What Is Successful Preaching?
Stuart Briscoe
I know I can get a quick response if I preach to felt needs, but that doesn't mean I've preached successfully.
—Stuart Briscoe
Many years ago, during the Cold War, I traveled to Poland for several weeks of itinerant ministry. One winter day my sponsors drove me in the dead of night to the middle of nowhere. I walked into a dilapidated building crammed with one hundred young people. I realized it was a unique opportunity.
Through an interpreter I preached from John 15 on abiding in Christ. Ten minutes into my message, the lights went out. Pitch black.
My interpreter urged me to keep talking. Unable to see my notes or read my Bible, I continued. After I had preached in the dark for twenty minutes, the lights suddenly blinked on, and what I saw startled me: everyone was on their knees, and they remained there for the rest of my message.
The next day I commented on this to one man, and he said, "After you left, we stayed on our knees most of the night. Your teaching was new to us. We wanted to make sure we were abiding in Christ."
Nights like that make you want to keep preaching!
It usually isn't that easy to know whether preaching has been a "success." Most of us preach each week to largely the same people, people accustomed to our speaking rhythms and themes, who perhaps take us for granted. Our people rarely tell us more than "I enjoyed the sermon, Pastor."
But like any worker, we need to know if our aim is accurate, if our preaching is accomplishing its purpose.
...
A tricky business
Objective feedback, though needed, is unreliable. If I judged the success of my preaching by the standard of my night in Poland, I would be mostly disappointed. We rarely see our listeners so visibly moved.
Furthermore, most pastors who complete an annual ...
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