike without stabilizers. It is a large psychological barrier. So, let me give you some helps to starting.

First, start small. Instead of launching out with a full sermon in your head, choose a small section which you are committed to preaching without notes and follow the procedure outlined above. Next time, do a larger section or two sections, and so on. Your mind will get into a groove and you will become gradually more confident in the method.

Second, have a back-up plan. Even though you are intending to preach a section or two extemporaneously, take your paper with you anyway so that if you do “blank,” you have your paper to fall back on. The great temptation here though is that your mind will take the easiest path and so will you. If you know there is going to be no lifebelt, you will prepare much better for the jump!

Third, don’t try to memorize Scripture references or quotations. Have these written down on a small paper so that you can read from them. That will save you a lot of mental work. Also, quotations tend to carry more authority if read rather than repeated from memory.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to preach at Grace Bible Church in Grand Blanc, Michigan. The audio is embedded below and I’ve also included my speaking notes.

Download Audio

Jesus, the True and Better Everything

• Everyone thinks Jesus was good man.
  • From NT evidence
  • Can we then ignore the OT? Jesus didn’t
  • Luke 24:25-27
• Whole Bible about Jesus, not just NT
• biblical theology = studying something throughout the entire narrative or story of the Bible
• Why Biblical Theology of Jesus? Culture has lots of Jesus, most of which aren’t from the Bible
  • Revolutionary Jesus
  • Hippy Jesus
  • Republican Jesus
  • Democrat Jesus
  • Therapist Jesus
  • Touchdown Jesus
  • Gandhi – “I like your Christ. I don’t like your Christians. They are so unlike your Christ”
    • Fact is, he didn’t really like Christ or he would have believed
• All of these Jesus’ have enough truth to make them appealing, but not all of them have the full truth, Let’s look at what the Bible says and we’ll get a much clearer picture of who Jesus really is and how He really is the True and Better Everything.

Adam

• The story of Adam starts the Bible.
• God creates everything
• He puts Adam & Eve in the garden of Eden, which is perfect.
  • They lack nothing
  • Adam even got to name the animals. Awesome
• God gave them only 1 command
  • Genesis 2:16-17
• Adam and Eve – perfect place in community with God.
  • They were so close that they could hear God walking (Genesis 3:8).
• All they had to do: refrain from eating from that one tree.
• Sadly, they did not. The serpent comes, tempts them, and they both eat.
• Adam and Eve eat and everything changes. They’re ashamed of their nakedness and afraid of God. Let’s continue in Genesis 3:16-19
• So now, everything has changed.
  • Death
  • Pain
  • Toil
  • All because of the actions of one man, Adam.
  • The rest of the Bible is the story of humanity dealing with the effects of one man’s sin
• Because of that sin, a way was needed to be cleansed from that sin. This was done through the Old Testament system of priestly sacrifices

OT High Priest / Sacrifice

• Modern man don’t know about sacrifices
  • they were integral to the life of the Jewish people
• Here is the prescription for the sacrifice from Leviticus 16:15-22 which was a yearly sacrifice to make atonement for Israel (Leviticus 16:15-22)
• That is a lot to that.
  • Atoning for sin is serious.
  • Even rope tied to leg.
• Imagine if that’s how seriously we took atoning for our sin.
• Legacy of that sacrifice – term scapegoat.
• Don’t think God is blood thirsty
  • but God is a holy and just God
  • His holiness and justice requires repenting and atoning for sins committed against Him.
  • Alternative, facing His righteous wrath
    • If He isn’t holy, then why worship Him? He would be fallible .
    • If He isn’t just, then why repent? No confidence of forgiveness or mercy
• Blood of sacrifices reminds us
  • sin and its effects aren’t pretty.
  • God spilled blood in the garden to clothe Adam and Eve (Genesis 3:21)
• If we sacrificed, we would think differently about sin
• Jewish people thought it could be atoned for yearly.
• Anything that needs to happen regularly isn’t truly satisfied, though.
• Repeating yearly = more work for the people
• With that work, comes need for rest

