Your Preaching Is Unique
Warren Wiersbe
The experiences we preachers go through are not accidents; they are appointments.
—Warren W. Wiersbe
It doesn't make sense!" said my pastor friend.
We were lingering over lunch and discussing the Bible conference I was conducting in his church. I'd just commented that the church was having a strong influence on the students and staff of the nearby university.
"What doesn't make sense?" I asked.
"Where you and I are serving," he replied.
"You're going to have to explain."
"Look, I'm really a country preacher with a minimum of academic training, yet I'm ministering to a university crowd. You write commentaries, and you read more books in a month than I do in a year, yet your congregation is primarily blue-collar and nonprofessional. It doesn't make sense."
The subject then changed, but I have pondered his observation many times in the intervening years. I've concluded it's a good thing God didn't put me on his "Pastor Placement Committee" because I would have really messed things up. I never would have sent rustic Amos to the affluent court of the king; I'd have given him a quiet country church somewhere. And I'd never have commissioned Saul of Tarsus, that "Hebrew of the Hebrews," to be a missionary to the Gentiles; I'd have put him in charge of Jewish evangelism in Jerusalem.
Why is it, then, that so many preachers do not enjoy preaching? Why do some busy themselves in minor matters when they should be studying and meditating? Why do others creep out of the pulpit after delivering their sermon, overwhelmed with a sense of failure and guilt?
The difference a witness makes
Without pausing to take a poll, I think I can suggest an answer: they are preaching in spite of themselves instead of preaching because of themselves. They either ...
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