The Sad State of Preaching Today

Reminder: The Christian Carnival will be here at Crossroads next Wednesday, May 15, 2007. To enter a post, see this.


Over at Resurgence, there is a good summary based on the teaching of Donald Bloesch of what many sermons today have dissoved into.

Here is the list, but I encourage you to read the whole article at the link above. He also tells what good sermons should consist of.

1. Modern preaching has degenerated into moralism. In other words, it stresses human effort.

2. Modern preaching has also fallen into dangerous gnostic tendencies.

3. Contemporary preaching has helped to promote what Bonhoeffer termed "cheap grace," or what some have rightly called, especially in the Wesleyan context, "easy believism."

4. You can preach from the Bible and not preach Christ or the cross.

5. Contemporary preaching often degenerates into a form of exhibitionism. The sermon is meant to make an impression, to provide a performance.

6. Enthusiasm, of the sort that continually puts the emphasis in preaching upon new experiences.

7. Perhaps the gravest new danger for modern preaching is what Bloesch calls the politicizing of the gospel. This is now done in pulpits on the Right just as it was done on the Left for decades. The church must not be reduced to a culture-shaping society or a partisan political lobby group. The church has a mandate to speak for a culture of life, but even this is not primarily about politics.