What do we mean when we talk about “good preaching”?
Two kinds of preaching predominate the American evangelical landscape today: the first we’ll call “moral preaching,” and the second we’ll call “doctrinal preaching.” Moral preaching is—as should be self-evident—preaching that aims at moral transformation. It has in its sights the way that we live. At its worst, moral preaching takes the form it took in one chapel speaker I remember at my nondenominational Christian high school: “If you’re not drinking, smoking, or sleeping around, well, you’re doing all right.” (Even this high schooler who was not “doing all right” by that assessment felt there was something off about this sermon.) But there are more genuine, robust, even “biblical” forms of moral preaching. The best moral preachers—most of them engaging orators in bustling megachurches—bring conviction of sin and send out their hearers inspired to be better people and more faithful Christians.
The second kind of preaching is less prevalent in popular megachurches and more prominent in Reformed evangelical circles. “Be transformed by the renewing of your mind,” chapter 12 of Paul’s Epistle to the Romans says—and so the doctrinal preachers aim at the mind. Committed to expository preaching, most doctrinal preachers work slowly through books, exegeting the text verse by verse, sometimes spending years in books like the Gospel of John or Romans or Hebrews, bringing out at every step the theology embedded in the text. Hearers of doctrinal preaching, in its best forms, leave humbled by a “big-God theology” and a more nuanced grasp of God’s character and his activity in the world.
In some ways, moral preaching and doctrinal preaching are opposed to one another. The former aims at the hands; the latter aims at the head. “What we need,” many moral preachers will say, “is not more stuffy theology but something practical for our lives.” Doctrinal preachers might respond that such preaching is legalistic, heaping heavy burdens on Christians—all law, no gospel.
As someone who has spent years of my life under both kinds of preaching, and who now preaches most Sunday mornings, I am convinced that both kinds of preaching fall short. Neither moral preaching nor doctrinal preaching leads to lasting spiritual transformation, and ironically, there is another way that accomplishes the goals of both approaches (moral growth and doctrinal growth) better than either. This article will argue the most faithful, fruitful, and transformational kind of preaching is aimed not primarily at the head or the hands, but at the heart—what we’ll call “affectional preaching.”
Thomas Chalmers and Edinburgh’s Pride Parade
In the heart of Edinburgh stands a statue of 19th-century Scottish preacher and statesman Thomas Chalmers. Last summer, I had the chance to spend a week in Scotland, and I paid Chalmers a visit. He was just one stop on my day off in Edinburgh, so I quickly moved on to see other sites. Halfway between Chalmers and the historic home of Scotland’s most famous churchman, the Protestant Reformer John Knox, I learned I was in Edinburgh on the day of the city’s pride parade. In fact, not far from Knox’s house, I quite literally got stuck in the parade.
After squeezing my way in between the thousands of marchers to get to Knox’s house, I watched people pour through the streets for nearly an hour—young and old, plainly dressed and decked out, many holding signs, nearly all participating in chants. What struck me—experiencing this scenario for the first time—was the anger. The chants were laced with profanities, the signs were vulgar, and the beating drums stirred a sense of violence. The whole vibe was one of rage. As I stood outside John Knox’s house, fresh from visiting Thomas Chalmers’s statue, I recalled Chalmers’s famous sermon: “The Expulsive Power of a New Affection.” The pride parade, in a way, embodied our first kind of preaching: moralist preaching. But Chalmers’s famously took a different tack:
There are two ways in which (one) may attempt to displace from the human heart its love of the world—either by a demonstration of the world’s vanity, so as that the heart shall be prevailed upon simply to withdraw its regards from an object that is not worthy of it; or, by setting forth another object, even God, as more worthy of its attachment, so as that the heart shall be prevailed upon not to resign an old affection, which shall have nothing to succeed it, but to exchange an old affection . . . for a new one . . .The former method is altogether incompetent and ineffectual and . . . the latter method will alone suffice for the rescue and recovery of the heart from the wrong affection that domineers over it. (Chalmers, 3)
Chalmers says there are two ways to inspire change: you can try to convince your hearers that what they’re doing is bad, and they need to stop it right now, or you can offer them something better, something more beautiful, “another object, even God, as more worthy of (the heart’s) attachment.” You can’t, Chalmers went on, get a person to cut away “the spring or the principle of one” affection without providing him a better one: “the whole heart and habit will rise in resistance against such an undertaking.” (Chalmers, 4) What you must do, rather, is display for your hearer the beauty and glory of God as a better object than anything else by which our affections might be held; only this can “dispose (the world) (its) ascendancy” in the human heart.” (Chalmers, 11–12) This is affectional preaching.
