PREACHING THAT BUILDS A CHURCH PLANT
This article in the series, ”Lessons Learned in the Cauldron of Church Planting”, looks at the all-important subject of what kind of preaching is needed in planting a new church. The conclusions I draw may surprise some. We will be looking at how not to preach in a young church context, but especially what kind of preaching will establish a solid base of God-loving people.
Why is preaching so important?
As a young pastor, I was given advice that has served me all my life in ministry. A senior man in ministry once told me, “If you preach well, you will give yourself less counselling, not more.”
He also said this: “In church life you can have a very good Monday to Saturday, but if you have a poor Sunday, you’ve had a poor week.” Not everyone would agree with that statement, but it did help me understand the importance of the Sunday corporate gathering in the building of a church community.
But what did he mean by his first comment: “Good preaching leads to less counselling.“ ?
Reflecting on that statement, I realised that the preaching by Pentecostal preachers can often be centred around the perceived needs of people, leading to, and depending on, prayer ministry and counselling, rather than the real needs of people leading them to grow in faith in God’s Word and to trust Him.
I remember once having invited a preacher I knew to minister at a day of training for our pastors and leaders in France. He was a very fluent speaker, but something about his content troubled me. He was going back into the past of those present, highlighting the hurts, disappointments, betrayals and rejection. Then, having stirred it up in many, he had a major altar call for inner healing and, of course, many responded to the appeal.
Two things made me feel uncomfortable: on the one hand, I felt people were being manipulated so that he could minister to a large altar call. Then, on the other hand, I also felt that his message was not faith-building to help people fight the good fight that serving God ultimately is.
Preaching that builds a young church
So, the question I put to myself is, “What kind of preaching builds a young church and what kind of preaching doesn’t?”
Let me speak in more general terms to begin with, before becoming more specific.
In what has been my experience, people need to be inspired by the preaching of the Word of God and not just be given biblical explanations. The preaching must be like the trumpet call that Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians 14:8.
“For if the trumpet makes an uncertain sound, who will prepare for battle?”
Inspiring preaching motivates and mobilises people to live for God and extend His kingdom on earth. It creates hunger in the hearts of God’s people, a hunger to know God more intimately and love Him more passionately.
To build a church, people need to discover God in the preaching. There must be a sense of receiving revelation in the Word that produces a love for the ever-unfolding, living truth contained in the Scriptures. Faith in God rises and expectation to see Him move rises with it.
There is nothing more captivating than hearing an inspiring preacher. I’ve experienced it myself. As a 21-year-old university student, I listened, enthralled, Sunday night after Sunday night to Pastor Trevor Chandler in Brisbane in the mid-1970’s. That stirred me to become a preacher!
When the preaching is heavy, filled with “…you need to, you must, you mustn’t…” or when it is complicated, theoretical, predictable, or dull, it won’t be long before motivation and mobilisation take a hit. People will feel they have to endure the preaching more than anything.
Preaching your thoughts or God’s Word?
I’m not quite finished on this subject.
The poorest form of preaching and teaching is when the speaker brings up personal points on a certain theme and tries to illustrate them with some verses of Scripture to reassure people that he’s preaching “the Word”. In fact, he’s actually preaching his own thoughts.
Inspiring preaching brings out revelation from the biblical text itself. The listener sees things they had never seen before.
Now allow me to be more specific.
In one church we planted, there was a lady who had a strong personality. She began attending our young church, having had a long experience in various Pentecostal churches. As is often the case, they love you when they come but, after a while, the shine rubs off and you discover what the person is really like. At one point, I could see her pulling faces during my preaching and thought to myself, “Something not good is brewing”. Sure enough, after several months it came to a head. She came to me at the end of a service and, with quite a disrespectful tone, said, “I want real preaching on subjects like the end times, the rapture, the return of Christ.” I tried to reason with her that we weren’t in a Bible School setting, but she wouldn’t listen, so off she went and left the church.
Most older Christians have never been involved in a church plant situation and simply don’t understand that what they want in the preaching isn’t what’s needed.
So, what’s not needed? Teaching on the end times, the rapture and the return of Jesus are not needed as dominant themes in a young church plant; neither are in-depth studies of the book of Revelation, the minor prophets, or church governance. I could add to this list, but I won’t, because I would be stirring up a hornet’s nest! We don’t build with controversial subjects that incite debate among Christians.
Build a young church with the fundamentals
of faith
We build with the fundamentals of our faith. We planted our new church in the northern suburbs of Brisbane with a series I took called, “The 100 Parables of Jesus – it’s not what you think!”. The parables in the Gospel records hold an essential place in the teachings of Jesus and cover so many fundamental subjects of the Christian faith. This series went for 2½ years! I followed it up with a series on “Faith to live by”, then another entitled “The Holy Spirit and You”.
Rarely do we have a visiting speaker, not because I need to preach every week, but the inconsistency and instability inherent in the planting phase of a church has to be offset by the consistency of the presence and message of the church planter.
Here’s my challenge to you if you’re in the process of planting a church:
Why not draw up your own list of preaching subjects?
Which ones do you think would be constructive in church planting, and which subjects are best kept in a Bible school context? This would make you more sensitive to the importance of what I have expressed in this article.
