The Main Ingredient in Preaching

Occasionally, Tim Challies links a blog post from the Ordinary Pastor blog, and I have always appreciated what Erik Raymond, a pastor in Omaha, Nebraska, has to share.  In his latest post, he discusses the "missing ingredient in many sermons," that one ingredient that can take a bland sermon and make it memorable: is the preacher personally "wowed" by the text of scripture? 

Erik explains this indispensable aspect of preaching:

"I have seen this in some otherwise terrific sermons. Guys can be exegetically sound, communicate with clarity, illustrate with profundity, and then at the end of the sermon it tastes like grandma’s meatloaf: somewhat filling but not so memorable.

On the other hand, we can probably identify a sermon that we have heard where the guy was working out of a passage with passionate engagement. And as he was doing this he was wringing out the text with personal adoration and joy. In other words, the text had gotten into him! The man went from a tour guide to a resident; a lecturer to a preacher! He goes from bland to flavor by seasoning the sermon with personal reflections of the infinite value of Christ; his beauty and unsurpassed glory."

He continues with another analogy:

"Preachers cannot be content to glide along the surface of the biblical ocean telling their hearers of the great treasures that lie under the boat. Instead they are to dive down into the depths of the water, see it themselves, marvel, and then come up and exclaim, with sea-weed on their shoulders, as one who has themselves seen, “This is who God is!” “This is what Christ has done for your souls!” It is easy to be sterile when we are dry and in the boat–preachers need to get wet, get deep and come up and preach like they have seen something!"

You can read the entire blog post here.