Christianity: A Matter of the Heart
Chalmers was not, in this sermon, offering something novel. He was simply pulling on the thread of Edwardsian, Augustinian, and—this preacher would argue—biblical Christianity. He understood that faith is, in large part, a matter of the heart—the affections. But this means more than it might appear at first glance. How should we define “affections”?
In his famous work Religious Affections, Jonathan Edwards defined affections as “the more vigorous and sensible exercises of the inclination and will of the soul.” (Edwards, 96) Edwards uses both “inclination” and “will” to refer to the “faculty . . . by which the soul does not merely perceive and view things, but is in some way inclined with respect to the things it views or considers.” (Edwards, 96, emphasis mine) I do not merely perceive or view dark chocolate after a savory meal; my soul inclines toward it. Thus, I have affection toward a delicious piece of chocolate.
The heart is large enough to hold many affections—some greater than others. The greatest affections are those expressed in more “vigorous” and “sensible” exercises—“vigorous” meaning strong or intense, and “sensible” meaning tangible, moving not only the ephemeral “heart” but making the blood rush and the physical heart beat faster. Thus, as strong as my affection for chocolate may be, my affection for my favorite sports team is stronger. Stronger still is my affection for my children and my wife.
“True religion,” Edwards said, “in great part, consists in holy affections . . . in vigorous and lively actings of the inclination and will of the soul, or the fervent exercises of the heart.” (Edwards, 95, 99) Edwards is arguing, in other words, that the mark of true Christianity is a heart strongly inclined toward Christ. “Affections,” Tim Keller neatly summarized, “are the inclination of the whole person when sensing the beauty and excellence of some object. When our heart inclines toward the object in love, it propels us to acquire and protect it.” (Keller, 160)
While Edwards offers a robust (some might say abstruse) explanation of the affection, Saint Augustine offers another way of understanding what drives the inclinations of our heart: “Happiness.” The bishop of Hippo was constantly talking about it. We understand he didn’t mean some fleeting, flippant feeling that flutters away as quickly as it comes—for which reason I’ve chosen to capitalize the word. Rather, Augustine has in view a deep, soul-level satisfaction and contentment—the same thing he famously referred to as “rest” in the opening sentences of the Confessions.
Augustine believed, with the ancient philosophers, that the thing which every person chiefly desires is Happiness. (Augustine, On the Happy Life, 26ff.) Our affections are given to the people or things we think will bring us the Happiness we long for. If you believe money will give you the good life, you’ll find yourself responding “vigorously and sensibly” to a big day on Wall Street. If you believe your preferred political candidate can give you the good life, you’ll find yourself responding with great emotion to perceived threats to his or her ascendancy. If you believe your romantic partner can bring you true Happiness, you’ll be overjoyed when they treat you well and despondent when they neglect to show you love.
We all want, at bottom, to be happy. Our affections are the inclination of our hearts toward those things we believe will give us that Happiness. And true religion, or genuine Christianity, consists in large part of holy affections—in hearts strongly inclined toward Christ as the only source of Happiness.
Preaching and the Affections
This must mean that Christian preaching is an attempt to participate in the transformation of the affections of one’s hearers. And this is what I have in mind with the concept of “affectional preaching.” Affectional preaching is preaching aimed at the transformation of one’s heart. It seeks to set before the hearts of hearers another object, a better object, even Christ, in contrast to things toward which their hearts are already inclined. Affectional preaching helps them to detach their hearts from the idols of money and sex and power and politics and family and attach their hearts to the only stable and sure source of Happiness.
Preachers are one of God’s instruments for detaching human hearts from objects that make empty promises of Happiness and attaching them instead to “that which abides forever and can’t be taken away from (them) by any cruel act of fortune.” (Augustine, On the Happy Life, 29) God himself is the only one who fits the bill. He alone is the “North Star” to which we can entrust ourselves. (Ibid., 20) Preachers are to hold him out before our hearers, helping them taste and see that the Lord is good—indeed, better than anything else.
