The dramatic persona of the preacher

Preaching is carried out by preachers. Although as Protestants, Sydney Anglican evangelicals do not have a priestly view of the ministry, the preacher is certainly a designated, called and highly trained for his role. For all the talk about every-member ministry, it is preaching that is the chief ministry in the congregation and the most special calling. The figure of the preacher assumes an almost heroic status. Ideally, the preacher embodies Christ himself – and like one of the great martyrs of the church is ready to suffer for the truth if necessary. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that the preacher imitates the apostle Paul as he in turn speaks of his own imitation of Christ in his ministry in 1 and 2 Corinthians. The onerous duty of the preacher is that he is called upon to say hard as well as gentle things; but this risky duty lends to the preaching profession a sense of romance.

The preacher’s privilege is extraordinary. His ministry is not merely in God’s service; it is in the terrifying honour of being God’s mouthpiece. The ministry of the word is the first and most important of ministries, and he is its designated exponent for the congregation. The word of God constitutes the church in its very essence. It calls it into being. And he, the preacher, wields this word – not exclusively or without accountability, but as his calling and duty.

If being a preacher is a joy with many delights, then it is also a burden with many pains. The dramatization of the role of the preacher in the life of the congregation is reflected in Phillip Jensen’s description of the preaching profession as ‘inherently dangerous.’ As he puts it, ‘If we are going to faithful preachers of the very words of God, delivering, explaining and applying his message to the people he has given us to love, we need to be ready for those times when people don’t love us back…This sort of faithfulness will inevitably lead to difficulty, conflict, suffering and persecution.’

The heroism of expository preaching in Sydney has been further shaped by the Katoomba Christian Conventions. The KCC is a non-denominational organisation with evangelical convictions, but Sydney Anglicans have had a substantial influence in it and have been substantially influenced by it. The conventions, especially the Youth Convention which ran from the 1970s until the mid-1990s in January each year, are intended to be a showcase of the best preachers and the best preaching. Though the KCC is non-denominational, Sydney Anglicans were often on the platform. It is the occasional nature and remarkable setting of the convention which means that the preaching heard there lingers long in the memory in a way in which the regular Sunday preaching tends not to.

At Katoomba, preachers like John Chapman, John Woodhouse and Phillip Jensen ministered to thousands of people in their late teens and early adulthood. Those who would fill Moore College to overflowing in the 1990s and 2000s had filled Katoomba’s massive tent in 1980s. It would be very difficult to forget Woodhouse’s remarkable exposition of the book of Leviticus in 1986 as a model of what could be done with the Sydney Anglican method of preaching. Leviticus is perhaps the least promising of all Old Testament books for a sermon series – and especially for a series at a major conference at which the organisers were hoping to attract thousands of young people. And yet, without resorting to a terrible and bizarre legalism, Woodhouse preached this difficult text as though it were God’s word for today.

Though it is something of a habit to bemoan the standard of the preaching, the quality of preaching in ordinary Sydney pulpits is very high. The overwhelming majority of preachers are well-trained (often to postgraduate level), mature and articulate. Even so, there were, for a couple of decades, a small group of local preachers who exemplified what expository preaching could achieve, and whose leadership of the movement as a whole was linked to their presence in the pulpit. Phillip Jensen’s influence was increased by the recording, cataloguing and distribution of tapes of his sermons. After the turn of the millennium, however, this technology was swiftly and rapidly superseded by the advent of mp3s and the internet. It became possible to hear the best of overseas preachers like John Piper, Mark Driscoll and Tim Keller regularly and almost without cost. Each of these men, whose Reformed convictions Sydney Anglicans share, has built enormous ministries in large US cities on a scale unimaginable in Australia. Preachers now preach in an environment where truly extraordinary preaching is available to their congregations in a few quick mouse-clicks.

The visit of Mark Driscoll to Australia in 2008 signalled a sea-change in the local evangelical scene. Some of the responses have seemed panicked. There has been an awful lot of muddle and a diffusion of strategies. The boundary-riding, heroic identity that had belonged to the preacher was now transferred to the figure of the church planter. While church planting is a noble calling, and church planters are indeed preachers, the danger in this transferral is that the nature and priority of the Christian ministry becomes much more managerial. New churches will not begin without good planning and effective management. But they will not be what they really are if listening to the voice of God in the Scriptures is not central to their life together.

I have spoken here about the dramatization of the role of the preacher in the culture of evangelicalism. To point it out is not to deride it. Biblically speaking, the activity of 'preaching' (as we pratice it) is linked to certain offices established by dint of the character of the preacher. I think this dramatization is entirely appropriate in a church or fellowship of churches that wants to be a church that listens to the word of God as its focal point. Where it becomes problematic is when the expectation that there will be rejection and persecution for preachers leads to a deafness to genuinely constructive criticism. The preacher speaks the words of God, but he does so as a fallible and sinful human being. He word he speaks is a word of man as well as a word of God. Sometimes he will be simply inept; at other times, he will be mistaken. He may be confused and inarticulate. He may be in sinful error and simply disobedient. To point out any of these, a person should not be made to feel as if he or she is being directly disobedient to the word of God, or stoking the flames beneath a martyr's pyre. It seriously dishonours the memory of the genuine martyrs to call a little bit of robust disagreement 'persecution' and 'rejection'.