Sabbath / Rest

• God commands that work / rest cycle
  • Genesis 3:18-19
• Adam’s sin, life requires hard work.
• God told us to rest (Moses & 10 Commandments)
  • Exodus 20:8-11
• We’ve made Sabbath into the day that we gather to worship God, but physiologically, it’s very beneficial to have a day off every week, even if we rarely treat it like a day of rest.
  • Ends up being yardwork day or fix-it day
  • Tell story of growing up
• In the Bible, however, It seems like it required a lot of work to not do work.
  • Pharisees beefed with Jesus in Matthew 12 about his disciples plucking heads of grain
  • Are we that picky sometimes? How Christian is Christian enough?
• How did a day of rest become so much work, then?
  • When it became all about men and what they have to do, what things they can or can’t do.
• In fact, if you look at the three things we’ve talked about so far (Adam, High Priest and sacrifice, the Sabbath) they’re all about man
  • First Man sins (Adam)
  • Man needs to repent and atone for his, and others, sins which brings in the High Priest
  • Man needs to work and then rest (Sabbath)
• Each of these repeats and repeats and by the end of the Old Testament, there was no hope for an end. However, there would soon come a Man who would satisfy all of these and become
  • True and Better Adam
  • True and Better High Priest
  • True and Better Sacrifice
  • True and Better Sabbath

Jesus, the True and Better Adam

• Started with the First Man, Adam, the man who started everything off bad.
• Now it’s the Second Adam, Jesus, the God Man who makes everything right.
• Look at Romans, written by Paul
• Give Paul’s history.
  • Damascus conversion
  • Planted churches
  • Wrote letters to churches which became books of the Bible.
• His letter to the church in Rome, the book of Romans, is deep. Specifically, let’s look at Romans 5:17-19
• Paul contrasts
  • Adam, whose sin led to condemnation for all men,
  • Jesus, whose righteousness leads to life for all mankind.
• Jesus led a completely sinless, perfect life, even while being fully human.
  • We can’t imagine it
  • Jesus did it.
• He lead a sinless life so we can be reconciled to God and declared righteous.
  • This is the idea of imputed righteousness, that Christ’s righteousness has been credited to believers through no action of their own.
  • There is nothing we can do to deserve it and nothing we can do to lose it.
• When we receive Christ’s righteousness, we acknowledge him as the True and Better Adam because He was fully righteous and obedient before God.

Jesus, both the True and Better High Priest AND the True and Better Sacrifice

• Adam’s sin required atonement.
• I talked about High Priest, who needed to make sacrifices to atone for the sins of Israel.
  • Done yearly
  • Dangerous (rope)
• We need High Priest who once and for all atoned and became the perfect mediator between us and God
• Let’s read Hebrews 4:14 – 5:10
• Contrasts between High Priest and Jesus as High Priest
• Sacrifice defines mediatorial relationship
  • High Priests between the Jews and God.
  • Jesus is acting on our behalf as a mediator between us and God.
• Frequency of sacrifice
  • High Priests – yearly
  • Jesus – once
• Jesus’ mediation better
  • Jesus is fully man – experience of being human and “sympathizing with our weaknesses”
  • Jesus is fully God – authority to be our mediator, no chance of “messing up”
• And not only is Jesus our High Priest, he’s also the rest of the atoning act by being the Sacrifice as well . Let’s look at 1 John 4:10
  • 1 John 4:10
• Propitiation is the idea of satisfying wrath, or “appeasing wrath by the offering of a gift”
  • Our sins, our rebellion against God rightly deserve God’s wrath
• We can’t satisfy God’s wrath.
• How do we respond?
  • Despair of knowing we’re going to hell.
  • No. We can rejoice that God sent Jesus to appease God’s wrath, as the atoning sacrifice or propiation for us.
    • Jesus = fully human = proper payment
    • Jesus = fully God = the ability to take God’s punishment for all the sins of man that have ever and will ever happen.
• That’s amazing to think of, that Jesus satisfied God’s righteous wrath forever, on our behalf, that through it we might worship God.
• Jesus is the True and Better Priest, because He perfectly acts as the mediator between us and God, making petitions for us in love and mercy.
• Jesus is the True and Better Sacrifice, because He gave His life on the cross, forever satisfying God’s righteous wrath against sin.
• And now as a result of that mediation and that sacrifice, we can find rest.
• That rest, however, is not the temporary rest of the Sabbath, but the permanent rest for those who live in Christ.

