Horton on Preaching

Preaching in our post-modern world often seems to be totally unrelated to what God actually says in His Word. Some of the things we hear appear to be designed to manipulate people into making a "decision" for Christ without any kind of explanation of why they have a need for Christ in the first place. The assumption is, as Joel Osteen might say, "people feel bad enough about themselves without me talking about sin."

Michael Horton disagrees with those who believe that some kind of "felt need" on the part of some people is actually a call to preach. Horton says:

"Surely you're not saying that a preacher has to be a scholar." That's exactly what I am saying. A faithful minister is not someone who crawls out of bed one day and decides that he is called to preach, and gets a few of his friends together to confirm him in his zeal. To be sure, the leading of the Spirit is part of the call to the ministry of Word and Sacrament, but it doesn't stop there. If one believes he is led by God to pursue this calling, he must surrender several years to the serious study of God's Word and the tools necessary for rightly dividing it. He must know the proper rules for biblical interpretation. How many cults have been spawned by untrained zealots who couldn't distinguish figures of speech and different literary genres? Further, he must know the languages and be capable, to some extent, of working through the passages in the original tongue. But that's not all. He must learn church history, to learn from the wisdom and folly of the past. Again, how many strange cults and sects have arisen because Brother Fred thought he was the first person to really understand the Bible, when all he was really doing was reviving a heresy that was over a thousand years old? He must learn the systematic teaching of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, on the most important doctrines, in order to see how they all fit into a constructive unity. Otherwise, he will be unbalanced and confused in his preaching and teaching.

Unbalanced, confused preaching and teaching is causing more harm to the body of Christ than these shallow preachers will ever know this side of Heaven. I sometimes wonder if they care about what they are doing.