C.S. Lewis said by contrast that sometimes the impression preachers leave is that they are simply…
“mild-mannered people exhorting mild-mannered people to be more mild-mannered.”
That is not the call of Paul. Or of Jesus.
Mark Labberton
http://www.christianitytoday.com/le/2005/summer/10.30.html?paging=off
Our Daunting Hope: Can preaching really change anyone?
More Quotes:
Preaching is never helped when, as preacher, I think that what God wants to achieve my preaching can accomplish. Instead, biblical wisdom teaches that the transformation for which we preach is far higher, deeper, and wider than our preaching could ever express, let alone accomplish. This doesn’t sound like good news, but it is essential truth that every preacher must learn.
This means not mere mental agreement with a preacher but an inward change that alters our public lives. Fruit is not born on the inside of a plant but on the outside; it’s meant to be seen, tasted, touched, experienced.
A self test
By this measure then, how is God’s spiritual transformation going in your life? In your congregation’s life? Ask yourself:
Am I preaching a transformation my preaching could accomplish, or am I bearing witness in my preaching to the full transformation that only God could accomplish?
Am I preaching our new humanity, or am I just fostering more “church people”?
Am I calling others to live peculiar lives that increasingly bear the fruit of the Holy Spirit, or am I just reproducing people who like my personality and laugh at my stories?
As a consequence of my preaching, am I finding that people hunger for God’s healing, forgiveness, and renewing love? Does it actually change what happens in daily life?
How does God accomplish such remarkable transformation? The greatness of God’s intentions might lead us to suppose God will use spectacular means. Yet God’s approach could hardly be more surprising. In a world where size, mass, and dominance seem to be what instigates change, God does something so different. His unexpected strategy remains personal, quiet, easily missed.
God’s strategy is God’s Word.
I look weekly into the faces of people who know pain and disappointment, depression and struggle, imagination and joy, love and rejection, decisions and disease, pressures and hopes. And what am I going to do? Preach? What madness makes me think this is even a good thing, let alone an essential thing to do? And what would ever lead me to do it again next week—and the next? Only that my life and the lives of others I know have been changed through the preached Word.
God’s work in fact.