Conrad Mbewe on Expository Preaching

Colin Adams asks Conrad Mbewe, pastor of Katwaba Baptist Church, Zambia, 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?
   As far as I can see from the Word of God, preaching must be central to the life of the church. This can be seen from the way the church started in the New Testament. As soon as the first church was gathered together in Acts 2, the Bible records that “they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer” (Acts 2:42). . . .
2. How long (on average) does it take you to prepare a sermon?
   It takes anything between two to three hours, depending on how familiar I am with the subject or the text. Because I usually preach in a consecutive expository fashion in my own pulpit, most of the initial spade work would have been done much earlier. Hence, that is not included in this time. Also, I rarely ever write out my sermons in full. My final sermon outline is hardly ever more than one page long. So, again, you have to cut out the average writing time that most pastors go through. That is why I do not spend as much time in sermon preparation as most of my fellow preachers.
3. Is it important to you that a sermon contain one major theme or idea? If so, how do you crystallise it?
   It is very important. I go before God’s people with “a word from the Lord” and it is important to me that they go home after listening to my preaching with that word—or theme or idea. I ensure that my introduction waters their appetite for that one “word” and that my conclusion nails it in with some immediate application. . . .
4. What are the greatest perils that a preacher must avoid?
   Familiarity and prayerlessness. I have preached for (only) twenty years and I sense the temptation to handle the work of preaching as “just one of those things”. Yet I am aware that these two vices will cost me the presence of God in preaching and I will soon become a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. May I add the temptation to use the Bible to say what you already started out wanting to say? . . .
5. What books on preaching, or exemplars of it, have you found most influential in your own preaching?
   The sermons of Charles Haddon Spurgeon come immediately to mind. In the early years of my Christian life, I used to preach some of them out to an empty church building. Well, it was not completely empty because I had a few of my friends sitting in the pews, but it was not a worship service either. Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ Evangelistic Sermons and his Old Testament Evangelistic Sermons (both published by the Banner of Truth Trust) are great examples of evangelistic preaching. One can add to this his expositions in Romans and Ephesians. Those sermons are worth their weight in gold! You will notice, therefore, that I have learnt more from books that contain sermons rather than books that teach how to preach.

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
• Thabiti Anyabwile on Expository Preaching

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