LEADERSHIP RESOURCES
My first several years in ministry, my training as a teacher/preacher included many books on the topic. It also included the teaching/preaching classes that I took as part of my seminary education. All of these resources were great at helping me perform better as a public speaker and my ability to formulate my thoughts while expositing the Scriptures. It was 4 years later when I was deeply convicted of an important aspect of teaching and preaching. I had neglected this in my sermons: Directing every passage back to the Gospel.
I have come to realize that the vast majority of teaching/preaching resources that I had used all had a basic assumption that I (the preacher/teacher) was already doing well at articulating and communicating the gospel. Furthermore, a dangerous commonality I began to notice in the church-growth and preaching materials is that they are based upon the assumption that everyone who reads them are effectively preaching the Gospel.
I started to listen more closely to many sermons by many different preachers, some local and some nationally/internationally known, and I noticed that many sermons I considered “good” did not communicate the Gospel to their audience. This makes it impossible for unbelievers to hear the good news of Jesus Christ. What these sermons ultimately communicated to their audiences was either instructions for living, that only Christians could understand, or a message of false hope for unbelievers by promoting a moralistic gospel. A gospel that teaches a lifestyle of conventional wisdom apart from total reliance upon Christ’s atoning sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins.
