The Preacher Spring 1990

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Two hundred years ago, Phillips Brooks said, "Preaching is truth through personality." If that was true then, it's even truer now, in the relational society we have at the end of the twentieth century. Personality shapes preaching; preaching shapes the personality.

Three of today's premier preachers recently teamed up to co-author a book, Mastering Contemporary Preaching (CTi/Multnomah, 1990). Leadership gathered the three to explore the personal dimensions of the preaching task.

- Stuart Briscoe is pastor of Elmbrook Church in the Milwaukee, Wisconsin, suburb of Brookfield, where he has served for more than fifteen years.

- Bill Hybels is pastor of Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Illinois, a church he founded in 1975.

- Haddon Robinson is president of Denver Seminary in Colorado. A student of communications (Ph.D. from the University of Illinois), he is the author of the widely read Biblical Preaching (Baker).

Leadership: What's the worst sermon you've ever preached?

Stuart Briscoe: I was young, doing youth evangelism, and I preached a sermon on Jabez, who is mentioned in only two verses in the Bible, 1 Chronicles 4:9-10. He prays that God "would bless me and enlarge my territory . . . and keep me from harm so that I will be free from pain." He came across to me then as a wimp, or what Margaret Thatcher would call "a real wet." I didn't like Jabez at all. My sermon outline was that Jabez was needy, weedy, greedy, and seedy. (Laughter)

That sermon haunts me to this day.

Haddon Robinson: A church in Dallas invited me to preach on John 14-"If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself." That's not an easy passage. It is filled with exegetical questions about death and the Second ...

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