Why Some Preachers Get Better and Others Don’t<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\nI often have to answer the strangest question anyone could ask a preaching professor: \u201cDo you think preaching can be taught?\u201d I always want to respond, \u201cNo, I\u2019m just going through the motions for the money.\u201d Of course I never do, not only because it\u2019s best not to say the smart aleck things I sometimes think, but because I know what they mean when they ask. It\u2019s not really an unfair question.<\/p>\n
No one denies that a preaching class and some coaching can help anyone become better. What we question is the possibility that someone with no natural giftedness and ability can be taught well enough that he can become really good.<\/p>\n
For the last 16 years I\u2019ve sat in a seminary classroom, listening to student sermons on an almost daily basis, and I\u2019ve heard every kind of sermon and every level of preacher.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve seen guys so nervous that they had to stop and vomit during the sermon, and I\u2019ve been so moved by a student\u2019s sermon that I felt I had been ushered into the presence of the risen Christ. I\u2019ve seen guys who were no better the fifth time they preached for me than they were the first time, but I\u2019ve seen guys whose initial sermon was depressingly awful turn it around so radically by the end of the semester that I almost couldn\u2019t recognize them as the same preacher.<\/p>\n
On the first day of the semester, or the first time I hear a student preach, I have no way of knowing if he has what it takes or is willing to do what he must to be the preacher he needs to be, but I can usually tell by the second sermon if he does, because that is when he has to act on what I told him after his first sermon.<\/p>\n
What makes the difference?<\/p>\n
1. Calling<\/h2>\n
The most frustrated preacher is the one who has a sense of duty, but not a burning calling.<\/p>\n
Preaching is not just another helping profession, a Christian version of politics or the Peace Corps. The call to preach is a definite demand issued by the Holy Spirit that ignites a fire in one\u2019s bones that cannot be extinguished by the hard-hearted, stiff-necked or dull of hearing.<\/p>\n
A preacher who has been called must preach what God has spoken simply because God has spoken it. The success of one\u2019s ministry will depend on the strength of his calling. His willingness to work at his preaching will be proportional to his conviction that God has called him to preach and to be as fit a vessel for God\u2019s use as he can be.<\/p>\n
The Holy Spirit must undergird everything else from preparation to delivery, and that will not happen apart from that calling.<\/p>\n
2. Teachability<\/h2>\n
Being a preaching professor is like getting paid to tell a mother that her baby is ugly. It might be the truth, but it\u2019s not a truth anyone wants to hear.<\/p>\n
Most guys I have taught dread my comments and cringe when I tell them they missed the point of the text or seemed unprepared. They tire of hearing me tell them they lacked energy or failed to establish a connection with the audience.<\/p>\n
Every now and then, however, someone smiles gratefully as I offer corrections and suggestions.<\/p>\n
Someone may even say, \u201cI want you to be really tough on me. Tell me everything I\u2019m doing wrong because I really want to do this well.\u201d That guy is going to be fine because his spirit is teachable and he\u2019s willing to pay the cost of personal discomfort in order to be effective. He understands that he is a vessel in service of the text, and his feelings are not the point.<\/p>\n
3. Passion<\/h2>\n
Almost all my students are passionate about Christ, about reaching the lost and about the Word of God. The problem is not that they don\u2019t feel passionate, but rather that they do not show passion. What I feel is never the point, whether good or bad, but rather how I act.<\/p>\n
If my delivery of the Word does not convey that passion, then my audience will not be moved to be passionate about it either. The prophets were all passionate. The apostles were passionate. Jesus was passionate. Why else would farmers, fishermen and housewives come and stand in the Galilean sun for hours just to hear Him?<\/p>\n
I once heard a missionary preach at the Southern Baptist Pastors Conference. He was dynamite, preaching a great expository sermon with incredible energy and moving the entire audience by his treatment of the Word and his testimony of baptizing tens of thousands of Africans. Astonished by his great preaching, I approached him and held out my hand to introduce myself.<\/p>\n
