Lend Me Your Ears . . .

When choosing a new church, one looks for good biblical preaching. What is good biblical preaching. Here is what "9 Marks" as in the nine marks for a living church has to say.


What are the different kinds of preaching?

Anecdotal - a sermon in which the preacher primarily tells engaging stories with a moral lesson.

Biographical - a sermon in which the preacher traces the life of a biblical character and draws contemporary moral implications.

Topical - a sermon that has a topic in mind prior to consulting the text, and then searches for one or more biblical texts that address the topic chosen beforehand.

Textual - a sermon that refers often to a particular Biblical text, but does not take the main point of the text as its own.

Expositional - a sermon which takes the point of the text as the point of the sermon

Expositional preaching expounds what Scripture says in a particular passage, carefully explaining its meaning and applying it to the congregation. It is a commitment to hearing God's Word and to recovering the centrality of it in our worship.

God's Word gives clear primacy to exposition. Many preachers and pastors today question whether the Bible really gives us any reason to think that expositional preaching is the best way to preach. But the prophetic nature of preaching and the performative nature of God's Word reveal exposition to be best suited to unleashing the power of the text. Exposition is primary because preaching is prophetic. To say that preaching is prophetic is not to say that it is either predictive or ecstatic utterance - preachers are ambassadors, not prognosticators; and their source of revelation is God's mediated written word, not His immediate verbal word. It is rather to say that preaching is about receiving God's word and communicating it to God's people in a way that is faithful to God's intention. Preaching is prophetic because it conveys God's Word to God's people. Exposition best handles the prophetic nature of preaching because the expositional sermon is unique for taking the point of the passage as the point of the message. It is therefore the best way to remain faithful to the content and intent of God's Word in any given text.

Preaching often becomes like taking pictures with a disposable camera - no zooming, no panning, focus isn't guaranteed, and panoramics are unlikely. Expositional preaching is like graduating to a telephoto lens - it gives you the ability to take a wider diversity of Scriptural snapshots from new angles and more perspectives with higher resolution, richer texture, and variable scope.

Visit the website to see the other nine marks - http://www.9marks.org/