Preaching: A Lasting Commitment
Few activities have occupied such a central place in the history of Christianity as preaching. From the patriarchs, through the prophets, through Christ and the apostles, and onward into the great periods of renewal throughout the centuries, the proclaimed Word stood at the center of the life of God’s people. In times of spiritual vigor, preaching gained strength and depth; in periods of decline, it generally lost its centrality, yielding ground to religious formalism, doctrinal superficiality, or cultural accommodation.
Even so, the very concept of preaching has become progressively diffuse in many contemporary contexts. Frequently, the pulpit is treated as a platform for motivational commentary, therapeutic speeches, personal opinions, or superficial cultural analysis. In other cases, preaching is reduced to an exercise in religious eloquence disconnected from the serious exposition of Scripture. This makes it necessary to recover a fundamental question: after all, what is preaching?
In its most essential sense, Christian preaching is the public proclamation of the Word of God. The Greek verb κηρύσσω (kēryssō), widely used in the New Testament, carries the idea of officially announcing a message received from another. The Christian preacher does not speak primarily in his own name. He acts as a messenger of the divine Word.
This understanding distinguishes Christian preaching from a mere religious lecture. The center of preaching is not the preacher’s creativity, but the authority of Scripture. For this reason, the Reformed tradition insisted that true preaching occurs when the Word of God is faithfully expounded and applied to the church.
Within this framework, the idea of expository preaching becomes especially significant. Rather than using biblical texts merely as starting points for previously conceived ideas, expository preaching seeks to derive its message from the sacred text itself, respecting its historical, literary, and theological context. Haddon Robinson defined expository preaching as “the communication of a biblical concept derived from and transmitted through a historical, grammatical, and literary study of a passage in its context.” This definition preserves something essential: the authority of the sermon does not rest upon the personality of the preacher, but upon faithfulness to the biblical text.
The preacher’s task is not to compete with Scripture, but to serve it. For that reason, preaching has always required more than rhetorical skill. It demands reverence before the sacred text, discipline in study, spiritual discernment, and pastoral awareness.
The roots of this understanding run throughout the entirety of biblical revelation. Even before the formation of Israel as a nation, Noah is described as “a preacher of righteousness” (2 Peter 2:5, ESV). In Moses, however, the proclamation of the Word assumes a more clearly recognizable form. The book of Deuteronomy, for example, is structured around great discourses addressed to the people on the eve of their entrance into Canaan, bringing together instruction, exhortation, and covenantal application.
Later, priests, Levites, and scribes exercised functions connected to the public teaching of Scripture. Nehemiah 8 offers one of the most important portraits of this process: Ezra reads the Book of the Law before the people, while the Levites explain the meaning of the text so that all may understand the reading. In the prophets, preaching assumes even more intense contours. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Amos, and many others appear as men raised up to confront sin, denounce idolatry, and call the people back to the Lord, while at the same time announcing future hope and messianic redemption.
Yet it is in the person of Jesus Christ that preaching reaches its supreme expression. Christ’s public ministry begins with preaching: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 4:17, ESV). The Gospels continually present Jesus teaching in synagogues, in homes, by the sea, along the roads, and on the mountainsides. His preaching possessed unique authority: “for he was teaching them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes” (Matthew 7:29, ESV).
Particularly in the Gospel of Matthew, the great discourses of Jesus structure the teaching of the Kingdom of God. The Sermon on the Mount presents the ethics of the Kingdom. The Missionary Discourse instructs the disciples concerning mission and suffering. The Parables Discourse reveals the mysteries of the Kingdom. The Church Discourse addresses community life, forgiveness, and discipline. The Olivet Discourse directs attention toward judgment and future consummation. These discourses demonstrate that, for Christ, preaching did not occupy a peripheral place. It was a central instrument in the manifestation of the Kingdom of God.
After the resurrection, this centrality remained. The apostles understood that they had been sent primarily to proclaim the gospel. At Pentecost, Peter stands to announce Christ crucified and risen. Paul travels through cities publicly expounding the Scriptures. The church is born and expands through the preached Word. Among the apostle Paul’s final words are those with which he charges Timothy:
”I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.
