Expository Preaching Gone Awry

Mike Gilbart-Smith, graduate of Cambridge University and Oak Hill Theological College (London) and pastor to students at Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington D. C., highlights (also here) seven mistakes expository preachers often make, resulting in something short of true expository preaching.

1. The Unfounded Sermon: The point of the passage is misunderstood.
   This is where the preacher says things that may or may not be true, but that in no sense came from the passage, when understood correctly. . . .
2. The Springboard Sermon: The point of the passage is ignored.
   Closely related is the sermon where the preacher has understood the center of the text, pays lip service to it, and then becomes intrigued by something that is a secondary or tertiary point, fixing his attention on that for the remainder of the sermon. . . .
3. The Exegetical Sermon: The point of the passage remains unapplied.
   Everything that is said is true to the passage, but is not really a sermon; it is merely a technical lecture on the passage. . . .
4. The Irrelevant Sermon: The point of the passage is applied to a different congregation.
   Either the point of the passage is applied only to non-believers, suggesting that the Word has nothing to say to the church, or it is applied to problems that are rarely seen in the congregation that is being preached to. . . .
5. The Misfit Sermon: The point of the passage is misapplied to the present congregation.
   Sometimes the hermeneutical gap between the original passage and the present congregation may be misunderstood, so that the application to the original context is wrongly directly transferred to the present context. . . .
6. The Doctrinal Sermon: The point of the passage is divorced from its generic impact.
   Too many sermons ignore the genre of a passage, and preach narrative, poetry, epistle and apocalyptic all alike as a series of propositional statements. . . .
7. The Shortcut Sermon: The point of the passage is preached without reference to the passage.
   Another sermon might have wonderfully appropriate application to mind, heart and will, yet the congregation will leave unaware of how it is appropriately applied from the text. . . .

Read the whole post (also here).

See also Mike’s other articles.

HT: Colin Adams

Like this post? Subscribe to our feed .