Preaching Center Versus Discipleship Community

Rick Thomas

There are many counseling dilemmas. One such dilemma is the answer to the question, “Why do you attend your church?” The answer typically follows the lines of either, “I like this church because the preaching is excellent. The pastor gives us the ‘meat’ of the Word. He is a great expositor” or “The preaching is so good. Our pastor is such a good teacher—he holds our attention with great stories and he’s so down to earth.” The answers may be accurate, but as a counselor I’m filtering the answer through the lens of the life I’m counseling. To be more pointed, the real question that these responses raise is, “Why am I counseling you if the preaching is that great?” (I am following their logic that preaching is the warp and woof of Christian growth and maturity.) I’m left thinking, “If the preaching is all that you say it is, why aren’t you growing in your sanctification, confessing sin to your spouse, seeking to serve your children, leading in family worship, engaging God privately in the ‘closet’ and setting the pace in the spiritual disciplines?” Could it be that a robust Christian faith requires much more than “great preaching”? Could it be that American Christianity has placed an unguarded emphasis on preaching, exposition, word studies, oratory skill, or cultural relevance?

What would the great Apostle to the Gentiles say regarding “great” preaching?

And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.[1]

As John Piper reflects on these verses, he writes,

In other words, [Paul] avoided the ostentation of oratory and intellect. Why? What was the ground of this demeanor in preaching? Verse 2 tells us very plainly: “For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.”

I think what he means by this verse is that he set his mind to be so saturated with the crucifying power of the cross that in everything he said and did, in all his preaching, there would be the aroma of death—death to self-reliance, death to pride, death to boasting in man—so that the life that people would see would be the life of Christ, and the power that people would see would be the power of God.

Why? Why did he want people to see this and not himself? Verse 5 answers: “So that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.” In other words, that God (not the preacher!) might be honored in the trust of his people. That’s the goal of preaching![2]

All too often the counselee is not manifesting the power of God through a crucified life, but rather is demonstrating some sort of spiritual blindness as to God’s comprehensive method for sanctification. Furthermore, American Christianity seems adamant that the key to success (success for the local church as well as the church-goer) is tied almost exclusively to the man in the pulpit. The outcome of this kind of thinking can be a “preaching center” that is progressively weakened as you move from the pulpit to the periphery of the ministry. There seems to be (and possibly could be) power in the pulpit, but the congregants are not necessarily growing by experience. There might be an accumulation of Bible knowledge, but too often people are relationally disconnected from the body and have very little direct accountability in their lives. Furthermore, there is no real plan for change; rather, people love their church just because of the “great preaching”. People come to counseling raving about the powerful preaching they hear from week to week, but they are often unable to see that their Christianity does not in any way manifest the power of God through a crucified life.

It’s possible, isn’t it, that people are substituting great pulpit speaking for meaningful personal sanctification? Though God has commanded His Gospel be preached, growth in Gospel grace requires much more than listening from the pew. If preaching, defined as one-way dialogue from the pulpit to the pew, is so important, why did Jesus rarely use this method of communication? Note what author, lecturer and counselor David Powlison says on this point.

Several years ago I happened to be reading the gospel of Mark while thinking about these matters. So I took apart five chapters (Mark 7-11), looking not for the content of Jesus’ teaching, but for the context in which his ministry of the gospel took place. I asked, ‘Is what happens in this scene one-way preaching or two-way conversation?’ These observations are not normative in any way (‘You must have the same ratio of interpersonal ministry to public ministry as Jesus has.’ ‘You should quote Scripture as often—or as infrequently—as Jesus.’). No, we are only watching and describing. I mean this to be provocative and illustrational.

These five chapters contain 26 scenes. Jesus talks in every scene, but four scenes are predominantly action. Here Jesus lives his message. In these incidents, he ministers the Word and proclaims the gospel by incarnating the message, arousing faith by actions. The verbal exchanges that take place are directives related to his actions. The other 22 scenes contain verbal ministry of the Word. How many portray public proclamation to the crowd? How many capture the back and forth of interpersonal conversation?

