Skip to main content

Marks of A Healthy Church: Expositional Preaching by Pastor Kevin Feder

By


Ok, ok, this isn't just a mark of a healthy church, it is more than that. It is an essential mark. It would be impossible to have a healthy church, or even be a true church at all, if it wasn't found upon the exposition of Scripture.  So what is expositional preaching and why does it matter? Good questions!

What Is Expositional Preaching? 

According to Mark Dever, "expositional preaching is the kind of preaching that, quite simply, exposes God's Word. It takes a particular passage of Scripture, explains that passage, and then applies the meaning of the passage to the life of the congregation. It's the kind of preaching most geared to get at what God says to his people, as well as to those who are not his people." 

This is a helpful quote from Dever. Other popular types of preaching, which can be legitimate on occasion, are topical preaching and biographical preaching. Topical preaching is aimed at gathering one or more passages that address a particular topic. Biographical preaching takes the life of someone in the Bible as a model of exemplary faith and a display of God's relationship to his people.

The reason why the topical approach and biographical approach are not good options for the preaching life of a church is that often times passages are selected to support what the preacher already knows, and therefore the congregation only learns what the preacher already knows instead of being challenged by what God is actually saying. Often times the passage itself used in a topical way is actually speaking to something else and isn't the main point of the passage. When this happens, we might conclude that it isn't God speaking as much as the preacher is.

Let me outline a few requirements for expositional preaching to occur within the life of a church:

The Church Must Be Committed To Expositional Preaching

In order for expositional preaching to exist in a church it must be a commitment of the pastor and the congregation.one cannot exist without the other. Theoretically, the pastor cannot preach expositionally if the congregation has no appetite for it. 

The Church Must Be Committed To Hearing From God

One of the difficulties with expositional preaching is that those who listen to it may not find their most pressing questions or needs quickly addressed. Often times this is the experience of those who read Scripture on some sort of reading plan: it seems irrelevant to the issues you might face. The same experience might characterize the preaching ministry. In order for expositional preaching to thrive in a church there must be a collective conviction that God does speak through his Word and he does so in his time and in his way. In other words, as long as God speaks then the hearers are getting what they need. Does the church believe that? That is the question. 

Expositional Preaching Is The Fountainhead of True Growth

The church gather to worship God as he is revealed (or exposed) in Scripture. The church is not a club and it isn't needed t affirm all of the popular sensibilities of the day. If that were the case then church wouldn't be necessary and we could gain plenty of worldly wisdom from many alternate places. 

Rather, the church must hear from God. Martin Luther began the reformation when he truly discovered what God was saying as opposed to what the Catholic church leaders were saying. Christianity is always about true reformation, ongoing reformation of the mind and heart of mankind en route to becoming more and more like Christ. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

To Have My Soul Happy in the Lord, by George Muller

By Anonymous
To Have My Soul Happy in the Lord By George Muller “It has pleased the Lord to teach me a truth, the benefit of which I have not lost for more than fourteen years. The point is this: I saw more clearly than ever that the first great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day was to have my soul happy in the Lord. The first thing to be concerned about was not how much I might serve the Lord, or how I might glorify the Lord, but how I might get my soul into a happy state, and how my inner man might be nourished. “I saw that the most important thing I had to do was to give myself to the reading of the Word of God—not prayer, but the Word of God. And here again, not the simple reading of the Word of God so that it only passes through my mind just as water runs through a pipe, but considering what I read, pondering over it, and applying it to my heart. To meditate on it, that thus my heart might be comforted, encouraged, warned, reproved, instructed. And that thus,...
Post a Comment
Read more

Worship Songs, October 15, 2017

By
We post these worship songs leading up to the worship service so that parents may listen to them in the house or in the car within the days leading up to the worship service. Our hope is that children will hear the songs prior to and it will prepare them to participate in worship on Sunday mornings. My Redeemers Love Hope Has Come I Will Glory In My Redeemer Blessed Be Your Name Here In Your Presence Your Glory Be Still My Soul (In You I Rest) -- Sermon Text: John 11:1-16 That the next generation will set their hope in God and not forget the works of God (Psalm 78:7).
Post a Comment
Read more

Meditations on the Glory of Christ: He Sits at the Right Hand of God

By
In Hebrews 1:2-4, the author makes seven claims about Jesus that when taken together greatly exalt his glory. The seventh claim the author makes about the Son is that, having made purification for sins, he now sits at the right hand of the Majesty on high. The words “he sat down” set the stage for chapter 7 where we’re taught that Jesus is both Priest and King. Prior to Jesus, no king offered his own sacrifices and no priest sat on the throne of David, for that wouldn’t be right. God had decreed that there should be a separation of powers between the priest and the king, but Jesus, unlike all before him, is worthy and able to fulfill both roles. So, on the one hand, Jesus sat down at the right hand of God after making purification for sins because the sacrifice he offered, namely himself, is sufficient. Other priests were always standing, as we see in chapter 10:11-14, because their work was never done. The blood of bulls and goats can never take away sins, so the priests could...
Post a Comment
Read more