In 1990, the year Gardner Taylor retired from preaching, Lee Strobel began to preach. By that time, Taylor had pastored historic Concord Baptist Church in New York City for 42 years. Today at 77 he still preaches almost every weekend, while Strobel regularly fills the Plexiglas pulpit at Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Illinois.
Taylor preached in a heyday of American preaching, when New York City pulpits were filled with the likes of George Buttrick, Robert McCracken, Fulton Sheen–and Gardner Taylor. In 1980 “Time” magazine declared him “dean of the nation’s black preachers.” The “Christian Century” recently quipped, “What was once alleged of Southern Baptist preacher Carlyle Marney may equally be said of Taylor: he has a voice like God’s–only deeper.”
Throughout his ministry Taylor’s love of preaching was surpassed only by his love for Laura, his wife of 52 years. “I sometimes see her lying in repose now,” he said, “and a great sadness comes over me because I know one of us must leave the other. But what can we do?”
Last February, several weeks after those words were published, Laura was struck and killed in a crosswalk by a city truck.
“My wife’s passing,” says Taylor now, “has given me a far larger confidence in the future life.”
Before Lee Strobel began preaching, he earned a master’s degree from Yale Law School and then became an award-winning reporter for the Chicago Tribune. The prototype Unchurched Harry, he began attending Willow Creek and moved from confessed atheist and irreligious journalist to a fully devoted follower of Jesus Christ.
Eventually Strobel joined the staff of Willow Creek and now serves as a teaching pastor; he, Bill Hybels, and two others share the responsibility of preaching to 15,000 people each weekend.
One thing didn’t change at conversion for Strobel, however: his investigative intensity. A while ago, his daughter said, “Dad, can we buy the house next door?”
“Why would you want to move next door?” he asked.
“No, no,” his daughter replied. “We wouldn’t move next door. You would move next door the weeks you’re working on a sermon.”
Strobel is the author of “Inside the Mind of Unchurched Harry & Mary” and “What Jesus Would Say.”
LEADERSHIP brought Lee Strobel and Gardner Taylor together to find out what makes preaching biblical–and how preachers present biblical truth in different generations.
LEADERSHIP: What was the first sermon that made an impact on you?
TAYLOR: It would have been around 1929. My father was a preacher in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He pastored a church that I later pastored. I was only 13 when he died, but as a boy I remember a sermon he preached, “A Balm In Gilead,” which touched me deeply.
STROBEL: It was January 20, 1980; I was 28 years old. I remember the date because I was an atheist. My wife had become a Christian through Willow Creek and encouraged me to attend. I rebuffed her attempts for several months but finally went. That Sunday Bill Hybels was preaching a message called “Basic Christianity.” For the first time in my life, I walked away understanding what grace is. I don’t want to say no one had ever tried to tell me before, but at least I had never heard it.
I came away from that service thinking two things: I don’t believe it’s true. But if it is, it would have incredible implications for my life. That sermon prompted a spiritual investigation that culminated in my coming to faith in late 1981.
LEADERSHIP: What changes in preaching have you observed during your ministry?
TAYLOR: There was much more a sense of the transcendence of God in the preaching of the forties and fifties.
There was also a much greater confidence in America–what it was and where it was going. I think we are in the midst of a great disillusionment about the land and about its future and about our future. So the emphasis has changed. Now one needs to preach about an authentic hope.
STROBEL: We’re seeing a difference in the kind of person that comes to our seeker service today compared to the person who came five years ago. Five years ago, people were more cynical; they arrived with arms folded, saying, “I dare you to communicate something to me that matters.”
Now they’re saying, “I’m in my third marriage, and it’s failing. I’ve got my second BMW, which hasn’t brought satisfaction. I’ve risen to the top of my company, but it doesn’t fulfill me the way I thought it would. ” They see the moral fabric of America coming unraveled, and they’re scared.
Therefore, the immanence of God tends to get communicated more–the closeness, the relationship that Christ offers.
LEADERSHIP: What do those listeners sense a need for?
STROBEL: There’s a lot of confusion. People don’t know what they feel. Many see themselves as victims as opposed to sinful. Some of the successful people I meet are desperate because their success has not brought them the soul satisfaction they thought it would. Others seem fearful.
