Prioritising preaching?

One of the great features of modern conservative evangelicalism is that over the last 50 years we have seen a restoration of the centrality of preaching in the churches.

This is tremendously welcome. To hear good sound expositions of Scripture is like fresh water to a thirsty soul. But has the emphasis on preaching left us somewhat unbalanced? For the apostles, prayer and the word were inseparable. Faced with the extra challenges of a growing church, the apostles prioritised not one, but both activities. They had to delegate waiting on tables and explained, ‘(we) will give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the word’ (Acts 6.4). Notice prayer comes first.

Prayer downgraded

This imbalance is not a new phenomenon. Let me quote Spurgeon. In his sermon on Revelation 5.8 which speaks of the prayers of the saints being received like incense in heaven, he talks about church services and he says this: ‘In the service of today, I believe the sermon to be a very important part; but I do not believe it is the all-important matter. I have heard friends say, “so-and-so will take the

preliminary service”, as if our prayer and singing were only a little preliminary affair to be got through, but the preaching was the great concern. But my brethren, praying is the end of preaching; preaching is only the stalk, the real ear is the devotion which we pray to God.’

With the advent of ‘worship leaders’ distinct from the preacher (nothing essentially wrong with that) have we tended to fall into the fallacy of which CHS is warning? Do we give the leading of the service to a willing, fresh-faced youngster because it is ‘just’ introducing the hymns and praying?

Private prayer

Public prayer, of course, has to be rooted in private prayer. Preachers or worship leaders can’t be one thing in prayer on the public stage and strangers to God elsewhere.

In his Lectures to my Students Spurgeon unusually refers to F. W. Faber who renounced Anglicanism and became a Roman Catholic. ‘I was reading yesterday a book by Father Faber, late of the Oratory at Brompton, a marvellous compound of truth and error. A certain preacher, whose sermons converted men by scores, received a revelation from heaven that not one of the conversions was owing to his talents or eloquence, but all to the prayers of an illiterate lay-brother, who sat on the pulpit steps, pleading all the time for the success of the sermon. It may, in the all-revealing day, be so with us. We may discover, after having laboured long and wearily in preaching, that all the honour belongs to another builder, whose prayers were gold, silver and precious stones, while our sermonising, being apart from prayer, was but hay and stubble.’

Schedule in prayer

If we neglect prayer it is probably because our hearts and minds have been groomed by secularism more than we care to recognise. What matters to our society is what is seen rather than what is done unseen in secret.

Preachers pore over their books and notes because the sermon is the public presentation. But private prayer does not ‘cut it’ in the same way for us. Time for prayer gets squeezed out.

The only way to protect prayer in a busy ministry life is to schedule it in as an inflexible, non-negotiable routine. This was how it was with that ‘highly esteemed’ man of prayer, Daniel. Even under threat of death, he climbed to his upstairs room and ‘three times a day he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to his God, just as he had done before’ (Dan. 6:10).

Power, prayer and pity

It is prayer that makes the best preacher. The Puritan, Robert Traill rightly says, ‘Some ministers of fewer gifts are more successful than some far above them in abilities; not because they preach better, so much as because they pray more.’

Spurgeon is so concerned that he gets quite rough with his ministerial students in what he says. ‘If you as ministers are not very prayerful, you are much to be pitied. If, in the future, you shall be called to sustain pastorates, large or small, if you become lax in secret devotion, not only will you need to be pitied, but your people also; and, in addition to that, you shall be blamed, and the day cometh in which you shall be ashamed and confounded.’

But let’s not lay this all on the preacher. Congregations, and elders especially, need to be people of prayer that all might be truly blessed by the preaching.