On “Preaching” and “Graduation Sermons”

Cultivating the “spirit of preaching”

Since the time of the Reformation, preaching has played an important role in worship. The Hong Kong Baptist Theological Seminary (HKBTS) emphasizes the importance of giving our students a solid foundation in biblical and theological knowledge and the importance of teaching them to interpret the message of the Bible faithfully. Above all, our preachers-in-training must cultivate their own preaching with spiritual vitality. Their preaching must be the kind of preaching that reflects this principle.

Beginning in the 2009-10 academic year, the seminary further enriched the training and practices of the preaching ministry. I expect that each sermon preached by our faculty members and students reflects this in that it will be a faithful and beautiful service, enabling the whole community, both the speakers and the audience, to grow together. I feel that the seminary must actively develop our students into preachers. We encourage them to cultivate their own “spirit of preaching,” because only then will they be able to deliver their preaching with spiritual vitality at the pulpit.

To become God’s faithful workers who have no need to be ashamed, preachers must pay close attention to the core of their ministry, and not chase after trends, but rather ask God to lead us back to the most important aspect—preaching the Gospel of the cross. For the world, the cross represents a very humiliating death; it is a foolish and ridiculous sign. But preachers must be convinced that we can only find life on the cross, because the cross is the source of salvation and the mystery of God. By the death of Jesus Christ, God has turned lamentations into triumphal hymns, humiliation into glory, despair into hope, and a mark of death into a sign of peace.

A preacher must proclaim the truth of the cross faithfully, not conforming to widespread secular culture which rewards opportunism and easy truths. Instead of simply trying to win the favor of others, sermons must be faithful to the Bible. We pray for the Word of God to penetrate into our lives. May we preach the truth of the Bible faithfully and humbly. May we proclaim nothing except Christ and His cross, and not by artful or sensational means. May we exhort our brothers and sisters in Christ with love and patience, believing that the Spirit of God would open their ears to hear and their hearts to follow His Word.

This is what I mean by the “spirit of preaching.” If preachers practice preaching with spiritual vitality, not only can they feed their flock, but they themselves will also be molded to become better shepherds. With this kind of spirituality, preaching will not be a burden, but will instead bring abundant joy and rest; the mission of the cross will be a source of life and strength.

A preacher is an evangelist, a pastor and a prophet

The preachers who are being nurtured in the seminary will take up the preaching ministry in the future. As I send the graduates out into the fields during the Commissioning Ceremony, I have been praying to God again and again that they would become “evangelists” who faithfully deliver the gospel message, “pastors” who listen and serve their brothers and sisters in Christ, as well as “prophets” who have the courage to speak the truth and who dare to engage themselves in the fight for it.

The concept of “evangelist” is derived from the Greek word kerusso, which means “preaching,” in the New Testament. By kerusso, God speaks through a human, just as a king delivers his words through the mouth of his messenger. The mission of a preacher is to become a vessel for God’s words, faithfully passing on the message of the Gospel ― the message of God concerning life and death, His judgment and the good news of forgiveness. As “evangelists,” we must pay attention to God’s voice with faith and discern His will. Once we have heard His voice, we must pass it on faithfully, without any amendments to His message. And we must also respond to His words ― not just respond, but also follow through with what is asked of us.

Moreover, preachers should also be “pastors” who love their flock. They should care and serve their brothers and sisters in Christ. A “pastor” will respond to the existential conditions of the people, feed the people of God with the Word of God, as well as satisfy their physical hunger and spiritual needs. These pastors genuinely get along with people, bringing healing and changes to the people they encounter. If a sermon can be delivered with a kind of faithfulness that tells the congregation, “I understand what you have experienced,” the congregation will be able to understand and receive the message of the preacher. Sincere care further reveals the humanity of the pastor. Therefore, preachers who have concerns for their flock are also caregivers, counselors and healers. They must have good ears to listen, sound discernment, empathy and love as well as integrity.

Furthermore, a preacher must also be a “prophet” who has the courage to speak the truth and act on it. A faithful sermon is prophetic in the sense that it dares to proclaim the divine sovereignty that transcends all the powers of the corporeal world. Being committed to delivering the Word of God, prophets will not care about how others will react or what price they will have to pay; they dare to confront, and expose the depth of sin as well as revealing how people are entangled by sin. Confrontation is often painful, but its intent is to bring healing; this is an essential part of pastoral care. Such preachers have to be genuine and authentic; they have to be genuine to God, others and themselves, so that they can preach genuinely.

Resuming graduation sermons

Seven years ago, in order to strengthen our students’ preparations for the preaching ministry, and after a period of exploration and consideration, I, along with my faculty team, decided to resume the graduation sermon arrangement. Since then, graduating students must deliver a sermon at the pulpit. I know that for a variety of reasons, several local theological seminaries have ceased their graduation sermon arrangements. Even so, we still endeavor to provide our students with an opportunity to practice preaching. Through this experience, they will be reminded that preaching is a very important part of ministry.

