Liam Goligher on Expository Preaching

Colin Adams asks Liam Goligher, pastor of Duke Street Church Richmond upon Thames, 10 questions about expository preaching. Here are a few selections:

1. Where do you place the importance of preaching in the grand scheme of church life?
   I think it would impossible for me to exaggerate the importance of preaching to the life and health of a church. It lies at the heart of corporate worship where the united life of a congregation finds it expression. . . .
2. How long (on average) does it take you to prepare a sermon?
   I take more time now than I ever did. In my first church (when I was 22) I had four sermons a week to prepare plus do all the visiting. So I spent 12 hours each on the Sunday one’s and ‘got by’ on the mid-week ones. . . . [Now] I give about 20 hours to each sermon. . . .
3. What notes, if any, do you use?
   I started with the back of a borrowed cigarette box! I graduated to two sides of A5, then developed in the middle part of my ministry to 8 small hand written pages. I now type 13 pages of printed A5. My manuscript is now fuller than ever, highly colored (though I lost what the codes were meant to mean long ago I’m afraid).
4. What are the greatest perils that a preacher must avoid?
   Perhaps the greatest dangers are professionalism and laziness. By professionalism I mean that we prepare sermons for other people without ever preaching them to ourselves first. . . .
5. What books on preaching, or exemplars of it, have you found most influential in your own preaching?
   Murray’s The Forgotten Spurgeon was of enormous help. There Murray describes the passion and power of Spurgeon’s preaching. Spurgeon’s Lectures to my Students was helpful at one stage, as was W. E. Sangster. I was a student at Seminary when Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers was published. Today I think Sam Logan’s The Preacher and Preaching is very helpful.

Read the whole post at Unashamed Workman.

See also:

• Tim Keller on Expository Preaching
• Philip Ryken on Expository Preaching
• Voddie Baucham on Expository Preaching
• Vaughan Roberts on Expository Preaching
• Thabiti Anyabwile on Expository Preaching
• Conrad Mbewe on Expository Preaching

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