Thabiti Anyabwile on Expository Preaching

Colin Adams asks Thabiti Anyabwile, pastor of First Baptist Church in Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands, 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 would rank preaching Christ and Him crucified as the most important commitment of the ministry. Everything else builds upon the exposition of God’s Word. . . .
2. How long (on average) does it take you to prepare a sermon?
   Currently, I devote two full days to sermon preparation—Thursday and Friday. I’ll generally spend about twenty hours over those two days and a few hours through the week reading the text and making notes.
3. Is it important to you that a sermon contain one major theme or idea? If so, how do you crystallise it?
   I think the sermon should contain the major themes or points of the text being considered. . . . I’d rather the number of themes or ideas from the text to determine the structure of my sermon than my “sermon framework/approach” to drive the number of themes or ideas I focus on in a text.
4. What is the most important aspect of a preacher’s style and what should he avoid?
   I think it’s probably most important that a preacher be himself . . . whatever that means stylistically. Piper is Piper; MacArthur is MacArthur; Stott is Stott; Lloyd-Jones was Lloyd-Jones. I suppose Thabiti is Thabiti, though as a young preacher I’m still trying to figure out what that means. . . .
5. What notes, if any, do you use?
   I take a full manuscript into the pulpit. I’ll probably deliver 85% of it. . . . I do this because I’m concerned about two things: 1) I want to be theologically more precise . . . . 2) Some of the most influential and prominent men in the history of the African American church left almost no record of their preaching ministries. . . .

Read the whole post at Unashamed Workman.

See also:

• Tim Keller on Expository Preaching
• Philip Ryken on Expository Preaching
• Voddie Baucham on Expository Preaching
• Liam Goligher on Expository Preaching
• Vaughan Roberts on Expository Preaching
• Conrad Mbewe on Expository Preaching

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