Jesus, the True and Better Rest

• To recap,
  • Adam’s sin = condemnation.
  • Christ’s life = True and Better Adam
    • we are made righteous.
  • High Priest’s sacrifice = Israel’s sinned were atoned for, with a goat being the yearly sacrifice.
  • Christ’s life = True and Better High Priest
    • we have a mediator between us and God
    • we can approach Him based on Christ’s righteousness.
  • Christ’s death = True and Better Sacrifice
    • propitiation has been made for our sins
    • God’s wrath has been appeased
    • we are no longer in fear of judgment.
• That’s good news, due in no part to us but due all to Christ
• But some people still think they need to work for it, that they still have to toil to be righteous.
  • They are still looking at the law, with its command to Sabbath
  • They think they need to do work to be righteous before God and to obey and please him.
  • There’s no grace, it’s all work
• They aren’t believing the promises made to us in Scripture that in Christ we find rest.
• Matthew 11:28-29
• Those verses promise
  • rest in Christ.
  • release from our burdens
  • understanding from Christ.
• Do we live in the truth of those promises? NO
  • We work, trying to prove our worth to Jesus
  • We worry about the burdens in our lives
  • We seek to learn about Christ without going to Him
• How then, should we rest in Christ?  What does that even mean?
• It means resting in the Gospel, secure in the Good News of who Jesus is and what He has done — The perfect God man who lived a holy life, dies on the cross taking the penalty for sin and facing God’s righteous wrath, and rising from the dead triumphing over death. Resting in the Gospel means trusting that it’s not “I do it” but “Jesus did it”
• It means resting in your identity in Christ, as a beloved son or daughter of God.
  • Dad issues
    • God is the perfect father and run to Him as a child.
  • Christians
    • Rejoice in your faith and share God with others.
  • Non-Christians
    • The offer of rest in Christ is made to everyone.
    • Requires nothing special but
      • acknowledge of your sin, your rebellion
      • acknowledge your inability to both stop sinning & pay the just penalty for your sins.
    • When you
      • seek after God,
      • repent of your sin, your rebellion against God
      • ask for forgiveness and turn away from sin,
      • you will find that you are turning into God, who has been seeking you all along.
      • Then you find true identity in Christ
• It means resting in contentment,
  • Having joy in pain
  • Having peace in struggle
• And finally, it means resting in worship because
  • Our sin being cleansed.
  • Our debt being paid for.
  • Our need to work being replaced by rest.
• Our reflection on the grand narrative of Jesus in the Bible, from Adam through the High Priests and the Sabbath, should cause us to
  • fall on our knees in worship.
  • sing and shout praises to God.
  • want to share that good news, that gospel, with others.
  • look forward to the day foretold in Revelation 7:9-12

GCR refers to the Great Commission Resurgence, the Southern Baptist task force that is attempting to influence a huge denomination to be more missional and have more kingdom impact. Nathan Akin recently wrote about how the church he attends is a model GCR church. Here are some highlights.

First, my church strives after the glory of God in all things with a strong emphasis on the Scriptures and Gospel-Centrality.

This works itself out in a commitment to expository preaching

In addition, this has led us to a focus on discipleship

First, there is a membership process; this comes directly out of our belief in the Baptist distinctive of “Regenerate Church Membership.”

Next, members are integrated into a small group, which is the primary means of discipleship and community in our church.

Finally, in the context of Gospel-Centrality, there is a focus on being as diverse as the community around us.

Second, our church is adamant about the primacy of the local church

Shepherd’s Training

The elders invite these men that they have identified into the 2-year program; it is not open to everyone. He is then paired with an Elder or leader in the church, along with one other trainee. This leader focuses on personal development and maturity with him. In addition, there is a focus on accountability and the character necessary for an elder. He meets with this Elder/leader every other week to go through these things and to work through memorizing the Pastoral Epistles. In addition, he also meets every other week with all those in the program and all the trainers. Each “semester” during the 2-year cycle focuses on a different aspect of pastoral ministry and leadership. The every other week meeting focuses on the portion of the Pastoral Epistles that was to be memorized that week. One of the Elders then leads through an exposition of that passage and the other elders add thoughts on the passage as well. Next, all the trainees are required to read a book for the week, examples of books read are Baxter’s “The Reformed Pastor,” Dever’s “Nine Marks of a Healthy Church,” Spurgeon’s “Lectures to My Students,” and Bonheoffer’s “Life Together.” Each week, two of the trainees deliver an oral book review of the book for that week and then ask questions of the book that the elders answer and discuss. Finally, the night ends with one of the elders lecturing on an area of pastoral ministry and then discussion of that topic among the elders and trainees. The topics range from “why we employ small groups” to “regenerate church membership.” In addition, during the semester the trainees write two position papers on topics of interest in pastoral ministries. The topics of these papers are things like, view of spiritual gifts in ministry, use of alcohol in ministry, view of divorce and remarriage, and view of church government. Finally, each trainee is to work on a ministry project in some area of church life.  The goal is to lead to the training of future elders and church planters through life on life training. This is the best way to evaluate whether a man possess the qualifications of an Elder and if they are ready to take on a role such as that.

