Monday, October 15, 2012

A Word for Preachers...Alexander on Preaching as Primarily Spiritual

Left to ourselves, we may do many things with a congregation. We may move them emotionally. We may attract them to ourselves personally, producing great loyalty. We may persuade them intellectually. We may educate them in a broad spectrum of Christian truth. But the one thing we can never do, left to ourselves, is to regenerate them spiritually and change them into the image of Jesus Christ, to bear his moral glory in their character. While that is the great calling of the church of Christ, it is essentially God’s work and not ours.

So it is possible to be homiletically brilliant, verbally fluent, theologically profound, biblically accurate and orthodox, and spiritually useless. That frightens me. I hope it frightens you, too.

Eric J. Alexander
What is Biblical Preaching?

2 comments:

Steve Martin said...

There is really only one preacher.

The Holy Spirit uses the poor efforts of the earthen vessel for His purposes.

It is a great comfort, is it not, that it doesn't depend on us.

Pete Scribner said...

Amen, Steve!