The Preaching of a Herald

I once described the Seminary as a train which carries future preachers forward and I am honored to take up a leading and serving role, sitting upfront to witness at close range how God continues to lead us forward joyfully on this journey.

In these two years, I have witnessed first hand how God has been leading the Seminary to move forward at good pace on the railway of growth and wise progress, from “excellence” to “synergy” and to “preaching.”

From “Excellence” to “Synergy” and to “Preaching”

Early last year, in my inaugural address as the new president, I mentioned the kind of “Excellent Theological Education” that I envisioned as I seek to build up a community of excellent servant leaders. I hope that these leaders can discern the desires of Jesus’ heart as they respond to the needs of the churches and society. This last August at the All Seminary’s Prayer Meeting at the beginning of the new school year, we fervently asked God to enable us to be an excellent seminary and grant us an ethos of hospitality. The excellence we seek is not “to stand above others” but rather seek to devote ourselves to the humble service that reflects the very heart of Christ Jesus. The excellence we seek would reflect a moral character worthy of the gospel of Christ, since a preacher must above all be faithful to the word of God. The “hospitality” for which we pray is the faith practice of loving each other and mutually accepting each other, and it is also the life quality a preacher should exemplify upon entering the field of Christian ministry.

This past January, the Seminary entered a new stage as we began to practise “synergy.” I challenged our faculty and staff to cooperate with and complement each other in the ministry of theological education so that together we can work with God and members of our seminary community. I talked with each faculty member to come to an understanding of their major and minor teaching and research areas and to hear their concern for the churches and society, from our conversations, I found that God had gathered them together, giving them the potential to supplement one another’s expertise and to develop interdisciplinary integration, allowing them to respond as a community to the needs of the churches and society. I leap with joy and gratitude before God who in His wisdom has brought us together. I am convinced that the synergy of teamwork among our faculty can generate immense power enabling us to be the Seminary’s engine, driving the seminary train forward, and strengthening us to serve the churches and to respond to our society.

In the new 2010-11 school year, the Seminary began to move forward in the direction of “preaching.” This August, in the Opening Convocation I shared with our faculty and students a message entitled “God’s Foolishness: Preaching for the World.” I hope that the lives of each of our faculty and students will be worthy of the cross and the gospel of Christ Jesus, and I pray that the Lord will call us to reclaim our basic vocation: to preach the “foolishness” of the gospel while resisting the temptations to follow the wisdom of the world and to be influenced negatively by the current atmosphere. Instead, I pray that we will wholeheartedly count on God’s Spirit and proclaim the “foolish” gospel of the cross. Throughout this year, I pray that God will lead us to reflect deeply on the vocation of preaching so that we can come to a greater understanding of our calling. I also pray that God will make HKBTS a preaching seminary and that our faculty and students will be filled with a deep spirituality reflecting the life of preaching.

A “Herald” Faithfully Seeks to Be the Channel of God’s Word

Besides the spirituality of preaching, I have also begun to think about the image of preaching. There are various images of preaching and one important image is that of “herald.” I hope to see HKBTS’s teachers and students reclaim the image of a “herald” as they proclaim the good news of God.

The “herald” image is one of the several terms used in the New Testament to describe preaching (kerusso). Kerusso is the message which God Himself speaks through human language as a king would speak through the mouth of his herald. Therefore, it is the task of the preacher to deliver God’s message. Although the preacher chooses the rhetoric of the message, it is God the Lord who proclaims the content of the message.¹

The purpose of this kind of heraldic preaching is not to give moral advice, nor to express opinions on important topics, nor to set forth religious “principles for living,” nor to share his personal experience. Such a “preacher” must not create the message, nor to add, nor to cut short, nor to reduce the message, nor to play the part of an apologist to speak in defense of the message. The preacher is not teaching a lesson, nor diagnosing the current situation, nor presenting his view on homiletics. These are not what a preacher should do. His mission is to act faithfully as a clear channel of the very word of the living God, which rises above the preacher’s voice proclaiming the message of the gospel: to proclaim God’s decision concerning life and death and to declare the gospel message of God’s judgment and acquittal.² The preacher in faith listens to God’s voice and submits himself to God’s will and then passes it on without making any changes. He must also respond to God’s call, not only respond to it but also submit to it.