\u201cHershael,\u201d he said, shocking me that he knew my name, \u201cwe went to seminary together.\u201d Embarrassed, I admitted that I did not remember him. \u201cYou had no reason to,\u201d he explained, \u201cI was very quiet, never spoke in class and never went out of my way to meet anyone.\u201d I asked him to explain what happened.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I got on the mission field, no one would listen to my preaching of the gospel. I was putting them to sleep. When I came stateside and preached in churches, they were bored to tears. Finally, I realized that the only way to be effective was to preach the Word in the way it deserved to be preached, so I became willing to go beyond my natural personality and comfort zone and allow God to make me effective. I prayed for the Word to so grip me in the pulpit that I would never be boring again.\u201d<\/p>\n
His teachability led him to show a passion that was not natural to his introverted personality. It was supernatural.<\/p>\n
4. Reckless Abandon<\/h2>\n
The generation of students I now teach have grown up with the written word \u2014 on screens, smart phones, blogs, Kindles and now iPads. Through video games they have raced cars, built civilizations, won wars, destroyed zombies and killed hundreds.<\/p>\n
They communicate orally far less than any previous generation, and when they do so, they typically do it with less passion. Yet God still uses the preaching of His Word \u2014 an oral event \u2014 to edify the church, encourage the saints and engage the lost.<\/p>\n
So to preach the Word, a young man has to be willing to get completely out of the comfortable cocoon he\u2019s built in his personality and habits, and recklessly abandon himself to risk being a fool for Christ.<\/p>\n
I tell my students, \u201cThat little voice inside your head saying \u2018That\u2019s just not who I am\u2019 is not your friend. Sanctification is the process by which the Holy Spirit overcomes \u2018who I am\u2019 and shapes me into who He wants me to be. So if I need to preach with a reckless abandon that is foreign to my natural way, I will beg the Holy Spirit to help me do it for Christ.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pay the Price<\/strong><\/p>\nFrankly, very few students I teach fail to get the meaning of the text. They often demonstrate an exegetical and hermeneutical sophistication that astounds me. They are serious about the Word.<\/p>\n
But they make the mistake of thinking that if they just feel that way, and if they just say the words, the preaching will take care of itself. And if they keep thinking that, if they insist on \u201cdata dump\u201d sermons that just concentrate on the content and not also on the delivery, there\u2019s not much I can do for them. They will be the kind of preachers they want to be.<\/p>\n
But if someone has a burning calling, a teachable spirit, a passionate heart and a reckless abandon to pay the price to preach well, then not even the limitation of their own background, personality or natural talents will keep them from preaching the Word of God with power.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-265884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
Hershael W. York on preaching - John Ng'ang'a<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/webfocuskenya.com\/jnnn\/hershael-w-york-on-preaching\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Hershael W. York on preaching - John Ng'ang'a\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"For those of \u00a0who preach, or listen to preachers \u2026. I thought this is a good message \u00a0 Hershael W. York is the Victor and Louise Lester Professor of Preaching and Associate Dean in the School of Theology at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY. \u00a0 Why Some Preachers Get Better and Others Don't I often have to answer the strangest question anyone could ask a preaching professor: \u201cDo you think preaching can be taught?\u201d I always want to respond, \u201cNo, I\u2019m just going through the motions for the money.\u201d Of course I never do, not only because it\u2019s best not to say the smart aleck things I sometimes think, but because I know what they mean when they ask. It\u2019s not really an unfair question. No one denies that a preaching class and some coaching can help anyone become better. What we question is the possibility that someone with no natural giftedness and ability can be taught well enough that he can become really good. For the last 16 years I\u2019ve sat in a seminary classroom, listening to student sermons on an almost daily basis, and I\u2019ve heard every kind of sermon and every level of preacher. I\u2019ve seen guys so nervous that they had to stop and vomit during the sermon, and I\u2019ve been so moved by a student\u2019s sermon that I felt I had been ushered into the presence of the risen Christ. I\u2019ve seen guys who were no better the fifth time they preached for me than they were the first time, but I\u2019ve seen guys whose initial sermon was depressingly awful turn it around so radically by the end of the semester that I almost couldn\u2019t recognize them as the same preacher. On the first day of the semester, or the first time I hear a student preach, I have no way of knowing if he has what it takes or is willing to do what he must to be the preacher he needs to be, but I can usually tell by the second sermon if he does, because that is when he has to act on what I told him after his first sermon. What makes the difference? 