Why Is Preaching Effective?

I was thinking about Christian worship and preaching today, which led me to chapter four of Michael Horton’s book, A Better Way. In chapter four, Horton gives a biblical overview of how preaching works. Here are a few helpful insights from this chapter:

It is important for us to realize that preaching is effective not because of the minister or the people, the music, the staging and lighting, dramas, or other means that we might consider more effective than ‘the foolishness of preaching.’

It is effective because God has promised to dispense his saving grace then and there by his Spirit, and it grows organically out of the logic of the message itself because it is an announcement of something that has been accomplished by God rather than an incentive to get sinners to save themselves by sheer force of will or effort. It is good news, not good advice, good production value, or good ideas.

…We may not feel God’s presence in every instance, and we may not experience his grace in the same measure each week, but the power is in God’s objective promise, not in our subjective apprehension. As we sit there and are ourselves declared righteous by God in the gospel, we recognize that we are objectively accepted by God even though our experience often seems to tell us otherwise. While I may not detect ‘that peaceful, easy feeling,’ I can be confident in this: ‘Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and rejoice in the hope of the glory of God’ (Rom. 5:1).

It is not the minister or his methods but God and his ordained means that make preaching different from anything else that we might think more creative, relevant, and exciting. ‘For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. And there is no creature hidden from his sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of him whom we must give account’ (Heb. 4:12-13).

Michael Horton, A Better Way, p. 64-65.

Shane Lems
Covenant Presbyterian Church (OPC)
Hammond, WI, 54015