Finally, in the focus of church primacy, my home church does church planting and missions “in house.”

This focus on the primacy of the local church does not mean that my church does not seek to be aided by the convention structures, but it means that they do not farm out missions’ work or church planting to an outside organization.

Finally, how does my church focus on missional living?

First, there is a focus on the small groups being missional. They are all to carry out community projects in our “We Love North Raleigh” campaign

Second, as has been mentioned, we focus on missional living through church planting

In addition, the church has worked hard at overseas and cross-cultural missions

I read the Jesus Storybook Bible to Malachi each night. It’s one of my favorite parts of the day. As I read it, and think about its theme of “Every Story Whispers His Name,” I reflect on all of the sermons I’ve heard that don’t have Jesus at the center. They may talk about Him and the cross, but the application of sermon still becomes all about me instead of being all about Him. For instance, I recently listened to a sermon about the feeding of the five thousand and the main point of the sermon was “watch Jesus take your little and turn it into a lot.” I respectively don’t think that’s the point of the story. I think it’s about Jesus being the bread of life. I think it’s about Jesus being all sustaining. I think it’s about Jesus rewriting the rules about what it means to be a King. I think it’s about Jesus doing miracles that demonstrate His divinity. All those points make much of Jesus and none of them make much of me or make it in any way about me and what I’ve given. It’s all about what HE has DONE. This blog post by Jared Wilson says the same thing in a much more eloquent way than I ever could:

You’ve probably heard this Sunday School humor tidbit:

Sunday School teacher holds up a picture and asks the class, “What is this?”

Little Johnny answers, tentatively, “Well, it looks like a squirrel, but I know the answer is ‘Jesus’.”

I can laugh at the Little Johnny and the Squirrel story, but I think it’s true too. The best teaching and preaching always makes the answer “Jesus.”

Not every biblical text is explicitly about Jesus of course. But no matter what it looks like, we can show that the answer is Jesus.

How?

Here’s how I approach biblical texts in the mode of gospel-centrality:

If I’m looking at an exhortation/command/Law, I ask what precipitates it. Sometimes you have to draw in the gospel reminder if it’s not immediately in the text or context. For instance: Leviticus is chock-full of commands, but this book comes after Exodus, after the Israelites are set free from Egyptian bondage and are in the wilderness. So I remind myself and my church that obedience is a response to God’s freedom, not the leverage for God’s freedom. In other words, we don’t obey to be set free; we obey *because* we’ve been set free. In the same way Jesus announces the blessings of the kingdom coming in the Beatitudes, and then proceeds to tell us what life in the kingdom looks like (the rest of the Sermon on the Mount). Pronouncement precedes exhortation; being precedes doing.

This is easier to do in Paul’s letters, because Paul is always connecting commands to gospel pronouncements, couching what we do in “what we are.” One has to try really hard to divorce Paul’s exhortations from Paul’s gospel proclamations. A lot of preachers do it, but you really have to put the blinders on. It gets harder in the Old Testament, but even in some of the hard core hellfire and brimstone passages of the Minor Prophets, there are plenty of little gospel pronouncements. (Malachi’s burning furnace and threat of God smearing dung on our faces comes after he explicitly reminds us “I have loved you.”)

If the text I’m looking at is a story of some kind, the most important thing I try to do is use it to point to Jesus as the hero of history. So David and Goliath becomes not about our having courage in the face of adversity but about Jesus defeating sin/death/Satan on our behalf. We aren’t David in that story; we are the scared Israelites.

A good template for gospel-centered biblical storytelling is Ferguson’s “Jesus is the true and better __________.”

This is extremely important. And once we make it our routine practice, it will get easier to see the gospel springs running beneath the hard soil of God’s harder words. Once we train our eyes to see it, we will see the gospel of Christ crucified and resurrected as the theme of all of Scripture, not just the New Testament, and not just the parts in the New Testament that are “easy.”