1. Calling The most frustrated preacher is the one who has a sense of duty, but not a burning calling. Preaching is not just another helping profession, a Christian version of politics or the Peace Corps. The call to preach is a definite demand issued by the Holy Spirit that ignites a fire in one\u2019s bones that cannot be extinguished by the hard-hearted, stiff-necked or dull of hearing. A preacher who has been called must preach what God has spoken simply because God has spoken it. The success of one\u2019s ministry will depend on the strength of his calling. His willingness to work at his preaching will be proportional to his conviction that God has called him to preach and to be as fit a vessel for God\u2019s use as he can be. The Holy Spirit must undergird everything else from preparation to delivery, and that will not happen apart from that calling. 2. Teachability Being a preaching professor is like getting paid to tell a mother that her baby is ugly. It might be the truth, but it\u2019s not a truth anyone wants to hear. Most guys I have taught dread my comments and cringe when I tell them they missed the point of the text or seemed unprepared. They tire of hearing me tell them they lacked energy or failed to establish a connection with the audience. Every now and then, however, someone smiles gratefully as I offer corrections and suggestions. Someone may even say, \u201cI want you to be really tough on me. Tell me everything I\u2019m doing wrong because I really want to do this well.\u201d That guy is going to be fine because his spirit is teachable and he\u2019s willing to pay the cost of personal discomfort in order to be effective. He understands that he is a vessel in service of the text, and his feelings are not the point. 3. Passion Almost all my students are passionate about Christ, about reaching the lost and about the Word of God. The problem is not that they don\u2019t feel passionate, but rather that they do not show passion. What I feel is never the point, whether good or bad, but rather how I act. If my delivery of the Word does not convey that passion, then my audience will not be moved to be passionate about it either. The prophets were all passionate. The apostles were passionate. Jesus was passionate. Why else would farmers, fishermen and housewives come and stand in the Galilean sun for hours just to hear Him? I once heard a missionary preach at the Southern Baptist Pastors Conference. He was dynamite, preaching a great expository sermon with incredible energy and moving the entire audience by his treatment of the Word and his testimony of baptizing tens of thousands of Africans. Astonished by his great preaching, I approached him and held out my hand to introduce myself. \u201cHershael,\u201d he said, shocking me that he knew my name, \u201cwe went to seminary together.\u201d Embarrassed, I admitted that I did not remember him. \u201cYou had no reason to,\u201d he explained, \u201cI was very quiet, never spoke in class and never went out of my way to meet anyone.\u201d I asked him to explain what happened. \u201cWhen I got on the mission field, no one would listen to my preaching of the gospel. I was putting them to sleep. When I came stateside and preached in churches, they were bored to tears. Finally, I realized that the only way to be effective was to preach the Word in the way it deserved to be preached, so I became willing to go beyond my natural personality and comfort zone and allow God to make me effective. I prayed for the Word to so grip me in the pulpit that I would never be boring again.\u201d His teachability led him to show a passion that was not natural to his introverted personality. It was supernatural. 4. Reckless Abandon The generation of students I now teach have grown up with the written word \u2014 on screens, smart phones, blogs, Kindles and now iPads. Through video games they have raced cars, built civilizations, won wars, destroyed zombies and killed hundreds. They communicate orally far less than any previous generation, and when they do so, they typically do it with less passion. Yet God still uses the preaching of His Word \u2014 an oral event \u2014 to edify the church, encourage the saints and engage the lost. So to preach the Word, a young man has to be willing to get completely out of the comfortable cocoon he\u2019s built in his personality and habits, and recklessly abandon himself to risk being a fool for Christ. I tell my students, \u201cThat little voice inside your head saying \u2018That\u2019s just not who I am\u2019 is not your friend. Sanctification is the process by which the Holy Spirit overcomes \u2018who I am\u2019 and shapes me into who He wants me to be. So if I need to preach with a reckless abandon that is foreign to my natural way, I will beg the Holy Spirit to help me do it for Christ.