There are four instances of public ministry, of sermons to crowds. Only one of these (8:34-9:1) did not either arise from an earlier conversation or lead to a subsequent conversation.

That leaves eighteen scenes in which Jesus does interpersonal ministry of the Word. Striking, isn’t it? Jesus converses the Word. Is that part of your associations to ministry of the Word? He interacts the gospel. Does that come to mind when you think ‘proclamation of the gospel’? No surprise, whether Jesus is preaching or counseling, he always puts things in a way that meets people. He engages their questions, reactions, thoughts, experiences, concerns, troubles, motives, blind spots, circumstances, hopes.

If you extract Matthew 5-7, you would find very little public ministry of the Word in comparison to the private ministry of the Word. Jesus’ main method of communicating his truth was two-way dialogue, not one-way monologue. He lived in the contexts of his people and interacted with them primarily.[3]

Jesus was the Prophet, a preacher of the Word; we would never want to minimize this truth. However, when we look at the Christian life as a whole, we do not see robust Christianity centered on a pulpit. The Christian life is lived and matured in a community. Preaching has its place, but it is not the epicenter of Christianity. The cross is central, and we build our entire lives around that singular event. More specifically, the focal point of the Christian life is not a thing or a place, but a Person—the Christ who died on that cross!

As far as teaching a cross-centered life is concerned, please note that Jesus’ primary counseling took place in the context of the people’s lives where they were living. He did not counsel at the same place every day. Jesus took his counseling outdoors and used the context he was in to draw out his counselee. He counseled from the concrete (e.g., birds, flowers, camels, nard, etc.) while moving to the abstract (e.g., worship, service, humility, etc.). He was so in tune with his world that he never missed an opportunity to teach others the ways of God.

The pulpit and the lectern are great places to exalt the Savior and expound the Gospel. To be sure, preaching is ordained of God for the proclamation of his Word. We also find in Scripture that it is in “the field” where the truths preached will be truly taught and remembered. You can tell someone a thousand times from the pulpit to serve, and it’s possible he will understand, personalize and apply this great truth. But if you bring in a towel and basin and wash your friends’ feet, you can be assured that that one act will never be forgotten (see John 13:15; Matthew 26:13).

There are two forms of ministry of the Word in the gospels. Jesus used both. One was the public proclamation of the Word. The second was the private ministry of the Word. Which did Jesus use more?

Ten Great Questions to Ask

The questions we need to be asking regarding the church we attend should be more comprehensive than preaching style or preference. Here is a sample listing:

1. Is the preaching cross-centered? Do I know what that means? Let’s not be asking, do I like this or that style?

2. Is the church acting out a relational model of cross-centered living versus a functional model that keeps you busy, but doesn’t build relationally in a person’s life?

3. As you move from the pulpit to the periphery, do the lives of the church members model cross-centered living?

4. Is there an intentional plan that is being worked out for disciple-making, and is it producing and reproducing disciple-makers?

5. Is there intentional, biblical care and accountability taking place in individual lives?

6. Are the men of the church leading their families? How do you know?

7. Is the faith of the member families “exportable”? One of the ways to assess this is by talking with the teens of the church. If the parents are being discipled rightly, it should be manifested in most of the parent’s children.

8. Can you experience biblical fellowship with fellow-members? Biblical fellowship is sharing personally, intimately and practically what God is doing in your life today.

9. When you first think of it, how would you describe the church you attend? It should, in some way, communicate a gospel-centered, cross-centered community. Remember Paul’s words: “I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.”

10. Why do you go to this church? The answer should be similar to the answer to #9. It is a Gospel-centered community.

[1] 1 Corinthians 2:1-5

[2] John Piper, The Supremacy of God in Preaching (Baker Books: Grand Rapids: MI) 1990, p. 38.

[3] David Powlison, “What is ‘Ministry of the Word’”? Journal of Biblical Counseling (Winter 2003~Volume 21~Number 2), Pp. 3-4.