Is it a good thing that most churches have generally only one man preaching? Obviously, there are some churches that only have one pastor trained to preach, and most churches that generally only utilize one man have other preachers once every 4-6 weeks (on average). Still, when does preaching turn from being the faithful proclamation of the Word of God (that is, Word-centered) into a personality cult to hear what Pastor So-and-so will say this week (that is, man-centered)?
I’m not saying that churches who generally utilize only one man to preach do so out of a desire to perpetuate a personality cult, but do they consider this issue when they decide who is to preach? Are multi-campus churches (where the same preacher is live at one campus but displayed on screens at the other campuses) good? Specifically, does that model teach us to value the Word of God itself, or does that model teach us to value the preacher?
Getting a little closer to home (because I have to evaluate my own motives for being a preacher when I ask this question), do I want to be the one preaching the majority of time because I think that I have the most important things to say, or because I feel a burden to do so? Is it an issue of control, or an issue of faithfulness?
This is a challenging question, especially because I feel that I desire to hear certain preachers more often because (1) God has given them special gifts to preach, which we should not down-play; and (2) a big criterion for evaluating preachers is their faithfulness in the exposition of the Bible. So, do I love listening to John Piper because God uses him mightily to proclaim his (God’s) Word, or do I love listening to John Piper because I like John Piper?
Please don’t read this as though I am targeting specific pastors at specific churches that I have attended; most of the pastors under whose preaching I have sat are some of the most godly, humble men I have ever met. This post arises much more from questioning the motives of my own heart.
I do have some more thoughts on this, but I would be interested in your thoughts on this subject.
Jacob –
You are on the Worship Minsitry Team. If you want me to preach more often you can bring it up at the next meeting.
I’ll keep that in mind, Martin. 🙂
Jacob,
I’ve actually pondered the same thing. I have a couple of thoughts on why it’s not necessarily bad, but I agree that we need to guard against building a personality cult around one person.
First, it occurs to me that the reason a lot of churches have a primary preaching pastor is simply because of the pattern of their growth. Many of them started in a much smaller state, with only one pastor in a position to preach. As they grow and hire new pastors, they tend to hire people who adopt the pastor’s other duties, leaving him with preaching as his main responsibility. I don’t think this gives a moral imperative one way or another, but since I tend to think that many of these churches (at least the good ones) are being blessed because of the clear, Spirit-filled proclamation of God’s word, the pastors who preach at these churches tend to be best utilizing their gifts by continuing to preach while having other people take up the slack in other areas.
Second, I do think there is some benefit to consistency in the pulpit, especially within certain sermon series. Since I’m a fan of systematic preaching, I think it’s generally helpful to have one person preaching through a book, since they are then enabled to be more fully immersed in the context of the whole book and have some continuity to the way they work through it.
As to the multi-site/campus model, I don’t know what to think. I believe church planting is the better alternative, but since 1) some churches simply cannot plant quickly enough to keep up with growth, considering the massive undertaking which is church planting, and 2) you probably can’t make the hangers-on, which are a substantial part of some of those congregations, go somewhere else, I guess I sympathize with why it happens. I guess there’s not a good answer to it all.
However, I do think that the cult-of-personality thing is a huge problem in Reformed circles. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how to personally fight this urge. One thing I think is important is really trying to cultivate respect for people who come from really different traditions. Also, a healthy dose of self-examination should be done in those who follow these figureheads; I think a lot of them are humble, Godly men, but I still want to use the fact that I agree with them to fuel my own pride.
Echoing some of Eric’s ideas, I also think church planting is the most desirable way of handling growth in numbers. Truth be told, my ideal would be to never have one local church grow over 100-200 people, and whenever it does, you plant a new one. All those churches would then be organized under a presbytery so that you still have the strengths of the larger churches (leadership accountability and larger amounts of resources) but you don’t have to deal with the issue of a massive personality cult developing around one preacher, as you might if you went multi-campus.
Sadly, there will never be enough qualified preachers to keep churches at a smaller size, so the ideal I just described is probably never going to happen.
Another thing that I think is important for the preacher is to fully subject themselves to the authority of the other elders and to make a point of stressing that point in their sermons whenever relevant. (I think Mark Driscoll is a good model of this.) I think if the pastor is regularly reminding himself, the elders, and the congregation of this point, I think that can be enormously helpful. If it doesn’t happen, it will quickly turn into a massive personality-cult. I really want to stress the point about subjection to the elders because I’ve seen a church where the pastor is the perpetual chairman of the board of elders and a time came when he was not qualified to be in the pulpit, by the qualifications laid out in scripture, but the elders voted to keep him on as the pastor. To my knowledge, he’s still the chairman of the board today.
Last thing, again echoing Eric, I think it’s good to find mentors from traditions other than your own. This is an area where I need to improve tremendously, but I have benefited greatly from reading A.W. Tozer, who is by no means Reformed but was a wonderful preacher and author.
I have another post planned in which I will respond to most of your thoughts, but I think that you make very valid points about learning from other traditions. That is the single greatest gift that coming to Beeson Divinity School has given me, and it can help to cool down a Reformed arrogance, I think.
By the way, if you are interested in a biography of Tozer, one of my professors here (the one that Bart had at Wheaton) just published a biography, A Passion for God: The Spiritual Journey of A. W. Tozer. I have heard many good things about it so far, and he is a great biographer (although I’ve only read his biography on Joy Davidman, C. S. Lewis’s wife, called A Love Observed, which inspired the movie Shadowlands, although the movie apparently changed a lot in the book).
Anyway, back to the subject at hand: thanks for the good thoughts. I’ll write that next post soon.