Colin Adams of the Unashamed Workman blog interviewsDerek Prime, former senior pastor of Charlotte Baptist Chapel in Edinburgh from 1969–1986, on matters relating to expository preaching.
He asks him 10 questions. Here are a few selections from that interview:
Colin Adams asks Conrad Mbewe, pastor of Katwaba Baptist Church, Zambia, 10 questions about expository preaching. Here are a few selections:
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). . . .
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.
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. . . .
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? . . .
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.
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:
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. . . .
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.
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.
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. . . .
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. . . .
Colin Adams asks Vaughan Roberts, Rector of St Ebbes Church in Oxford, 10 questions about expository preaching. Here are a few selections:
Where do you place the importance of preaching in the grand scheme of church life?
Preaching is central. Christ gathers his church and rules it through his word. The preaching of his word must therefore be the focal point of our congregational gatherings if Christ is to be at the centre. . . .
How long (on average) does it take you to prepare a sermon?
About 12 hours. Early sermons in a new series on a less familiar book can take a few hours longer.
Is it important to you that a sermon contain one major theme or idea? If so, how do you crystallise it?
It’s certainly important that the sermon should have an aim. It needs to have a clear sense of direction and of what it intends to communicate. That is not a single point that’s chosen arbitrarily from a number of different points that could be made from the passage; it should rather be driven by the thrust of the text itself. . . .
What are the greatest perils that a preacher must avoid?
They will vary from person to person and from time to time. At the moment my biggest danger is taking on too much and drifting into a spiritually dull ‘professionalism’ as a preacher. I need to preserve the freshness of my own walk with Christ if my preaching is to remain fresh.
What books on preaching, or exemplars of it, have you found most influential in your own preaching?
John Stott’s ‘I believe in preaching’ was the first book I read on the subject and I still go back to it. John Stott, Dick Lucas, Roy Clements and Jonathan Fletcher were influential models when I first began preaching.
Colin Adams asks Liam Goligher, pastor of Duke Street Church Richmond upon Thames, 10 questions about expository preaching. Here are a few selections:
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. . . .
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. . . .
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).
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. . . .
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.
Colin Adams asks Voddie Baucham, Pastor of Preaching at Grace Family Baptist Church in Spring, TX, 10 questions about expository preaching. Here are a few selections:
Where do you place the importance of preaching in the grand scheme of church life?
I believe preaching is central to the grand scheme of church life (see Acts 2:42ff). Preaching/teaching sets the tone and the parameters for all other functions of the church. . . .
Is it important to you that a sermon contain one major theme or idea? If so, how do you crystallise it?
Absolutely! I am always looking for the central theme in a passage. There may be more than one, but I have come to realize that I am most effective when I limit myself to the main idea. . . .
What is the most important aspect of a preacher’s style and what should he avoid?
The most important aspect of a preacher’s style is authenticity. . . .
What are the greatest perils that a preacher must avoid?
Laziness, pride and the fear of men. Laziness will keep us from plumbing the depths of the Word. Pride will keep us from prayer, and the fear of men will keep us from preaching the hard things.
What books on preaching, or exemplars of it, have you found most influential in your own preaching? 12 Essential Skills for Great Preaching, by Wayne McDill, Spirit Empowered Preaching, by Arturo Azurdia, and Preaching and Preachers, by D. Martin Lloyd Jones. As for exemplars, I am fond of men like Tony Evans, Alistair Begg and John Piper.
Colin Adams asks Philip Ryken, senior minister of Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, 10 questions about expository preaching. Here are a few selections:
Can you provide us with a definition of biblical preaching?
Expository preaching means making God’s Word plain. In an expository sermon the preacher simply tries to explain what the Bible teaches. The main points of his sermon are the points made by a particular text in the Bible. . . .
Do you have any thoughts on the current concern over ‘redemptive-historical’ preaching? How does preaching Christ from all the Scriptures govern the shape of your sermons? I have been strongly influenced by Geerhardus Vos, Sidney Greidanus, Edmund Clowney, and other advocates of redemptive-historical preaching. What I take to be the main point of this emphasis is exactly right: that we are to preach Christ from all the Scriptures, as Jesus himself did (see Luke 24:25-27). . . .
What books on preaching have you found most influential in your own preaching? I find Bryan Chapell’s book on Christ-Centered Preaching to be the best how-to manual for beginning to learn how to preach. For capturing the flavor of what preaching is all about my favorite book is John Piper’s The Supremacy of God in Preaching.
What has been your practice in preaching as regards consecutive expository, textual or topical preaching? My general practice is to preach expository sermons from consecutive passages in whole books of the Bible. On occasion I have preached a more topical series, but I have generally done this in expositional format. . . .
What concessions, if any, does the modern preacher have to make in order to speak to postmodernity? I’m not sure that any preacher ever has to make any concessions to anything except the Word of God, to which he submits as his only ultimate authority. Of course it is true that any preacher needs to know the context in which he is preaching. . . .
Where do you place the importance of preaching in the grand scheme of church life?
It is central, but not alone at the center. Pastoral ministry is as important as preaching ministry, and lay ‘every-member’ ministry is as crucial as ordained ministry. . . .
How long (on average) does it take you to prepare a sermon?
I pastor a large church and have a large staff and so I give special prominence to preparing the sermon. I give it 15-20 hours a week. . . . When I was a pastor without a large staff I put in 6-8 hours on a sermon.
What is the most important aspect of a preacher’s style and what should he avoid?
He should combine warmth and authority/force. That is hard to do, since tempermentally we incline one way or the other. . . .
What notes, if any, do you use?
I use a very detailed outline, with many key phrases in each sub-point written out word for word.
How do you fight to balance preparation for preaching with other important responsibilities (eg. pastoral care, leadership responsibilities)?
It is a very great mistake to pit pastoral care and leadership against preaching preparation. It is only through doing people-work that you become the preacher you need to be–someone who knows sin, how the heart works, what people’s struggles are, and so on. . . .
Bryan Chapell (Wikipedia), president of Covenant Theological Seminary, is a well-respected expert on expository preaching. If you haven’t his Christ-Centered Preaching, you need to.
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Colin Adams of the Unashamed Workman blog 
Colin Adams asks Conrad Mbewe, pastor of 
Colin Adams asks 
Colin Adams asks Liam Goligher, pastor of 
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