The Preacher as Pastor

The Preaching as Herald

In the school year 2010-11, the Seminary continues to move forward in the direction of “preaching.” Our faculty team with one accord agreed to go in this direction and we continue to pray that we and our students will be worthy to proclaim the “foolishness” of the gospel of the cross of Jesus Christ. Besides the spiritual basis of preaching, I continue to explore certain rich images of preaching. The image of a “herald” particularly teases my imagination. I believe our teachers are “heralds” able to train and inspire our students to become reliable heralds empowered by the Holy Spirit.

The purpose of “heraldic preaching” is not merely to give moral advice, nor to express personal opinions on certain topics, nor to set forth religious “principles for living,” nor to share one’s own personal experience, nor to create, add, subtract, or argue about the advantages of the gospel message, nor to teach a lesson, nor even to present one’s views on homiletics. This means that the preacher merely proclaims the central message of the gospel: proclaiming God’s decision concerning life and death and declaring the message of God’s judgment and acquittal.¹ In this way, the preacher has heard God’s word, grasped its meaning in faith and passed it on without altering it whatsoever. At the same time, the minister must also respond to God’s call and submit to it. When the Scriptures are faithfully preached, God will speak through Scripture and sermon and He will be present with the hearers.² Therefore, God’s word is not a set of words, but rather an event in which God in Christ speaks to individuals, an event at which God is present with individuals and with the congregation as a whole.

Besides the “herald” image, I have been thinking about the image of a “pastor” or pastoral counsellor. I anticipate that HKBTS’s faculty and students have both the images of a “herald” as well as a “pastor.” In the last issue, I talked about “the preaching as herald” and here I want to explore further “the preaching as pastor.”

Concern for Hearers’ Need and the Impact of Sermon on the Hearers

While the preacher as herald focuses on the biblical word, the preacher as pastor looks to the other end of the preaching spectrum to consider the needs of the listeners. To do both of these, the pastor must have a deep understanding of the congregation. This requires that the preacher listens to the details of the daily lives of his congregation and becomes aware of their worries and dreams. The preacher needs to be in touch with the hearers so that he understands his congregation’s real situations and needs and directs members to seek God’s help so that they can be transformed to become a responsible hearer, living out ethical Christian lives.³ In other words, the pastor’s preaching shows an awareness of and a response to the existential condition of the hearers as he feeds God’s people with God’s word, filling their hunger and meeting their spiritual needs. According to the way each hearer perceives or understands the sermon, the preacher adjusts the message, making sure that the hearers can absorb the nutriments that help them grow in their lives.

Then too, the pastor needs to possess certain life qualities enabling him to have sincere fellowship with the hearers so that their lives can be healed and changed.⁴ Ideally, the preacher is also a caring person, a counselor, a healer, and one with great sensitivity in listening, with good judgment, loving empathy and trustworthy integrity. These roles and qualities together with professional skills need to be developed and encouraged in ministers of the gospel. Very often, preaching could fail to gain entry into the listeners’ hearts as the preacher fails to listen carefully to their needs and voices from their hearts. If the sermon is successful in conveying a faithful mood—”I know what you have experienced,” the congregation will naturally be more willing to listen to the pastor’s preaching. A truthful concern reveals a pastor’s genuine humanness. With the help of scripture, God’s spokesmen can often exhibit true humanness in their preaching: laugh, praise, discover, come to faith, awe, cry and repent as they listen to the people’s needs and then declare the will of God and cry out for God. Our preachers should model after these faithful ancestors recorded in the Bible.

Furthermore, the preacher as pastor lays emphasis on “what I hope to occur in preaching” rather than “what I want to say.” All pastors expect at the end of their preaching that the hearers receive healing, improve morally and find salvation.⁵ The mission of preaching must result in creating something in the souls of the congregation deeper than the particular topic of the sermon.⁶ For example, a sermon on joy does not try to analyze the definition of joy but leads members of the congregation to experience a deep joy, that is a deeper joy than what they have experienced before.⁷

These Two Modes of Preaching Seems Diametrically Opposite

Here, we can recognize a tension between the “heraldic preaching” and “pastoral preaching” which are on the surface diametrically opposed to each other. While the former may not be inclined to emphasize communication with the congregation nor to analyze members’ needs but to intent on waiting to receive God’s word for that moment. The latter, on the other hand, demands that the preacher make the effort to know the congregation well and to be concerned with their needs. While the former plays down the preacher’s personality; the latter considers the preacher’s personality and his relationship with the hearers as essential to the pastoral care process. As the former starts with the Bible as the source, the latter begins with the main real human dilemma experienced by the hearers and then turns to the Bible for solutions as the main source.⁸ As the former regards preaching as an event in which God speaks to men in Christ, the latter underscores those things happening within the hearers.

