Thrown Up Preaching

Ed Stetzer has been posting a series of snippets from his interview with Andy Stanley, pastor of the 22,000 member North Point Community Church on three Atlanta area campuses. Stetzer included a quote from Preaching Magazine about the process Stanley uses in planning his messages:

All of our series planning begins with a team of people and me just throwing things up on the board and at every level of preparation bringing people into the process and saying, "What do you think about this? Does this make sense?" The average person gives me all the credit for that wonderfully delivered message, but it had a lot of hands in it...I think the whole team approach to series planning is helpful. My best visual aids weren't my ideas but when you get a group of people thinking, they all have a gift. So I wish I'd done that earlier. It takes the creative pressure off sometimes. I'll have other people out there thinking about it while I'm in here working on the details.

Contrast Stanley’s take on sermon series preparation with Alistair Begg’s reasoning behind systematic, consecutive, expository preaching of the Scriptures:

• Expository preaching gives glory to God, which ought to be the ultimate end of all we do. (Notice there is no glory given to the “whole team approach” or a “gift” or “creative” people. The glory is God’s.)


• Expository preaching demands that the preacher himself becomes a student of the Word of God. (Not “other people out there thinking about it.”)


• Expository preaching enables the congregation to learn the Bible in the most obvious and natural way. (As opposed to “the average person [giving] me all the credit for that wonderfully delivered message.)


• Expository preaching prevents the preacher from avoiding difficult passages or from dwelling on his favorite texts. (As is the inherent danger in starting with questions asked of people instead of asking them of the Text: “What do you think about this? Does this make sense?”)


• Expository preaching assures the congregation of enjoying a balanced diet of God’s Word. (As opposed to “a team of people and me just throwing things up on the board at every level of preparation.”)


• Expository preaching liberates the preacher from the pressure of last-minute preparation on Saturday night. (It also liberates the preacher from “creative pressure”.)

Comparing and contrasting quotes like these only serves to deepen my conviction to systematically, consecutively preach expository sermons. I want people to see the glory of Christ in His Word, not the collaborative creative genius of the team behind the production. Preaching God's Word is far too important to simply throw topics against the wall to see what sticks.

Nehemiah 8:8

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A Vision of Their Own Imagination

Thus says the Lord of hosts,
“Do not listen to the words of the prophets who are prophesying to you.
They are leading you into futility;
They speak a vision of their own imagination,
Not from the mouth of the Lord.

“They keep saying to those who despise Me,
‘The Lord has said, “You will have peace” ’;
And as for everyone who walks in the stubbornness of his own heart,
They say, ‘Calamity will not come upon you.’

“But who has stood in the council of the Lord,
That he should see and hear His word?
Who has given heed to His word and listened?

“Behold, the storm of the Lord has gone forth in wrath,
Even a whirling tempest; It will swirl down on the head of the wicked.

“The anger of the Lord will not turn back
Until He has performed and carried out the purposes of His heart;
In the last days you will clearly understand it.

“I did not send these prophets,
But they ran.
I did not speak to them,
But they prophesied.

“But if they had stood in My council,
Then they would have announced My words to My people,
And would have turned them back from their evil way

And from the evil of their deeds.

(Jeremiah 23:16-22)

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