I recently read this book:

Andy Stanley and Lane Jones. Communicating for a Change. Sisters, OR: Multnomah, 2006.

It’s filled with insights about public speaking in general, so it’s worth reading even if you deeply disagree with it at points along the way.

The book compares preachers to performers. In one sense there’s something to that since both preachers and performers—whether stand-up comedians or actors on a stage—must engage their audience. And to their credit, the authors qualify that “acting and preaching are a bit different” (p. 134).

But this is a good example of how a controlling metaphor can slant an argument. Why not choose the metaphor of a herald (κῆρυξ)? After all, the New Testament itself uses that metaphor in 1 Tim 2:7 and 2 Tim 1:11 (not to mention the 61 occurrences of the main verb for preaching: κηρύσσω).

Jonathan Leeman, Reverberation: How God’s Word Brings Light, Freedom, and Action to His People (IX Marks; Chicago: Moody, 2010), 105–7, 112:

“We don’t think your preaching will build this church. So we have decided not to nominate you as our next pastor.” That is what the elders of a church said to me toward the end of a three-month interim pastorate.

It was a Sunday. We had just finished the church’s evening service, which I had led. My wife had gone home. And the four elders and I were now sitting in the living room of the elder chairman. My wife and I had prayed that, God willing, the interim pastorate would turn into a full-time pastorate. Apparently, that was not going to happen.

What was wrong with my preaching? That was the obvious question. The four brothers focused their answer almost entirely on one thing: my faithfulness to the biblical text. They put it like this: “Your preaching has been fine from the standpoint of saying true things, and much of what you’re saying comes out of the text you’re preaching. The problem is, your sermons tend to be 20 to 30 degrees off the main point of the text.” [Read more…] about Just Preach the Point of the Text