5 Things That Make a Good Preacher
At Ridley College, we train people for a variety of ministries, but one important ministry is that of pastor-preachers.
So what makes for a good preacher?
At one level, this is a matter of good oral communication, with training of the voice, conveying a presence, eye-contact, clarity and coherence. But preaching is more than oral communication skills. There is a personal and pastoral dimension to preaching. Yes, I know that not all pastors are preachers and some preachers are not always pastorally gifted. However, pastoring and preaching do go together. The Word you speak to people will be more powerful if you know the people and have a demonstrable love for them.
So here are my Top 5 Things that make a good preacher.
# 1 Spends time studying the Word.
Preachers need to spend time studying the passage they are preaching on. No, this doesn’t have to be as if one is presenting an academic paper, writing a commentary, or reading everything on everything. But you want to know the text you’re preaching. Know the scholarly questions around it, the pastoral questions people will have, and even the skeptical objections people might make. I usually read one critical commentary and one application commentary when I’m preparing a sermon. I then imagine what kind of questions a millennial non-Christian, a new Christian, a not-my-ethnic-group-Christian, and a Christian in crisis might ask about a given passage. Let me add though, while preaching is based on good exegesis, it is not a display of your exegesis. Don’t offer a commentary on the commentaries you read; instead, take the nuggets of gold you found and cast them into precious jewels to adorn your main point.
# 2 Approaches in prayer and is upheld in prayer.
A good preacher prays for wisdom, insight, humility, and ability to set forth God’s counsel to his or her flock. Equally necessary is the congregation that upholds their pastor in prayer to deliver a word in season to exhort and encourage the congregation.
# 3 Know his/her people and their needs.
It’s not enough to know the text. You have to know your audience. You have to know them as a group, know their leaders, know their history, know their area, and know what some families and individuals are going through. Okay, every now and then a guest speaker is fine, but a revolving door of fly-in fly-out preachers is not as effective as someone who is in weekly communication with their congregation. Precisely why many people prefer recorded podcasts to sermons, because sometimes they have a better chance at connecting with a podcaster on social media than with their own pastor in person in a big church.
# 4 Prepares delivery as much as content.
The medium is the message. So practice your presentation. It’s not content alone that shines and sparkles, it is content plus presence and passion that really makes the message sink in. Learning to do your introduction without notes, know when to raise or slow down your voice, a deliberate pause, repeat things, use your body, try taking your hands off the pulpit, all of that adds to the impact. You have to be deliberately exaggerated in your voice and bodily movements in a way that feels weird and over the top, but does look natural to people watching. That is not to make it a performance … except it kind of is. Monotone exegesis delivered with the enthusiasm of a sedated sloth is painfully dull. You don’t have to be a comedian or a motivational speaker, but preach like you’re telling a joke to the president or urging a depressed person not to jump off a bridge.
# 5 All illustrations and measured, appropriate, and land.
Let me tell you some sad news. 30 minutes after the sermon, most people will not remember most of the content. They will remember the main point (if you had one), some great one-liners, and some moving illustrations you used. So make them count. Know what to repeat, know how to illustrate, and try to anticipate which bits people are likely to remember. Most of my illustrations come from Les Miserable, Star Wars, or things that happened to me in the Army.
Okay, that’s all I got from the Michael Bird School of Homiletical Hijinks.
Did I miss anything? Would you change or dismiss anything from this list?
Here's one to consider adding: Preaching is an Isaiah 6 moment! It begins and ends with a sense of genuine awe before God. It was F. F. Bruce who noted in his commentary on 1 Thessalonians that prophecy is "proclaiming the mind of God by the power of the Spirit." A preacher must understand that, in a very real sense, they are speaking on behalf of God when fortified by the Spirit. Preachers are not merely sharing information gleaned or knowledge learned; they are engaged in something supremely important that could change lives in the present and for eternity.
Two thoughts on this. As well as teacher and pastor, the preacher must be a prophet - in the sense of forth-telling not fore-telling - telling people what God wants them to know. And on a more mundane level, I gleaned more practical help about preaching from a civil engineer's course on public speaking and presentation than I ever did from evening classes on preaching at Spurgeon's College!