Eventually we can look at any text and say, “Well, it looks like a squirrel — and maybe it is a squirrel — but we know the answer is Jesus.”

Sovereign Grace is “a family of churches passionate about the gospel of Jesus Christ. We are devoted to planting and supporting local churches, with a strong doctrinal basis that is evangelical, Reformed, and continuationist.” Outside of their church polity (elder-rule), I’m a proponent of everything that they do. Dave Harvey, who heads up their church planting efforts, recently blogged about their “governors—things that help us pursue opportunities at the speed limit our values will allow.” The first governor is the qualified guy

What do we mean by a qualified man? A qualified man is one who has sensed a clear and enduring call to plant a church. But there’s more. That sense of call has been confirmed by mature leaders who know the man, warts and all. A qualified man is revealed by the grace on his life. How do we know if there’s grace? Because there are character and abilities that match the eldership qualifications of 1 Timothy 3:1-7, Titus 1:5-9, and other passages. And not just to attain them, but to maintain them as well.

In Sovereign Grace Ministries, we organize these qualities around five essential criteria, which we call the “e5.” First and primarily there is preaching. That’s the BIG E. A qualified guy must be an expositor who knows how to handle God’s Word in clear and compelling manner. In our experience, the training and evaluation involved in this component just takes time. It slows the process. We realize that dialing this one back, maybe just downgrading from expository skill to sensible Bible teaching, would speed things up considerably. But we’re called not just to win converts but to make disciples. Disciple making requires exposition.

It doesn’t end there; here are numbers two through five. The qualified man displays (2) a leadership gift, (3) faith towards God, (4) a shepherd’s heart that cares for people, and (5) a determination to “do the work of an evangelist” (2 Timothy 4:5).

Those are outstanding qualifications and thoroughly biblical. As I look towards planting, the primary “e5″ that I’m lacking is the preaching one. Lord willing, there will be opportunities possibly at Grace or other local churches to preach. It’s an area that I need to grow in and to do that you need experience.

David Murray recently wrote a great series of blog posts on evangelistic preaching. If you want to read them all, click here or read below for excerpts from each one.

What is evangelistic preaching?

evangelistic preaching expounds God’s Word (it is expository) with the primary aim being the salvation of lost souls (rather than the instruction of God’s people). Stuart Olyott says it is to “preach from the Bible with the immediate aim of the immediate conversion of every soul in front of us.”

What’s happened to evangelistic preaching?

The Preacher

Prejudice: “It’s more socially acceptable, it’s more dignified and respectable to be engaged in calm reasoning and deduction, rather than in anxious weeping and beseeching. I think we’d all have to admit that it is easier emotionally and socially to be teachers than evangelists. And that prejudice, that bias, influences our choice of text and the way we preach our texts.”

Pragmatism: “Let’s get people in first. Get them used to our church. Then we will become more “evangelistic.” After all we don’t want to put them off by telling them they are sinners who need a Savior; or that they must abandon their own works and trust in Christ’s grace alone; or that without faith in Christ they will be punished forever in hell, etc.”

Presumption: “some pastors dangerously presume that their hearers are already saved.”

The Congregation

Mature Christians: “When we preach evangelistic sermons, the mature Christians in our congregations, those we often lean on for our encouragement and strength, might feel (or even say), “Well there wasn’t much for me in that sermon…that’s more like milk for babies than meat for the mature.” They are maybe less than enthusiastic about simple preaching of the Gospel to lost sinners.”

Few Unconverted Persons: “My first congregation had only 20-30 people. Sometimes there were maybe only 3-5 unconverted hearers in an evening service. It’s a lot harder to preach an evangelistic sermon in these circumstances, because everyone knows to whom you are directing your warning, wooing, and pleading words.”

The World
… The real test of incipient pluralism is, “How do we really view the unconverted?” Is our first thought when we see them, “These precious souls are hell-bound, without Christ, lost, under the wrath of God, however religious they may be?” I’m deeply afraid that a kind of incipient, subtle, often unnoticed pluralism has blunted the sharp edge of evangelistic preaching.

The Devil
Then, of course, there is our great enemy, the devil. If there’s any kind of preaching that has been more successful in stealing captives from him and claiming them for the Lord, it is passionate evangelistic preaching. No weapon in the Gospel armory has been so effective in rescuing souls. Of course, he is going to fight it, and he is going to supply every excuse not to preach in an evangelistic way.