TAYLOR: The great preacher George Buttrick was supposed to have said to Norman Vincent Peale, “Norman, don’t you think your people feel insecure because maybe they are?” (Laughter.)
Some of the most successful are the most desperate. Rudyard Kipling gave an address to the graduating medical class of McGill University in which he said, “You’ll go out from here, and very likely you’ll make a lot of money. One day you’ll meet someone for whom that means very little. Then you will know how poor you are.”
When I was a young pastor, I was lecturing at an institute with A.J. Muste, the pacifist, with whom I roomed. I had three or four pairs of shoes. Muste had one pair, and one of his shoes had a hole in it. But something about the man’s spirit made me feel how poor I really was.
LEADERSHIP: Thirty years ago a sermon on Elijah and his desert experience at Horeb would have emphasized God’s sovereignty and provision. In today’s therapeutic climate, often the application is how to cope with burnout or depression. Is that a legitimate switch in emphasis?
TAYLOR: The psychologists and the psychiatrists have had their impact. Much of today’s psychological preaching has put an emphasis upon the problems within ourselves, obscuring repentance from what it was in an earlier day.
Any type of preaching that does not bring in the vertical aspect of the sermon–the impact of God upon human life–cannot be called a sermon. There’s no excuse for the preacher if he or she is not speaking to people for God–a presumptuous undertaking, to be sure, but one that we are called to do. And unless that is done I don’t think preaching has occurred.
STROBEL: There’s a continuum these days in preaching: On the one end are extremely vertical messages that emphasize doctrine or the nature of God but, unfortunately, lack application. These sermons generally don’t accomplish what I think the goal of preaching is, which is life change.
But I also have trouble with the other side of the continuum, which emphasizes application, but often just through human ideas. The preacher tacks on a verse or two to give it some legitimacy, but essentially it’s a man-based solution.
The answer is in the middle: Whatever we preach has to flow out of the truth of God, and, be applied to people’s lives as well. The Bible tells us to be not just hearers of the Word but doers. I want the sermon to help people do, to help people change.
LEADERSHIP: How do you determine whether the sermon you have just preached is biblical enough?
TAYLOR: When I was a lad, there was a woman who lectured around the country. She once said that she liked to see a preacher open the Bible when he or she starts preaching. Doing so may not do all that should be done, but it does something. It says that one is dealing out of the crucial context of the Bible.
I’m suspicious of preaching that is not biblically based, but I’m also suspicious of preaching that is biblically confined. If one doesn’t get out of the Bible and into people’s lives, I think one has missed it. If a preacher tries to change people’s lives without the Bible, I think he or she is something less than a Christian preacher.
STROBEL: It’s important to understand what does not make a sermon biblical–the number of verses quoted, for example, or a certain language that is used. Alan Walker, a former Methodist missionary, once said that in our churches there is “an idolatry of words”: When people don’t hear certain buzz words, they make the sometimes absurd criticism that the gospel is not being preached.
Nor do I think it’s necessarily whether the message is expository, topical, or textual. I did a message once that was unbiblical in the sense that I didn’t quote Scripture. I wanted to preach a simple message on the gospel, so we created a forest scene on the stage of the church. A little girl sat on my lap, and I read her a children’s book called Adam Raccoon at Forever Falls, a powerful allegory of the gospel. I was preaching to the children–but I was also preaching to their parents. I read the story, and then I closed the book; the little girl jumped off my lap. Then I looked out over the audience and said, “What you just heard was the gospel of Jesus Christ told in a story form.” I explained it and helped them crystallize what the gospel means for their lives.
Being biblical means the gospel of Jesus is presented in its fullness, with accuracy, and in a compelling way, calling people to action.
TAYLOR: Every preacher, every Christian for that matter, needs his or her sense of the whole range of Scripture. What is it all about? In The Scarlet Thread, I wrote there is a crimson thread that runs through all of biblical history–that God is out to get his Creation back. And a sermon needs to be tested by that.
Incidentally, Lee, about the amount of Scripture, the Scottish preachers used to say that you ought to use a large body of Scripture in case there’s nothing else in the message. (Laughter.) Someone also said that if there’s absolutely no value in a sermon, if that can happen, the people on that day are taught patience. (Laughter.)
STROBEL: I look at each message and ask myself, What kind of sermon is this? Is it a “What” message–primarily informational? Sometimes I need to communicate information. I once preached a message on evolution versus creation, which was largely informational.
