The Myth of Expository Preaching?
By admin August 1, 2006
David Fitch, pastor of Life on the Vine Chrisitan Community in Long Grove, Illinois has written a series of three posts about expository preaching for the Leadership Blog Out of Ur. In the first post, “The Myth of Expository Preaching and the Commodification of the Word,” Fitch argues that expository preaching promotes individualism. Pastors think they can, on their own, get to the heart of a text’s meaning and the person in the pew thinks he can individually apply that text to his life.
In the second post, “The Myth of Expository Preaching (Part 2): proclamation that inspires the imagination,” Fitch describes the preacher as needing to “fund imagination.” Instead of going sentence by sentence through the text in an expository fashion, he needs to “describe the world as it is via the person and work of Jesus Christ, then invite the hearers into this reality by calling for submission, confession, obedience, or the affirmation of a truth.” It gets a little fuzzy here but suffice it to say Fitch is encouraging pastors to invite their listeners into the divine drama of Scripture along the lines of Kevin Vanhoozer’s recent work–emphasizing that much of the biblical text is in narrative form not simply “a propositional textbook of religious facts.”
In the third post, “The Myth of Expository Preaching (part 3): responding to Scripture as a community,” Fitch said preachers need to avoid giving their congregations “to do” lists and start proclaiming the reality of how the world really is in light of the good news. If we do that, “we cannot help but be changed and engage the world differently. Our character changes, our view of the world changes, the way we see the poor, our money, our children—everything changes. In Christ, by the Holy Spirit, ‘the eyes of our imaginations are opened, and we receive a new self.’” At his church, small groups gather to review the Sunday morning texts and seek ways to apply the passages to their lives.
Let me say that I love that fact that Fitch is taking preaching seriously. The church desperately needs pastors willing to recognize that with the call to preach comes a responsibility to handlle the Word of God wisely. Nonetheless, I find several aspects of his analysis troubling.
First, expository preaching, if done well, should shatter individualism by making its listeners increasingly dependent upon God and His word. According to Fitch we are so affected by the Enlightenment (the individual defines reality) and its postmodern descendants that we cannot even process the words of a sermon satisfactorily. I’m not prepared to give either the Enlightenment or Postmodernism that much credit, yet. I have enough confidence that the language and the truths of Scripture are simple enough that a faithful pastor can preach and an attentive congregant can understand without Derrida getting in the way.
Second, he has created a caricature of expository preaching to critique. No doubt there is expository preaching out there that is “sentence by sentence,” stale, and that treats the Bible as a storehouse of facts, and not as the diverse collection of history, law, poetry, wisdom, gospels, epistles, and apocryphal literature that it really is. The irony of his critique is that I think true expository preaching–that intends to let the text speak for itself–will uncover the nuances of these texts beautifully. I think there certainly are preachers who are so quick to turn a text of scripture into a “How to be a better husband” sermon that though they think they are preaching expositionally, it feels more like a topical sermon. Is that what Fitch is criticizing?
Third, I think we need clear and pointed application from the pulpit. I love the fact that at Fitch’s church small groups meet to discuss how to apply the text to their lives. That is terrific. But when Fitch says that after describing what the world is like in light of the good news “we cannot help but be changed” I want to say, “Oh yes we can!” We are bold sinners and one of the great ministries of proclamation, is not only to describe but also to prescribe. This needs to be done well, being faithful to the text, in love and humility, but it needs to be done. Every Christian runs the risk of being hardened by the deceitfulness of sin and I see no reason not to honestly warn people of this from the pulpit.
Again, I’m thankful that Fitch raises issues about preaching, I just wished he hadn’t raised them as an all out attack against expository preaching. I think expository preaching, with it’s desire for the text to speak for itself, is an answer to some of the very concerns he has brought out. Nor do I think expository preaching is an enemy to fostering the type of community he has has fostered at his own church and is encouraging in other churches. We don’t need less expository preaching, we need more of it.