Why preach evangelistic sermons?

Biblical Warrant: “The Old Testament prophets were passionate pleaders for the souls of their fellow men and women. Deuteronomy reads like an Old Testament evangelistic tract, as Moses expostulates with Israel and beseeches them to embrace the God of Genesis to Numbers. Study the weeping reasonings of Jeremiah and the powerful pictorial pleas of Hosea. Even apocalyptic and enigmatic Ezekiel contains the most beautiful calls to Israel to turn from their evil ways and live. In encounter after encounter, in public and in private, Jesus exhorted souls to seek salvation. The Acts of the Apostles show us Peter and Paul pleading with individuals, groups, congregations, and public gatherings. “Teacher” Paul cannot resist tearful expressions of angst and desire in Romans 9-11, that most doctrinal of letters.”

What happens when Evangelistic Sermons are absent?

• Preaching becomes lecturely and academic
• Christians become forgetful, proud, inward-looking, and prayerless
• Christians do not bring friends to church
• Children growing up in the church assume they are saved
• Lost souls go to hell

Four kinds of evangelistic sermon

“Warm-up” sermons: “These are sermons we preach to clear and prepare the ground for the gospel. They address some of the common objections to Christianity; the caricatures of and prejudices against Christianity .. These sermons are aiming at conversion, especially the early stages of conversion. They are clearing away all the rubbish that has accumulated in a sinner’s mind, to gain a hearing for the gospel.”

Warning Sermons: “The great aim of these sermons is to convict, to bring our hearers to an awareness of their perilous state before God, and their need of repentance.”

Wooing Sermons: “We explain the wonders of the Father’s willingness to send his Son to sinners, and to save them by His sufferings, death, and resurrection. We also focus on the Lord Jesus; His willingness to come, suffer and die for sinners; His tender, wise and winning ways with sinners. We explain the powerful work of the Holy Spirit in regenerating and renewing the hardest of hearts. We explain that God saves by grace through faith, not by merit through works. We are trying to address people who are trembling, who are fearful, who are scared, and are seeking to draw them in to the love and the mercy and the grace of God. No pastor can pluck the chord of grace enough.”

Will Sermons: “These are sermons that bring people to the signpost at the junction, with two choices. These are sermons that bring people to the ballot box, where they must cast their vote. They bring people to that point where they are faced with the two great and ultimate options: faith or unbelief, life or death, heaven or hell. These are sermons that are full of persuasion, pleading, and arguing and beseeching.”

8 marks of an evangelistic sermon

Present: “Evangelistic preaching majors in the present tense. Yes, it deals with biblical data, which is usually in the past tense. But it moves rapidly from the past to the present”

Personal: “Yes, again, we begin with explaining the Word as originally given to the Israelites, the disciples, etc. It starts with “they” and “them.” However, in evangelistic preaching, we move rapidly to “you.”"

Persuasion: “We are here to persuade. People must see our anxiety that they respond to the Gospel in faith and repentance.”

Passionate: “Let people see that we feel this deeply, that we fear for their eternal state, that we are anxious over them, and that we love them deeply. Let that be communicated in our words, but also in our facial expressions, our body language, and our tone.”

Plain: “If we love sinners and we are anxious for them to be saved, we will be clear and plain in our structure, content, and choice of words. If we can use a smaller word, we use it. If we can shorten our sentences, we do so. If we can find an illustration, we tell it. Everything is aimed at simplicity and clarity, so that, as it was said of Martin Luther, it may be said of us, “It’s impossible to misunderstand him.”

Powerful: “Let’s preach with powerful, bold, divine authority. People need to hear, “Thus says the Lord.””

Perseverance: “And let our evangelistic sermons also be characterized by perseverance. We preach. No one’s converted. We do it again. We preach. No one’s converted. We do it again, and again, and again.”

Prayerful: “Above all, of course, evangelistic preaching is to be prayerful – before, during, and after. Pray to be delivered from the fear of man, pray that God would give you passion for souls. Pray that you would be able to communicate naturally and easily and freely. Pray that you’d get a hearing for the gospel and you’d be able to present Christ so that you “disappear.” And pray afterward that the seed sown would bring forth a harvest of saved souls, and that the church will be revived and built up.”