The Pulpit Is a Place to Die
Todd Brewer on the beautiful mess of preaching.
My good friend Todd Brewer’s latest article for Mockingbird, “Why Do Preachers Sound So Weird?” is well worth your time and consideration, especially for anyone interested and/or invested in the art and discipline of gospel proclamation, a.k.a. preaching. Preachers and their God-given mode of communicating truth have taken their fair share of critiques over the years, especially recently. Despite the obvious and more than occasional potshot, the censures I’ve seen are well-founded, in most cases, as pastors continue to do themselves a disservice by getting themselves embroiled in all manner of squalor and scandal. Sinners are going to sin, I guess. In many ways, though, that’s sort of the point. The attention and, in some contexts, notoriety that accompany the pastorate seem to denude the pastor of his awareness of his own need, fostering, instead, a pious incorrigibility.
I don’t mean to come across cynical; it’s just, as a pastor, I feel somewhat protective, if that’s the right word, of the pastoral office itself. You know, sort of how collegiate and professional coaches, regardless of the sport, are grandfathered into an unspoken fraternity of fellow coaches, all of whom are well aware of the frustrations, successes, and struggles that come along with the position. Similarly, as a pastor of a local church who’s friends with other pastors of local churches, I can vouch for the fact that there is more in common between your small-town rural church pastor and your megachurch pastor than you might think at first. Both are easily susceptible to doubt and depression, but more to the point, both can just as easily succumb to the applause of their peers. When the adulation of one’s contemporaries becomes the abiding factor in one’s spiritual identity, there’s no telling what one will do to maintain that acclaim.
As Steven W. Smith put it in his book, Dying to Preach, “Every major problem facing the church can be laid at the feet of a compromising pulpit.”1 This is just a long-winded way of introducing what I think is most beneficial from Todd’s piece — namely, the fact that pastors aren’t really fulfilling their calling unless they themselves are “persuaded by their own words.” Todd writes:
While Augustine repeatedly praises the efficacy of eloquence and commends the use of varied rhetorical approaches, the beauty he aims for bears no resemblance to the theater. “Nothing can be called eloquence,” Augustine contends, “if it be not suitable to the person of the speaker.” To him, pastors cannot ultimately persuade anyone if they are not being persuaded by their own words. In this way, the preaching voice sacrifices sincerity for eloquence, one that can leave the listener wondering whether all the impassioned declarations are just part of the show. The less a preacher sounds like a real person, the more their words become sequestered to the ever-shrinking realm of the spiritual.
My mind immediately thinks of Paul’s first canonical letter to the Corinthians, where he divulges his homiletical methodology. “I, when I came to you,” he writes, “did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom” (1 Cor. 2:1). In modern parlance, he dropped the performative TED Talk cadence, opting instead for the sincere message and meter of “Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2). Rather than jockeying for approval by massaging the message of grace so that it fits the “plausible words of wisdom,” Paul was far more intersted in conveying the word of God’s gospel “in demonstration of the Spirit and of power,” which ushers sinners to rest in the wisdom and power of God, not men (1 Cor. 2:4–5). As Todd put it, the point is to sound like “a real person,” that is, a real bona fide sinner, who is convinced that the only message suitable to one’s case is the one revealed in the Word. Todd continues:
As Augustine sees it, a sermon is neither a polished speech, nor is it the performance of a dead script in need of enlivening. It is one desperate sinner speaking from their heart to the hearts of other desperate sinners, a fellow traveler who guides with meekness and humility. Those with the authority to proclaim forgiveness do not exalt themselves over others with a powerful voice, but speak with the powerlessness of a servant. One cannot proclaim a crucified God with the voice of an angel, but with weakness, fear, and trembling speech.
The good preacher tells of the freedom they themselves possess, the comfort they need, and the hope they yearn for. A theologian might say that all proclamation is really a form of prayer to God, but the sterile piousness of that doesn’t quite capture the risk. Preaching is, instead, like open heart surgery, with the speaker strapped onto the operating table and God wielding the scalpel. The preacher of the cross bears its wounds for all to see and hear. It is an agonizing, public humiliation on the slight off chance that this testimony might resonate with a fellow sufferer — a beautifully messy vulnerability that lacks any affectation, mimicry, or manufactured drama. The words of the preacher may not be their own, but the voice is their own and never another’s.
“Finding your voice” as a preacher is, in many ways, all about cultivating the humility to realize one’s desperate need for the very same grace one is called by God to extend to his church in the Word and the Sacraments. Pastoral ministry, to use Steven W. Smith’s estimate of it, is primarily about “finding the stamina to tread water while you explain to the drowning that they are indeed drowning.”2 The paradigm is less “spiritual guru imparting wisdom” and more “beggar telling other beggars where the cold water is.”3 Accordingly, a preacher’s tone is a byproduct of their perceived need for grace; of their willingness to own up to the mess of sin that lurks within their own hearts.
If I’m asked what’s missing in the church today, it’s that: “beautifully messy vulnerability,” especially from those who stand behind a pulpit on a weekly basis. After all, “preaching,” Smith concludes, “is not a display case for rhetorical ability; it is not a place to show how traditional or trendy we are; it is not a place to fulfill aspirations of glory. The pulpit is a place to die so that others might live.”4 And if that doesn’t sound glamorous, well, that’s the point: it’s not. But the good news is that ours is a God who specializes in the unglamorous work of grace that raises corpses back to life.
Grace and peace.
Steven W. Smith, Dying to Preach: Embracing the Cross in the Pulpit (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel, 2009), 27.
Smith, 24.
“Like cold water to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country” (Prov. 25:25).
Smith, 27.
Amen