What Preachers Like to Hear

I'm still growing as a preacher, so I don't have the delusion that I'm a hotshot, superstar speaker. I'm grateful for the days when God seems to use me, and I try not to get too disappointed when I don't do as well as I'd like. That's when I have to trust God for what he can do through an imperfect sermon, and, of course, that is what he always wants-- trust, that is, not a mediocre sermon! I have yet to preach the perfect sermon anyway.

With all that being said, I am human, and I still have to wrestle with pride, as irrational as it may be. It's amazing that God uses imperfect sermons and imperfect preachers!

Here are some helpful comments from a pastor named Derek Thomas on what a preacher should want to hear about his sermon:

Which of these two statements do preachers most like to hear: a) "I didn't understand much of what you said, but I love to hear you preach," or "You know, when I hear you preach I say to myself, 'I could have seen that in the text"?

Pride will dictate that preachers prefer the first response. It flatters and appeals to the ego. It makes us appear learned and profound. It justifies the expense the church has made in employing us. But the biblical servant of God will prefer the second response. Because that response means that those who listen to our sermons are learning to read and understand Scripture for themselves. Truth is, as the doctrine of perspicuity suggests, they are learning to read and understand through our instrumentality as preachers. As the Westminster Confession's opening chapter insists: "those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed for salvation are so clearly propounded, and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them." One of those "ordinary means", of course, is our preaching. But when the messenger steps into the background enabling the listener to read for themselves, a greater service is done to the church of Christ.