Here’s Simon Manchester’s final error – ‘Teaching beats learning’:
A final danger I would mention is the teaching-beats-learning syndrome. This is the style – often picked up by the pew more than the pulpit – that the message has had no effect on the communicator. When the word of God is passed from an unaffected preacher to some unaffected listeners, the result is unworthy of God and discouraging to people. We must cry to God to search us because if the word of God that is “profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness” (2 Tim 3:16) does none of these things, who has the problem? There is an arrogance in some preaching that imagines that the preacher is ‘up there’ with the word of God, not ‘down there’ with the humble listener. To preach cold food every week (and not warm transforming food) is proof that something is wrong. May God help us.
I suppose this is the whole thing of preaching FOR change. It means hardcore personal wrestling with the text. In an allegorical sense, it means wrestling with the text until God blesses you through it (ala Jacob) and moves your heart by it so that others might be moved to change when you open it to them. I must admit that I have failed many times to wrestle sufficiently.
Manchester closes this section with the following words:
I write as someone on the road to a faithful sermon. I see some dangers and I see some answers. I have no lofty position on this, just a desire to escape from preaching errors and troubles, for the sake of changed lives and God’s honour.
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