\u201d Pay the Price Frankly, very few students I teach fail to get the meaning of the text. They often demonstrate an exegetical and hermeneutical sophistication that astounds me. They are serious about the Word. But they make the mistake of thinking that if they just feel that way, and if they just say the words, the preaching will take care of itself. And if they keep thinking that, if they insist on \u201cdata dump\u201d sermons that just concentrate on the content and not also on the delivery, there\u2019s not much I can do for them. They will be the kind of preachers they want to be. But if someone has a burning calling, a teachable spirit, a passionate heart and a reckless abandon to pay the price to preach well, then not even the limitation of their own background, personality or natural talents will keep them from preaching the Word of God with power.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/webfocuskenya.com\/jnnn\/hershael-w-york-on-preaching\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"John Ng'ang'a\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2016-10-26T03:27:09+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"johnad\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"johnad\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/webfocuskenya.com\\\/jnnn\\\/hershael-w-york-on-preaching\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/webfocuskenya.com\\\/jnnn\\\/hershael-w-york-on-preaching\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"johnad\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/webfocuskenya.com\\\/jnnn\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/60d2ddd8c3ee6ab5a4a456022a7c540b\"},\"headline\":\"Hershael W. 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York on preaching - John Ng'ang'a","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/webfocuskenya.com\/jnnn\/hershael-w-york-on-preaching\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Hershael W. York on preaching - John Ng'ang'a","og_description":"For those of \u00a0who preach, or listen to preachers \u2026. I thought this is a good message \u00a0 Hershael W. York is the Victor and Louise Lester Professor of Preaching and Associate Dean in the School of Theology at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY. \u00a0 Why Some Preachers Get Better and Others Don't I often have to answer the strangest question anyone could ask a preaching professor: \u201cDo you think preaching can be taught?\u201d I always want to respond, \u201cNo, I\u2019m just going through the motions for the money.\u201d Of course I never do, not only because it\u2019s best not to say the smart aleck things I sometimes think, but because I know what they mean when they ask. It\u2019s not really an unfair question. No one denies that a preaching class and some coaching can help anyone become better. What we question is the possibility that someone with no natural giftedness and ability can be taught well enough that he can become really good. For the last 16 years I\u2019ve sat in a seminary classroom, listening to student sermons on an almost daily basis, and I\u2019ve heard every kind of sermon and every level of preacher. I\u2019ve seen guys so nervous that they had to stop and vomit during the sermon, and I\u2019ve been so moved by a student\u2019s sermon that I felt I had been ushered into the presence of the risen Christ. I\u2019ve seen guys who were no better the fifth time they preached for me than they were the first time, but I\u2019ve seen guys whose initial sermon was depressingly awful turn it around so radically by the end of the semester that I almost couldn\u2019t recognize them as the same preacher. On the first day of the semester, or the first time I hear a student preach, I have no way of knowing if he has what it takes or is willing to do what he must to be the preacher he needs to be, but I can usually tell by the second sermon if he does, because that is when he has to act on what I told him after his first sermon. What makes the difference? 1. Calling The most frustrated preacher is the one who has a sense of duty, but not a burning calling. Preaching is not just another helping profession, a Christian version of politics or the Peace Corps. The call to preach is a definite demand issued by the Holy Spirit that ignites a fire in one\u2019s bones that cannot be extinguished by the hard-hearted, stiff-necked or dull of hearing. A preacher who has been called must preach what God has spoken simply because God has spoken it. The success of one\u2019s ministry will depend on the strength of his calling. His willingness to work at his preaching will be proportional to his conviction that God has called him to preach and to be as fit a vessel for God\u2019s use as he can be. The Holy Spirit must undergird everything else from preparation to delivery, and that will not happen apart from that calling. 2. Teachability Being a preaching professor is like getting paid to tell a mother that her baby is ugly. It might be the truth, but it\u2019s not a truth anyone wants to hear. Most guys I have taught dread my comments and cringe when I tell them they missed the point of the text or seemed unprepared. They tire of hearing me tell them they lacked energy or failed to establish a connection with the audience. Every now and then, however, someone smiles gratefully as I offer corrections and suggestions. Someone may even say, \u201cI want you to be really tough on me. Tell me everything I\u2019m doing wrong because I really want to do this well.