The Minister in His Pulpit
By Daniel ChamberlinPreaching is God's method for which there is no substitute. Your pulpit is your primary public duty. Prepare for it well, both on paper and on your knees. Do not despise a small congregation: on judgment day, they will be plenty to account for. If you are faithful to proclaim the Word, God will see to it that you have some hearers.
Let something of the dignity of God be reflected in your pulpit demeanor. Maintain decorum and couth. Never be crude. Show respect for God and your hearers by dressing up. Sloppiness is no virtue in or out of the pulpit. Be cheerful but solemn, neither lighthearted nor gloomy.
Too often the "gift of gab" is mistaken for a call to preach. In such a case, it amounts to more a curse than a gift.
It is said that the minister's duty is to afflict the comfortable and to comfort the afflicted. Wisdom is knowing the right time for each of these. Should we preach grace to sinners and law to saints, or law to sinners and grace to saints? In truth, we should preach the biblical proportion of both law and grace to both sinners and saints.
There are two kinds of preachers: those who can be heard and those who must be heard. Endeavor to be the latter. what makes the difference? A sense of urgency, eternity, appearing in the presence of God, and authority from God. A casual, informal approach is detrimental. Many who determine to be up-to-date and relevant are quickly outdated and irrelevant. biblical truth is timeless by its very nature.
When you know that you are handling the Word of God honestly, you may enter your pulpit with holy confidence. Be assured that the authority of heaven is behind you as you deliver the message from God. When a man in a pulpit lacks this note of authority, he becomes a mere lecturer. The preacher's stance is not one who speaks to the people about God, but one who speaks for God to the people.
All preaching includes teaching, as we instruct the people of God from the Word of God. But preaching goes beyond teaching. It makes application to the hearers. It drives the truth home to their consciences and makes demands on them. The indicative must always lead to the imperative. Where there is no imperative, there is no preaching.
Several of my ministerial heroes have insisted on preaching evangelistically one service every Lord's Day. The benefit to the lost is obvious. But we tend to overlook the benefit to the saints. For them, it is salvation applied in an ongoing way: their repentance and faith are renewed by this repeated gospel emphasis. It shows them how to evangelize others and encourages them to bring lost visitors to that service. As you do the work of an evangelist in your pulpit, use a wide variety of texts and approaches to avoid becoming stale.
I almost never announce in advance what I am going to preach. The element of surprise is priceless. Power Point presentations and graphics are death to preaching and holding an audience.
Some people today expect every sermon to be a part of an ongoing expository series. This is probably a reaction against topical and textual preaching done poorly. Lloyd-Jones lamented that some who thought to follow his expository method had done it poorly, and their churches were suffering because of it. Someday the pendulum may swing back as a reaction against tedious, laborious expositions. "One-offs" can be done well, and should be. This is the kind of preaching that God has most often used throughout history to awaken sinners and revive saints. It is all that Spurgeon ever did. Perhaps the best plan is a combination of one-offs for Sunday morning when visitors are likely to be present, and an expositional series for the afternoon or evening geared more for believers.
A pastor is a shepherd, the people his flock. Like Peter, we show our love for Christ by feeding His sheep (John 21:15-17). They are not cattle, who must be driven, but sheep, who must be led. Find the perfect blend of gentleness and firmness, like Goldilock's bed.
If you try to change people, you will be frustrated and fail. Give them the Word, pray for them, and wait on the Lord to change them. your influence over time will be greater than you perceive.
Only demand of your hearers what is biblical and what you exemplify. "Professionalism is the curse of the ministry" (Lloyd-Jones). God's people would far rather hear a sincere man with ordinary gifts than a greatly gifted man with the least bit of artificiality. We can get a name for holiness rather easily, but to be truly holy demands our all. "Hard studies, much knowledge, and excellent preaching, if the ends be not right, is but more glorious hypocritical sinning (Baxter).
While we contend for the faith (Jude 3), we must be cautious in controversy. It tends to bring out the worst in us. We must contend graciously. If we know the doctrines of grace, let us also know the grace of the doctrines.
People do not come to church to see you, they come to hear from God. Do not get in their way. The pulpit is not the showcase for your gifts; it is the sounding board for the Word of God. If you make your pulpit a place of entertainment, you will draw a carnal crowd. You will have a social club but not the church of Jesus Christ. The story is told of visitors in London who came away from Joseph Parker's City Temple saying, "What a great preacher!" But they left Spurgeon's Tabernacle saying, "What a great Savior!" May God make us Spurgeonic!
A woman who heard Erskine twice was puzzled as to why the second time was not as impressive as the first. He explained "Madame, the reason is this: last Lord's Day you went to hear Jesus Christ; but today you have come to hear Ebenezer Erskine."
Avoid distracting habits in the pulpit. Observing a preacher should not be painful. Walking around while preaching calls attention to the messenger and away from the message. Our goal is to be heard more than seen. Faith comes by hearing.
How long should we preach? Better for our hearers to wish we had preached longer rather than shorter.
Weldon Frazier said to me, "Brother, we must handle the Word of God accurately, for some people will bleieve what we tell them." God grant it!
How many points shoulda sermon have? At least one!
I think the highest compliment that could be paid to a minister is one spoken at a memorial service for a godly deacon: "He was faithful to the Word."
============================== [From Daniel Chamberlin, editor, FOUNDATIONS, 2025, No. 1, pp. 20-22. Scanned and formatted by Jim Duvall.]
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