I remember when I first proposed to resume the graduation sermon arrangement, some faculty members worried that the seminary may not have enough chapel services for each graduating student to deliver a sermon. At that time, I suggested a solution that two students could preach at the same chapel service. If there were two students preaching at the same chapel, they may even work together; their messages or scriptural texts may relate to each other. Hence, the two sermons could be mutually connected, like a bird flying on two wings. I therefore called this form of preaching “flying on two wings.” I explained to the faculty members that this approach is not without precedent. For example, two veteran preachers, Brian K. Blount and Gary W. Charles, co-authored the book Preaching Mark in Two Voices, which proclaims the message of the Gospel of Mark from two different perspectives. In doing so, the book fully reveals the abundance and the depth of the Word of God.

In the early stages when the graduation sermon arrangement had just been resumed, the graduating students were invited to participate. After the three-year transition period had ended, all full-time students were then required to deliver a graduation sermon before graduation. At the beginning when students were faced with this new challenge, many were a bit hesitant. But then the number of students enrolled for preaching gradually increased. A new atmosphere of excitement and expectancy began to pervade the campus. During that year, more than 60% of the graduating students enrolled to give their graduation sermon. In the second year, the number of applicants increased to more than 80%. We can see that not only did our students recognize the importance of the preaching ministry, but that their confidence also increased.

A meaningful tradition at HKBTS

Now that the number of graduating students keeps increasing, we generally arrange that two students deliver their graduation sermons during the same chapel service. Some students are excited to pair up and adopt the “flying on two wings” approach. Often each of the two students will choose a closely related topic, or each will expound a related text from the same book, or even from a different book of the Bible depending on the subject. In this way, the messages of the two sermons serve to echo each other. The “flying on two wings” approach has become one of the defining characteristics of the graduation sermon. Subsequently, even teachers have joined in. A teacher will sometimes be paired with a graduating student, each preaching a closely related scriptural text at the same chapel service. The messages of the teacher and the student echo each other, demonstrating the full the essence of the “flying on two wings” approach.

Although the students may have taken courses like “preaching methods,” “preaching practice” and may have accumulated some practical experience in the classroom, standing up in front of the pulpit and delivering a sermon before all the teachers and students is, after all, a terrifying experience. In order to encourage and help the students, two teachers, serve as “gatekeepers” for the graduating students; they will scrutinize the sermons the students have prepared and make sure that there are no hermeneutical or theological problems. After the graduation preaching, a teacher will lead the audience to pray together for the students who have just preached ― pray for their needs and entrust their future ministry to the hands of the Lord.

The outcome has been encouraging and gratifying. For more than seven years, the overall performance of the graduating students has been brilliant. All of them have made a good effort to preach the Word of God, and the whole seminary community has been very supportive of them. Each time a graduation sermon ends, the whole seminary community will come together to shake hands with the student preachers, giving them encouragement and blessings as well as expressing gratitude for their messages. No one would have thought that these spontaneous handshakes and hugs which have carried on from the very first graduate preaching would continue into the present. It has become a tradition of HKBTS which is both a gratifying and moving experience for the whole seminary community.

The sermons of the faculty: amazing interactions and tacit understandings

In recent years, the faculty has become more mature, resulting in great synergy. I find that the mutual trust and friendship among the faculty members has also been deepening, so that all our energy can be focused on teaching, research, and working together to care for the various needs of our students. I thank God for the healthy community the faculty shares. In particular, I am amazed by the close interactions and tacit understandings among us. Such interaction and understanding is often reflected in the sermons. At the very beginning of the spring semester, Dr. Freeman Huen delivered a sermon entitled “Just Praying” which examined the issue of “justice and prayer” for teachers and students on the Spiritual Formation Day. It elicited enthusiastic responses from the faculty members at the subsequent chapels. For example, Dr. Wong Fook-kong and Dr. Nathan Ng then preached on the topics “Just Pray” and “Just Prayer” respectively. The former taught us how to pray by learning from Nehemiah’s prayer to God. The latter examined the life transformation of Peter at different turning points in his life and how it can shed light on the way we should pray to God today. In addition, the messages of Dr. Andres Tang and Dr. Eric Kwong also focused on “prayer” in close succession.

Unexpectedly, an amazing synchronicity also occurred between Dr. Jonathan Lo and me. My sermon was arranged to precede Dr. Lo’s sermon by one day, and the scriptural text we selected for exposition was coincidentally the same text! God providentially led us to expound the same scriptural text and share two related messages with our faculty members and students at two consecutive chapels. In HKBTS, a tacit understanding among the faculty members has been formed.

That is how we are learning to preach and listen to the Word of God at the chapel services. The chapel service at HKBTS is a sacred opportunity for communal worship. It is a spiritual discipline for all of us. It is an essential part of our spiritual formation. During the chapel service, we worship, pray, and listen to the Word of God together as a community. Our research and what we learn in the classroom will all converge at the chapel, which is like a big classroom where we as a community come to discern the heart of Jesus Christ through preaching the Bible. I hope that in the process of delivering and receiving sermons, our prospective preachers will learn to discern the will of God; so in the future they will be able to respond to the needs of the church, face the challenges of our society, and walk through the hardship and suffering of this generation with their neighbors.

May 2017