\u201d That guy is going to be fine because his spirit is teachable and he\u2019s willing to pay the cost of personal discomfort in order to be effective. He understands that he is a vessel in service of the text, and his feelings are not the point. 3. Passion Almost all my students are passionate about Christ, about reaching the lost and about the Word of God. The problem is not that they don\u2019t feel passionate, but rather that they do not show passion. What I feel is never the point, whether good or bad, but rather how I act. If my delivery of the Word does not convey that passion, then my audience will not be moved to be passionate about it either. The prophets were all passionate. The apostles were passionate. Jesus was passionate. Why else would farmers, fishermen and housewives come and stand in the Galilean sun for hours just to hear Him? I once heard a missionary preach at the Southern Baptist Pastors Conference. He was dynamite, preaching a great expository sermon with incredible energy and moving the entire audience by his treatment of the Word and his testimony of baptizing tens of thousands of Africans. Astonished by his great preaching, I approached him and held out my hand to introduce myself. \u201cHershael,\u201d he said, shocking me that he knew my name, \u201cwe went to seminary together.\u201d Embarrassed, I admitted that I did not remember him. \u201cYou had no reason to,\u201d he explained, \u201cI was very quiet, never spoke in class and never went out of my way to meet anyone.\u201d I asked him to explain what happened. \u201cWhen I got on the mission field, no one would listen to my preaching of the gospel. I was putting them to sleep. When I came stateside and preached in churches, they were bored to tears. Finally, I realized that the only way to be effective was to preach the Word in the way it deserved to be preached, so I became willing to go beyond my natural personality and comfort zone and allow God to make me effective. I prayed for the Word to so grip me in the pulpit that I would never be boring again.\u201d His teachability led him to show a passion that was not natural to his introverted personality. It was supernatural. 4. Reckless Abandon The generation of students I now teach have grown up with the written word \u2014 on screens, smart phones, blogs, Kindles and now iPads. Through video games they have raced cars, built civilizations, won wars, destroyed zombies and killed hundreds. They communicate orally far less than any previous generation, and when they do so, they typically do it with less passion. Yet God still uses the preaching of His Word \u2014 an oral event \u2014 to edify the church, encourage the saints and engage the lost. So to preach the Word, a young man has to be willing to get completely out of the comfortable cocoon he\u2019s built in his personality and habits, and recklessly abandon himself to risk being a fool for Christ. I tell my students, \u201cThat little voice inside your head saying \u2018That\u2019s just not who I am\u2019 is not your friend. Sanctification is the process by which the Holy Spirit overcomes \u2018who I am\u2019 and shapes me into who He wants me to be. So if I need to preach with a reckless abandon that is foreign to my natural way, I will beg the Holy Spirit to help me do it for Christ.\u201d Pay the Price Frankly, very few students I teach fail to get the meaning of the text. They often demonstrate an exegetical and hermeneutical sophistication that astounds me. They are serious about the Word. But they make the mistake of thinking that if they just feel that way, and if they just say the words, the preaching will take care of itself. And if they keep thinking that, if they insist on \u201cdata dump\u201d sermons that just concentrate on the content and not also on the delivery, there\u2019s not much I can do for them. They will be the kind of preachers they want to be. But if someone has a burning calling, a teachable spirit, a passionate heart and a reckless abandon to pay the price to preach well, then not even the limitation of their own background, personality or natural talents will keep them from preaching the Word of God with power.","og_url":"https:\/\/webfocuskenya.com\/jnnn\/hershael-w-york-on-preaching\/","og_site_name":"John Ng'ang'a","article_published_time":"2016-10-26T03:27:09+00:00","author":"johnad","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"johnad"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/webfocuskenya.com\/jnnn\/hershael-w-york-on-preaching\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/webfocuskenya.com\/jnnn\/hershael-w-york-on-preaching\/"},"author":{"name":"johnad","@id":"https:\/\/webfocuskenya.com\/jnnn\/#\/schema\/person\/60d2ddd8c3ee6ab5a4a456022a7c540b"},"headline":"Hershael W. 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