Some messages are “Why” messages. For instance, why does God say we should not engage in certain sexual activity?
Then there are the “How” messages. If you preach a message on the power of God, for example, people will nod their heads and say, “Of course God is powerful. He created the world.” But their real question is, “How do I access that power in my life?” In these sermons, I fail people if I don’t help them know how to access the power that God offers us.
LEADERSHIP: How do you know if you succeeded in preaching the right kind of message?
STROBEL: At Willow Creek we’re honest about evaluating each other’s work.
I give each message three times. After the first time, a few elders and other discerning leaders of the church give me written feedback. So if there is a problem, I can correct it before I give it again. For example, once after I preached on a Saturday evening, Bill Hybels pulled me aside and basically told me the message didn’t work. If I hadn’t trusted him, it would have destroyed me, because he was brutally honest.
I stayed up all night fixing the message and then gave it again twice Sunday morning. Bill was right; I had not done enough work that week. I’m thankful he cares enough to give me a no-holds-barred evaluation.
TAYLOR: I think one needs that. During my wife’s lifetime, I was blessed with that. She talked very straight to me.
At one point, I had gotten too involved in Brooklyn politics because of the size of the church. After a while, my wife said to me, “Your preaching is getting very thin.” It was one of the most scathing things I’ve ever heard. I soon stopped preaching too much about politics. It’s something one needs to do, but for it to lay primary claim upon one’s life as a preacher is dangerous.
LEADERSHIP: How has modern media affected the listener of the sermon?
TAYLOR: A man who wrote for Lorimar Productions once said that in television you have fifty seconds to get people’s attention. If you miss them, they may still be there bodily, but they’re gone mentally. Of course, this has made a difference.
The preachers I knew in my early years, during the golden era of preaching in New York City, had such enormous gifts of communication. They seemed to preach with their whole being. Everything about them was a preacher. It was something to listen to, and people listened. Perhaps preaching was esteemed more; people were more attached to it. But I’m not sure the gothic kind of preaching that went on in that day would go over well today.
STROBEL: We may have to connect with people more quickly these days–we need to establish credibility and relevance right away–but I think people will stay with you if you speak to issues that make a difference in their lives. I don’t agree with the notion that people have short attention spans. People will sit in front of a TV for six hours at a time or attend a three-hour concert.
I do try to think through every sermon to see if I can supplement the boring image of a lone preacher standing and speaking. I try, for example, to integrate video into my preaching when I can.
For instance, when I preached a message called “The God of Hope,” I said that we have a God who will give us a do-over in life, like when a little kid plays baseball and strikes out, and everybody says, “Do over! Do over!” To drive home the point, in the middle of the message I showed a three-minute clip from the motion picture City Slickers. It was from the scene where the friends of one of the main characters, who had made a wreck of his life, talked about do-overs. Afterward, I said that God could give us the ultimate do-over. The effect was powerful.
Most sermons don’t lend themselves to movie clips; you don’t want to become gimmicky. But sometimes a slide or video or prop can illuminate God’s Word in a way that gives the congregation a fresh glimpse into what you’re trying to say.
LEADERSHIP: Does people’s general ignorance of Scripture change how we must approach the sermon?
TAYLOR: Today one has to assume there is an ignorance of the Scripture. The culture cannot help but affect everybody in it. But I find among older blacks, there is still a reverence for the Bible. Among younger blacks, there is curiosity.
More important, I think the preacher must have certain presuppositions about Scripture. It’s amazing that twenty centuries of preaching have come and gone out of the Old Testament and the twenty-seven New Testament pamphlets. That alone is reason enough for the authority and the divine nature of Scripture–twenty centuries of preaching from this thin volume. There is a quality about Scripture that is compelling and engaging. And it first ought to engage the preacher. If it does, and he or she deals with it faithfully, it will likely engage the people.
STROBEL: John Stott once said that good preaching begins in the Bible and then builds a bridge to the real world, which I think is true for believers, because they trust the Bible. Often for seekers, however, I find that the reverse works: I begin in the real world, connecting with their needs, and show them that I do understand where they’ve been and where they are. Based on that, I show the relevance of Scripture. I build a bridge from the real world into the world of Scripture.
