Preacher/Politician?

It’s party conference season in the UK – Lib-Dems this week, Labour next, and the Tories the week after that. Only the most devoted political junkie can actively enjoy these events. For most of the rest of us they pass by with a mixture of indifference and embarrassment. For me, it is largely embarrassment.

Footage from the conferences seem largely to reveal an audience who do not contain many people I would willingly choose to be trapped in a lift with; and the speeches themselves are often toe-curling. It is difficult to hear anything beyond cliché and self-satisfaction. And the big speeches are now so tightly scripted and choreographed that the attempts at humour and the common touch feel patronizing and contrived.

I think my embarrassment is heightened by the fact that I am a preacher, and regularly stand up and speak in front of a crowd of people. My worst nightmare is to end up sounding like a politician at a party conference.

This Sunday is ‘Vision Sunday’ at Gateway, when I give some review of the past year, and try to paint a picture of what we are working towards over the next twelve months. The worst thing I could do on Sunday is make a politicians speech – but that is all too easy for a preacher to do, and I’ve heard enough preachers do it. Part of the problem is that politicians tend to borrow preachers language, because what politicians are attempting to persuade their hearers is that they offer the way to salvation. This means that most politicians are Pelagians, saying that if only everything was a little bit better, if only everything was done a little more as they liked it, then everyone would live in the promised land.

In order to not end up as a preacher who sounds like a politician aping a preacher, the preacher of the gospel mustn’t be a Pelagian!

The chasm-wide difference between the gospel preacher and the politician is the gospel. Rather than offering salvation through a particular program, the gospel preacher is charged with opening up and applying the Word of God. What we must preach is that apart from Christ there is no salvation, and that without him even the best programs – no matter how worthy – will never bring us to utopia. As preachers, we must have a vision, but that vision is founded in Christ, not in ourselves. And that means the message we preach is very different from a politicians speech.

A LITTLE LEAVEN

Have you seen this clip of Mark Dever, Matt Chandler and James MacDonald talking about some of their preaching gaffs?


Preaching Goofs from The Gospel Coalition on Vimeo.


It's interesting that the guys say illustrations about sport often come off badly. This is certainly my experience - in the UK there can be an assumption by football fans that everyone likes football and will relate to a football illustration. But most people (in absolute terms) are actually not that interested in football, and tend to be immediately alienated by footballing illustrations.


Illustrations, period, are fraught with danger.


I tend not to use many illustrations in my preaching. Partly this is because it is just not a style that comes naturally to me, but it also reflects a concern expressed by Martyn Lloyd-Jones in 'Preaching and Preachers' - that illustrations can be merely distracting. Often we can come away from a sermon thinking, 'that was an amazing sermon' when in fact it was a talk with some very captivating illustrations. If I then remember only the illustration, and not the point of the sermon, well, I may as well have stayed home and watched TV.


It is interesting that when Jesus used illustrations it was always in the form of a story, which helped to cement the point in his hearers thinking. For example, this morning I was reading Luke 7, in which Jesus tells the story of two debtors:


"A certain moneylender had two debtors. One owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. When they could not pay, he cancelled the debt of both. Now which of them will love him more?" Simon answered, "The one, I suppose, for whom he cancelled the larger debt." And he said to him, "You have judged rightly."


Now that is an illustration, but it is one that completely underscores the point, and ensures the point is memorable. Which is very different from the kinds of illustrations I have heard which tell me a lot more about the preacher than they do about Jesus. 


Preachers can spend a long time thinking of the perfect illustration. Or - worse - build their whole sermon around an illustration they have found that is such a good illustration it just has to be told. Better, I think, to worry less about whether the congregation considers us entertaining, and more about whether we are actually preaching Christ. If we're not doing that, even the best illustration is simply a preachers gaff.