Ironically, affectional preaching is more effective than both moral preaching and doctrinal preaching at producing what moral preaching and doctrinal preaching aim to produce. Moral preaching aims for transformed actions, but only when the heart is transformed will actions be lastingly changed. Doctrinal preaching aims for transformed thoughts, but only when we love God will we be driven to know more about him, not for the knowledge that puffs up but the love that builds up. “What the heart most wants the mind finds reasonable, the emotions find valuable, and the will finds doable.” (Keller, 159)
Preaching for the Affections
Much should be said about how to preach to the affections. I would recommend, for a start, Keller’s Preaching and his “Preaching in a Postmodern World” lectures. We could offer a few points in brief.
First, preach Scripture. Thankfully, preachers have a great aid in affectional preaching: the Bible itself! Our task is not to rely on ingenuity or wit to appeal to the affections of our hearers but to simply preach Christ and him crucified. We do this from Scripture, for “what Scripture is for is the conversion of human affection.” Preaching Christ from every text of Scripture—which is not less than moral or doctrinal preaching, but is always much more—is the only way to reliably “set forth another object” before the affections of our hearers, and is thus the only way to reliably participate in their lasting spiritual transformation. For this reason, my aim in preaching is to show my hearers, by a faithful exposition of the biblical text, that Christ is a better object for the attachment of their hearts than anyone or anything else that exists.
Second, preach Christ and his gospel from all of Scripture. In Luke 24, after his death and resurrection, Jesus famously appeared incognito to two of his despondent disciples. He asked them why they were so down. Haven’t you heard, they asked, the things that have happened? Jesus responded: What things? When they told him about their despair—we thought we’d found the Messiah, but he’s been crucified!—Jesus proceeded to offer them the most important hermeneutical lecture in church history.
He said to them, “How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself. (Luke 24:25–27, emphasis mine)
Jesus did not say, “In a few decades, some of my disciples are going to write these spiritual biographies called Gospels, and they’ll explain it all to you.” He didn’t say, “Wait until I convert this guy named Paul—he’ll tell you why I had to be crucified.” No, Jesus told them clearly: the Old Testament itself, at every turn, bears witness to my death and resurrection. Approaches regarding how to preach Christ from the Old Testament vary; more important, however, that how preachers do so is that they do so.
Third, preach the beauty of Christ in contrast to the allure of your hearer’s idols. This requires cultural exegesis—understanding what your community looks to for Happiness and what stirs their affections. In the midsize college town where I grew up, the local university’s sports teams were one of the biggest idols. In the neighborhood where I now live and pastor, progressive notions of freedom and justice predominate. Your community may idolize physical safety, creature comforts, and money. It may idolize health and wellness, beauty and strength. It may be steeped in another religion, with citizens looking to a literal idol or another god for Happiness. Whatever the case, you as a preacher must become intimately familiar with these idols and show the people how Christ is more beautiful still. For instance, if your community idolizes sports, demonstrate how the belonging and success they seek through a team are fleeting, but in Christ, they are eternal. If they value justice, show how Christ, the eternal King, brings perfect justice without creating new oppressors—fulfilling their deepest desires but in a far better way.
Fourth, use strong, gripping illustrations. The heart is more moved by narrative and anecdotes and word pictures than it is by propositional statements. That doesn’t mean we jettison propositions—by no means! Rather, we must often illustrate the propositions with gripping stories or word pictures to get them from our hearers’ heads to their hearts.
Finally, soak your sermon, before, during, and after, in prayer. Saint Augustine wrote his work On Christian Doctrine to give instruction for how to teach and preach the Bible, but my biggest takeaway had nothing to do with methods of Christian instruction. Rather, this book taught me that preachers should give far more attention to personal integrity and prayer than to skill in communication. Charles Spurgeon was famously converted by what must be one of the worst recorded sermons in the history of the English language. Rhetorical skill is far from the most important part of preaching. If our aim is to move hearts, God’s Spirit must be active. And we should implore him to act by praying: for ourselves, for the clarity of our communication, for open minds and hearts.
While I hope these applicational points are helpful, how you preach for the affections is far less important than that you do it. For what our hearers need most is not moral inspiration or doctrinal instruction but an encounter with the living God. We need to behold him, and in beholding him, to be transformed. Indeed, when we preach Christ to the hearts of our hearers, they can say with the Apostle Paul: “And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit” (2 Cor. 3:18).
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