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

Billy Graham, Holiness, and Leadership

By
A few years ago, I was listening to a radio program on which Marshall Shelley was being interviewed about his new book, The Leadership Secrets of Billy Graham (Zondervan, 2005). They were giving away a few copies of the book to those who called in, and something inside me felt compelled to call. But I didn’t have a good question to ask, so I prayed to the Lord and said, “If you want me to have a copy of this book, please give me a good question to ask and I’ll call.” I’m not sure if the Lord gave me this question or if it just popped into my head, but one way or the other, I thought to ask about the connection in Billy’s life between his private pursuit of holiness and integrity, and his public effectiveness and longevity. So, I made the call and was given the last copy of the book they had to give. A couple of years earlier, I had breakfast with some friends and the subject of Billy Graham’s life and ministry came up. We talked mostly about his commitment to integrity in the area...
Post a Comment
Read more

Catechisms: Building a Heritage of Sound Faith - By Pastor Kevin Feder

By
This is an article I (Pastor Kevin) wrote in 2005 and updated in 2017. It is featured in a new resource available through Children’s Desiring God called Discipleship through Doctrinal Teaching and Catechism by Sally Michael.  It is our desire to encourage parents to use a children’s catechism as a tool in building and strengthening faith in children. A simple definition of a catechism is “organized teaching.” Catechisms are not the only things that can or should be used to instruct the next generation, yet they have useful purposes. Listed here are ten specific benefits a catechism can uniquely offer. Hopefully these ten points will help parents understand how a catechism can be effectively used in their families. 1.  A catechism is a very clear and complete gospel message. A catechism is, among other things, a very clear and concise gospel message to children. Everything a child needs to know for salvation is embodied within a catechism. The gospel is truly ama...
Post a Comment
Read more