The Herald Preacher Possesses the “Command” and Promise to Proclaim God’s Word

However, to put into practice the mission of this kind of preaching does not imply that by giving an explanation or repeating the words of the scripture, the herald preacher can then grasp the meaning and pass on God’s word. He does not possess the word of God. Instead, what he possesses is the “command” and promise to proclaim God’s word. This means that when the scripture is preached faithfully, God will speak through the scripture and the sermon to men and He will be present with men. Therefore, God’s word is not a set of words but rather an event in which God in Christ speaks to men and is present with men.³ Preaching is an instrument to implement God’s work of reconciling the world to Himself and operating to bring wholeness to the church. As the preacher faithfully proclaims the message of the scripture, God will be present with the congregation.⁴ Therefore, within the reciprocal relationship involving the Bible, the preacher and the church, an event occurs in which God freely speaks to all who listen.⁵

The Authority of the Herald Preacher Consists in His Commission

Such an event is mentioned in the Book of Isaiah 43:8-13: you have known and believed in me and need to know that I am God. God plays the most basic role in the Bible as the Creator who takes pleasure to be in fellowship with those He has created. He judges, saves, takes care of, destroys, builds up and forgives. The main focus of the Bible is not God’s being in itself but how it is possible for humans to live in the love of God.⁶ For this reason, the preacher does not just sit in an office studying the scripture, nor trying to understand the attributes of God on his own. Neither does the preacher collect certain facts about God; but instead he must come into the presence of God, the Lord who judges, saves, takes care of, destroys, builds up and forgives so that he experiences the renewal of being in God’s presence.

It is important to remember that the preacher does not go to the Bible alone.⁷ He goes to the Bible on behalf of the church. As a member of the congregation, he is set apart and commissioned to seek to discover God’s word, to study it and to hear God speak through it. On the one hand, he is passionately concerned with the problems and needs of the church. On the other hand, he seeks scrupulously to discover the truth of God’s word. In this way, the church is able to go to the scripture through the preacher who listens as God speaks to him and as he faithfully seeks to discover the truth of God’s word. The congregation will then be amazed by God’s word so that members of the congregation will be unified to become God’s faithful people. The preacher must never forget that his authority comes from his church. After all, it is the church that chooses its minister and expects him to go to the scripture to listen attentively to the truth and then proclaim it. Therefore, the authority of the preacher comes from the brothers and sisters in the church who call and affirm their preacher. The authority of the preacher lies not in his status, nor in his power, nor in his superiority over others in the congregation. In the congregation, the preacher may not be the one who is the most highly educated, nor the one who has the firmest grasp of human nature, nor even the one who knows the most about the Bible and theology. Rather, the preacher’s authority originates in God’s commission, a commission coming through the church.

The Preacher’s Authority Comes from the Word of God that Has Seen and Heard

Moreover, the preacher’s authority comes from God, through the congregation, has called him to go to the scripture and week after week listen patiently and discover the truth found in His word. In preparing his sermon, the preacher has to wrestle with the biblical text and listen to the voice of God. Before God speaks to him, the preacher must say nothing.⁸ When God speaks, the preacher sees and hears the word of God revealed afresh through the scripture. Under the power of God’s word, the preacher lays aside his own ego and his personal concerns, and resists saying what he wishes to say but rather proclaims faithfully the word of God with his lips. In this way, the preacher’s authority grows out of what he has seen and heard in the scripture.

The church realizes that its life depends on the supply of God’s word. The reason the church sets up a seminary is to nurture those preachers whom God has called to help members of the congregation understand God’s truth and live it out in their daily lives. This vocation requires a right spirit in and demands a special preparation for the ones who preach the word of God. The training seminary imparts to students is to ensure that they become reliable heralds. This is the responsibility of a seminary and is certainly the responsibility which Hong Kong Baptist Theological Seminary must shoulder.

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¹ Thomas G. Long, The Witness of Preaching, 2nd ed. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2005), 19. I take reference from the view of Prof. Long and present his ideas in my own way, giving the citations here. But what I write is to a certain extent different from Prof. Long’s view. The image of a “herald” that I envision is not a sketch drawn stroke by stroke from Prof. Long’s view but I am grateful for Prof. Long’s integration and insight. In August next year, Prof. Long will come to the Seminary to be the speaker of the Belote Lectures.
² Long, The Witness of Preaching, 19.
³ Long, The Witness of Preaching, 21.
⁴ Long, The Witness of Preaching, 21.
⁵ Long, The Witness of Preaching, 23.
⁶ Long, The Witness of Preaching, 48-49.
⁷ Long, The Witness of Preaching, 49.
⁸ Long, The Witness of Preaching, 48.

Nov 2010