{"id":15586,"date":"2025-04-30T14:13:57","date_gmt":"2025-04-30T20:13:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.faithfellowship.info\/?p=15586"},"modified":"2025-04-30T14:14:41","modified_gmt":"2025-04-30T20:14:41","slug":"preaching-affects-everything-the-masters-seminary-blog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.faithfellowship.info\/?p=15586","title":{"rendered":"Preaching Affects Everything -The Master’s Seminary Blog"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

blog.tms.edu<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Preaching Affects Everything<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

Brian Biedebach<\/p>\n\n\n\n

5\u20137 minutes<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Some time ago, I had a conversation with a pastor who was developing some training material for pastors in Africa. He had asked me to review the material, and when I asked him why there was such a low emphasis on preaching, he said to me, \u201cI don\u2019t buy into this \u2018preaching is everything\u2019 mentality.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He went on to explain that some pastors act as if all one needs to do is preach and teach the Bible to grow a congregation in a healthy way. He believed there were more important priorities that pastors needed to focus on, such as fellowship and evangelism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As he was still looking for feedback from me, I had three responses:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) First,<\/strong> I don\u2019t know of any pastor who only<\/em> preaches and teaches the Bible. All Christians should engage in fellowship and evangelism. Since pastors are Christians, they should naturally be involved in activities that all Christians are called to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) Second,<\/strong> there is an underemphasis today on the importance of preaching the Word.  Preaching and teaching are essential shepherding activities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If someone says their pastor is a good<\/em> pastor but he is not a good<\/em> preacher, they don\u2019t have a right understanding of what pastoring involves. A pastor is a shepherd of people. If a literal shepherd of sheep nurtured his sheep, hugged them, combed their wool, protected them from wolves, but never fed them\u2014would anyone think that he was a good shepherd?  How is it that we could think a pastor who does not feed his flock well from the Word is adequately doing his job?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Third,<\/strong> the phrase \u201cpreaching is everything\u201d can be helpful because it reminds pastors of their God-given responsibility to faithfully proclaim the Word of God. However, for those uncomfortable with that phrase, perhaps they could at least embrace this one instead:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The preaching ministry of a pastor is directly related to every other ministry he is involved in. Consider preaching\u2019s impact on the following six areas:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fellowship<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

If there is a lack of genuine fellowship in the church, what means should a pastor use to promote fellowship? The best way to encourage true fellowship is to preach through passages from God\u2019s Word that help people understand their responsibility to other members of the body of Christ. It is significant to note that in Acts 2:42 when the early church was \u201ccontinually devoting themselves\u201d to \u201cfellowship,\u201d they were also devoting themselves to the \u201cApostle\u2019s teaching.\u201d The two go hand in hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Counseling<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Counseling others from the Word is related to preaching. A pastor who has studied, understood, applied, and proclaimed a passage of Scripture is well-equipped to share it with individuals who need to understand and apply its principles as well. In Acts 20:32 it is God and the \u201cWord of His grace, which is able to build you up.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Holy Living<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

True preaching involves sincere study with personal application before the text is preached. The more a pastor prepares to preach the Word, the more the rough edges of his life will be chiseled away by the sanctifying power of the Word. It is no coincidence that passages which speak about progressive sanctification are within the context of gaining a better understanding of God\u2019s Word (cf. Romans 12:2; 2 Corinthians 3:18). As the preacher helps his congregation understand the Scriptures better, the process of sanctification is at work in his life and in the lives of the hearers (1 Peter 2:1\u20133).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Guarding the Flock<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The primary way a pastor can guard his flock from error and temptation is through the proclamation of the Word. When Paul instructed the Ephesian elders to \u201cbe on guard for themselves and for all the flock\u201d (Acts 20:28), he did so right after stating, \u201cI did not shrink from declaring to you the whole purpose of God\u201d (Acts 20:27). Guarding the flock is directly related to preaching.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Evangelism<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The work of evangelism is more than merely sharing the way of salvation. It also involves discipleship. The Great Commission places an emphasis on making disciples, which implies training and instruction in the Word of God (Matthew 28:18\u201320). When Timothy was instructed to \u201cdo the work of an evangelist\u201d (2 Timothy 4:5) it was within the context of pastoral ministry. Just a few verses earlier, he was charged to “preach the Word” (2 Timothy 4:2). Evangelism is encouraged and even modeled in a pulpit ministry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prayer<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

All Christians should pray, but pastors should especially pray for the congregation that the Lord has put them over to shepherd. The way that a pastor prays for his flock is often related to his preaching. He prays for them to grow in knowledge and discernment (Philippians 1:9); He prays that the eyes of their hearts might be enlightened (Ephesians 1:16\u201318a); He prays that they will know the hope of their calling (Ephesians 1:18b\u201319). Each one of his prayers is related to the preaching of the Word.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I could go on, but the above examples are sufficient to demonstrate that preaching affects everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If we downplay the importance of preaching in the church, everything else is affected negatively.  In Mark Dever\u2019s Nine Marks of a Healthy Church<\/em>, he said it this way: “The first mark of a healthy church is expositional preaching.  It is not only the first mark; it is far and away the most important of them all, because if you get this one right, all of the others should follow” (p. 39).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[Editor’s note: This post was originally published in March 2015 and has been updated.]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

blog.tms.edu Preaching Affects Everything Brian Biedebach 5\u20137 minutes Some time ago, I had a conversation with a pastor who was developing some training material for pastors in Africa. He had asked me to review the material, and when I asked him why there was such a low emphasis on preaching, he said to me, \u201cI […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.faithfellowship.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.faithfellowship.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.faithfellowship.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.faithfellowship.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.faithfellowship.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15586"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/blog.faithfellowship.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15586\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15588,"href":"http:\/\/blog.faithfellowship.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15586\/revisions\/15588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.faithfellowship.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.faithfellowship.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.faithfellowship.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}