TAYLOR: That was Dr. Fosdick’s method. He preached to a highly critical congregation–John Dewey and his crowd at Columbia University. And he went at it, as he said, from the human side toward the divine. Dr. Fosdick’s preaching has been widely criticized, some of it justifiably, but Fosdick went at a biblical truth as it relates to human life from life’s situations. That’s just the way he preached.
And, of course, it was tried in England, certainly, where they carried the evening service out of the church into theaters and other venues. The evening service was more of a guest service.
STROBEL: Back in the late eighties, during a slow news week, Time ran a cover story on Jesus that they had on file. It turned out to be their best-selling issue of the year. People are curious about the Bible and curious about Jesus. However, they’re not so curious about the church, which is the problem. A lot of people are turned off toward the institution of the church.
TAYLOR: That’s true, but that’s not all bad. There is in each of us a skeptical aspect to our personalities. I think this serves the preacher well, because there are skeptic-ideas, skeptic-moods in the people to whom we preach. I am suspicious of preachers who are completely sure about everything. I don’t think it’s real. There are doubts in life. There are questions, uncertainties, fears. And to speak with a bland assurance, I think, is to cheapen the gospel.
LEADERSHIP: Is increasing people’s knowledge about the Bible one of your goals in preaching?
STROBEL: It is a goal but not the goal. I see it as a means to an end, which is life change. What I hope my preaching does is help people become more like Jesus. That is life change.
There is an informational component to a message, but I don’t spend a lot of time trying to teach Greek or Hebrew words. I use as much biblical knowledge as is necessary to help people understand what the Bible teaches about the topic, so that they become doers of the Word. The classroom-type of teaching of biblical information is probably best done somewhere other than the main service. At Willow Creek, we offer other venues for in-depth informational teaching.
TAYLOR: There’s a story about a southern preacher who knew Greek and Hebrew and used it every Sunday. The chairman of the deacon board made a motion in a business meeting that they seek a new pastor on the grounds that nobody in the congregation except one person understood any Greek–and he knew only the Greek alphabet. The board recommended the pastor ought to be free to go somewhere where his talents might be more appreciated. The board was probably right.
LEADERSHIP: How important is it to communicate theological truth in a sermon?
TAYLOR: The Christian preacher is called upon to declare to people the theological truths of God, but he or she has to get the theology into the street where people live. That means knocking on the doors where people reside. The preacher must go see what their lives are all about.
STROBEL: Theology is especially important today, with so much relativism, with people saying, “Your truth is good, and my truth is good.” Unfortunately, many people have stopped looking for truth at all. Instead, they’re looking for something that works in their life; they don’t care if it comes from Buddhism or from Islam or from Christianity.
Christianity is not true because it works; Christianity works because it’s true. We must go to Scripture and show the transcendent truth. But I try to teach theology without ever using the word. Sometimes I’ll even stop in a message and say, “Time out. There is a word called sanctification, and this is what it means.”
Theological truths must be taught so we don’t veer off course. But the way they’re taught to the average person should be a hands-on kind of theology.
LEADERSHIP: Should preaching only proclaim truth? Or do you refute error?
TAYLOR: One does both. But I think one ought to proclaim truth more than refute error. And in proclaiming truth, one ought to be refuting error. I think sometimes we are called upon to face it directly.
I play golf (or try to play golf), and I run into men who are skeptical of the church. They arch their eyebrows and say, “I don’t go to church. I believe in the Golden Rule.”
I’ve said to them, “I had a Doberman Pinscher like that. A very fine animal, too. And he never went to church, either. But I know why he didn’t–he was a dog. Why don’t you?” (Of course, I’m old enough to say such a thing and get away with it, and I always make sure they don’t have a club in their hand.)
Sometimes you have to come at people that way. But I don’t think you can build your preaching around that. It must be a change of pace. I try not to attack continually on the issue of race, for instance. Constantly harping is not the answer, though to ignore it, I think, is to be unfaithful to the gospel.
LEADERSHIP: The ultimate test for a biblical preacher is probably when speaking to crises in the congregation or nation. What have you learned from those situations?
TAYLOR: The Civil Rights revolution was a great convulsion I had to deal with biblically. Another moment was the Sunday after Pearl Harbor. Still another was the Sunday of the missile crisis in Cuba. I have never known a congregation so tense. I could feel the tension throughout the sanctuary. More than ever in my life, there came over me the awareness of how people were affected by world events. They could not know what was going to happen.