The Condition of the Hearer’s Inner World and the Power of the Gospel Message

On the whole, one major strength in the pastoral preaching is that it simultaneously sees the inner dynamics of the hearers and the healing power of the gospel. Pastoral preaching points out the advantages of God’s word to men. God’s word is not historical data, nor noble ideas, nor interesting information, but it is instead an event related to men and involving the incarnated God. In pastoral preaching, the needs, pain, hungers and loneliness of the hearers are neither regarded as irrelevant nor as something that would distract from the gospel message. Rather, it is the very place where God’s grace can be discovered. In this place preaching of God’s word is imbued with power to bring healing to the hearers. To this end, pastoral preaching and heraldic preaching must both be biblical; the real significance of such biblical preaching is that it engages the hearers, speaking to their deepest needs.

Another strength of pastoral preaching is that it compels the pastor to preach in very practical terms. A preacher is concerned with patterns of communication, experimenting with language and structure, analyzing the specific personal and social contexts of the congregation, and exploring different approaches, styles and tactics so that their lives can be transformed. In this way and by God’s grace, His word can then enter the hearer’s hearts. Therefore, the pastor preacher seeks to enliven the hearers so that they will say, “This is a sermon of good news!” (Of course, I must say that the gospel is always true even when men find themselves unable to or unwilling to believe it to be good for them.)

The advantage of this kind of preaching is that the pastor can be empathetic, standing beside the hearers to identify with them. Both solidarity and identification with the hearers manifest the pastor’s honesty and loving heart. This kind of preacher clearly points out that the word of God speaks not only to brothers and sisters, but to himself as well. This means that the pastor will not become an authoritarian, furious father using the pulpit to take control and using the gospel as a resource to persecute, ridicule and humiliate others. This pastoral minister would never assume that he has no weaknesses or has committed no trespasses so that the congregation should respond only in the ways the minister expects since he regards himself as God’s all wise spokesman.

Looking at the Ultimate Answer to Problems of Life from the Angle of Faith

Clearly, pastoral preaching must neither reduce theology to anthropology nor reduce the gospel to merely meet the needs of man.⁹ The image of a herald is not a one-directional model of preaching (that is to go from the audience’s experience to the gospel). In this way, the gospel content will be reduced and the power of the gospel will also be seriously limited.

The relevance of preaching does not only consist in whether or not it can meet people’s needs. On the one hand, the preacher should discern people’s needs. At the same time, the minister should also know that man’s needs are immense while the preacher is finite. The minister must remember that it is God’s word which is infinite. On the other hand, the preaching that emphasizes real life situations must not settle for a narrow understanding of human needs. Not only should man meet life’s crises and make suitable decisions, but he should be challenged to pursue life’s deeper needs and its eternal purpose. This can be summed up in these words: humans need a vision to lead them forward and an eternal hope based on the belief that God continues to care and to reign. In simple terms, man needs “God” and His “gospel.” From a theological perspective, the kind of preaching that creates an intimate, individualistic, subjective qualities are often inadequate at preaching and may even lead believers toward moral and spiritual bankruptcy. Such kind of preaching plays down the value of man and squeezes out man’s hope for God’s abiding presence. Therefore, pastoral preaching must take place in a theological context and go beyond non-directive listening and an emphatic spirit. Instead, solid preaching seeks to face the ultimate answer to life’s problem with theological insight and develop answers from a Christian perspective.

The “Herald” Is Also the “Pastor”

In this way, the “pastor” or pastoral counsellor must also be “the herald preacher” described above. The two preaching models must never be seen as diametrically opposed but rather as mutually compatible, and even complementary. If we examine the two models carefully, we find that the “herald” is the “pastor” while the “pastor” is also the “herald.”

My prayer is that both teachers and students of Hong Kong Baptist Theological Seminary continue to be both “heralds” and “pastors.” The Seminary is resolved to train seminary students to be reliable heralds and pastors filled with God’s love and care.

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¹ Thomas G. Long, The Witness of Preaching, 2nd ed. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2005), 19.
² Long, The Witness of Preaching, 21.
³ Long, The Witness of Preaching, 28,29.
⁴ Long, The Witness of Preaching, 31.
⁵ Long, The Witness of Preaching, 31.
⁶ Long, The Witness of Preaching, 30.
⁷ Long, The Witness of Preaching, 30.
⁸ Long, The Witness of Preaching, 31.
⁹ Long, The Witness of Preaching, 35.

Feb 2011