People often raise the issue of a changing society. The logic is simple – our world is changing at a rapid rate.  Technology is advancing faster than ever; people are bombarded with highly stimulating, rapidly moving content, and consumers access information differently than they did even a few years ago. 

Therefore, many say that a verbal monologue delivered to a gathered congregation must be a mode of communication that should be consigned to history. 

Spurgeon’s Victorian England may have needed preachers, and maybe Lloyd-Jones’ twentieth-century London required preachers, but surely we now live in a different world?

Why preaching?”  We mention three reasons in our podcast:

1. Because of the Biblical example 

From Moses and Joshua, through the times of the Old Testament prophets, to the ministry of Jesus and the apostles in the early church, the consistent example is that of spoken messages pointing people to God’s person and purpose in this world.

The world of the Bible is not monolithic. There were vast shifts and changes between the preaching of Moses in Sinai, and the message of Joshua in the Promised Land, to the proclamation of Paul in Athens or Miletus. 

And yet, through all the rising and falling of great empires, the shifting of cultures, the progression in God’s plan of history, still the pattern is consistent.  God’s messengers spoke a word that changed lives and shifted history. 

It could be considered arrogant to think that our brief period of change should override millennia of shifting contexts in which preaching was a primary means of God working in the world.

2. Because of Biblical instruction

Paul’s final letter, written to Timothy, closes with the instruction to preach the Word. It is fascinating that he does not focus on spectacular spiritual gifts or any other possible emphases for continuing ministry beyond his own time. 

Instead, he urges Timothy to prioritize reading God’s Word and preaching it!  In other places, we can see instruction that would lead us to consider preaching as a critical component of gospel ministry.

3. Because of theological reality

What is God like? He is a revealing, speaking and incarnational God. In preaching, we see all persons of the Trinity in action – the Father’s loving initiative driving the whole mission of God in this world; the Son’s revealing of his Father and rescuing of humanity is the focus of both Scriptural and biblical preaching; and the Spirit woos, convicts and changes hearts through preaching. 

Preaching (including spoken testimony), plays a key role in the story of salvation. Where humanity fell into sin by doubting the word of an apparently absent God, so God wins a redeemed people back based not on a great show of power but based on the apparent weakness of words spoken in the kingdom of darkness.

Peter Mead is mentor at Cor Deo and author of several books. He blogs at Biblical Preaching.