As I preached during those difficult times, I wanted people to know that God is still on the throne. I couldn’t predict the future; I could only give them the assertion my old theology dean, Thomas Graham, used to make: faith is reason gone courageous.
It’s the same in a personal crisis, like the recent sudden death of my wife. I don’t know what people do without faith. I don’t always have a calm assurance about her death, but I believe with all my heart that God will not do us evil.
LEADERSHIP: Did the fact you were a preacher help you during the time of your wife’s death and the grief afterwards? Or did it complicate the grieving?
TAYLOR: I guess it complicated it in one way, because of the assurance I had passed out to people during my years in ministry. I thought I was sincere. I thought I understood what they were going through–but I did not. It was humbling. People reminded me gently that I had said things to them that now I had to deal with.
My wife’s passing made me realize that the veil between this life and the next is very thin. It has also given me a far larger confidence in the future life. I have gropingly come to believe that the Lord transfers our holdings on to heaven in advance of our arrival.
As we grow older, this life shows its true qualities of impermanence and unreliability. The young ought not feel that way; they ought to have the illusion of permanence. I don’t think you could live very well without that illusion, but it isn’t reality. As one gets older, God has ordained it so that as one must leave the world, it becomes less attractive.
LEADERSHIP: What challenges you about trying to preach biblically today?
STROBEL: A theologian named William Hordern said there are two ways you can communicate the gospel.
One way is transforming the message into something it isn’t because you’re trying to soft-sell it; you’re afraid to confront people with the hard truth. And so, the tough parts of the gospel like sin and repentance are softened. That’s not legitimate. I think we have to preach on sin. We have to preach on repentance.
The other way, which I think is legitimate, is not to transform the gospel into something it isn’t but to translate it into language and art forms and modes of communication that people in twentieth-century America can understand, relate to, and respond to.
One of the weaknesses of preaching today is a fear of confronting people. But I think people, deep down, want to be confronted; they want the truth. Some churches that do seeker services tend to back off on the tough issues like sin and repentance. I think the opposite needs to be true. We always need to communicate grace, but we should not shrink from challenging people.
TAYLOR: This is one of the tensions of preaching. In the sense that a preacher must perform, he or she is like an actor. But the moment a preacher becomes an actor, he or she is in trouble, because preaching becomes nothing more than manipulation. And, yet, in another sense, what we do approaches manipulation. The tension ought to keep the preacher humble.
In another generation, James Denny in Scotland used to say that it is difficult for one to prove at the same time that he or she is clever and that Jesus Christ is powerful to save. One may do one or the other.
This is one of the anomalies, one of the contradictions, one of the dangers of preaching. When one gets engrossed with the idea that he or she is doing something, the actual preaching diminishes. And, yet, one is doing something. It’s in that tension, I think, that we do our work best. The preacher has to be aware: Am I intruding myself too much into the gospel? But if I remove myself from the preaching, it’s eviscerated.
So many of us are forever pushing the Lord out of the center place in his church and trying to take that place. If we would let the Lord have his rightful place in his own house, he could do much more for us and with us. It’s a perilous work we’re in, perhaps more perilous for the preacher than for the people the preacher preaches to. Only grace can save us from either becoming too withdrawn or too assertive.
STROBEL: I like to use a baseball analogy. Wrigley Field in Chicago has a wind that blows out to centerfield. There are times when I have done my best, but the truth is that my preaching was like a pop fly that should have been easily caught by the centerfielder for the final out. But then the wind takes the ball out of the park.
I suddenly realize the whole process is governed by the Holy Spirit. I hit a pop-up. I prayed; I studied; I fasted; I gave the best message I could. But it wasn’t that good. Then God took it and did something miraculous.
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Would you like to talk with Gardner Taylor and Lee Strobel about the challenges of biblical preaching? They will lead a live, online discussion on Monday, November 6, at 8 p.m. (Central Time). In America Online, type the key words “CO Live.” To enroll in Christianity Online, call 1-800-413-9747, ext. 174021.
Copyright (c) 1995 Christianity Today, Inc./LEADERSHIP Journal
Copyright © 1995 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