But as for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.” (1 Timothy 4:1-5).
The subsequent history of Christianity confirms this centrality. In the apostolic era, the public proclamation of the gospel was the principal instrument of Christian expansion. During the patristic centuries, preachers such as John Chrysostom and Augustine of Hippo united theological depth, biblical exposition, and pastoral application, helping to shape the doctrinal consciousness of the early church.
In the Middle Ages, the centrality of preaching experienced relative weakening in many contexts. Sacramental liturgy gradually came to occupy the visible center of ecclesiastical life, while the use of Latin and the growing distance between clergy and people limited access to Scripture. Even so, figures such as Bernard of Clairvaux and Francis of Assisi preserved, in different ways, the importance of the proclaimed word, while John Wycliffe and the Waldensians anticipated elements that would later be recovered by the Reformation.
It was, however, during the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century that preaching decisively returned to the center of church life. The Reformers understood that the renewal of the church depended upon the return of Scripture to the pulpit. The doctrine of Sola Scriptura reorganized worship, ministry, and the very identity of the church. The pulpit gained visible centrality. Biblical exposition once again became the dominant element of Christian worship.
Martin Luther preached continually through Romans, Galatians, and the Psalms, emphasizing justification by faith. Ulrich Zwingli developed the lectio continua, expounding entire books of the Bible sequentially. John Calvin, in Geneva, provided one of history’s greatest models of continuous expository preaching, working through virtually the whole of Scripture throughout his ministry.
Later, the Puritans deepened even further the pastoral dimension of preaching. They maintained the biblical centrality recovered by the Reformation, yet added a strong concern for the experimental application of truth to the human heart. Puritan preaching sought to enlighten the mind, reach the conscience, and move the will.
The great spiritual awakenings that followed likewise remained connected to the recovery of preaching. Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, Charles Spurgeon, and many others demonstrate that periods of greatest vitality in the church have almost always been associated with the return of the Word proclaimed with clarity, depth, and spiritual power.
The contemporary world, however, has profoundly altered the way people hear and process language. The culture of speed, fragmentation, and image has produced an environment less disposed toward prolonged listening, deep reflection, and sustained argumentation. Within this context, Christian preaching faces one of its greatest historical tensions.
The difficulty lies not only outside the church. In many evangelical settings, the sermon gives way to hybrid forms of communication: motivational talks, therapeutic speeches, religious entertainment, or highly personalized performances. Frequently, Scripture remains merely a symbolic starting point for messages constructed around human experience.
Historically, the church understood that the authority of preaching derived from the authority of the Word of God. When the biblical text ceases to govern the sermon, the pulpit inevitably becomes occupied by the preacher’s subjectivity, the expectations of the audience, or the demands of the religious marketplace.
Paradoxically, contemporary emptiness itself reveals the enduring necessity of preaching. Amid the saturation of voices, opinions, and competing narratives, there remains the need for a word that does not depend merely upon human instability. The more fragmented human experience becomes, the more necessary coherent exposition of Scripture becomes.
For this reason, the recovery of preaching does not depend merely upon more sophisticated homiletical techniques. Above all, it depends upon a return to the conviction that God continues to speak through His Word.
After decades in the ministry of the Word, certain perceptions become unavoidable. The first is that the Word of God remains greater than the preacher. Generations change, cultures transform themselves, and the minister himself matures and grows old, yet Scripture continues to speak with surprising relevance and depth.
It also becomes evident to me that preaching profoundly shapes the one who preaches. Continuous contact with the biblical text confronts, corrects, consoles, and instructs the expositor himself. In a certain sense, no one remains the same after years living under the discipline of studying and proclaiming Scripture.
At the same time, nearly half a century of ministry has allowed me to perceive that the true relevance of preaching cannot be measured merely by numbers, visibility, or immediate impact. Very often, its deepest effect occurs quietly: in the gradual formation of the church, in the strengthening of faith, in doctrinal preservation, and in the faithful transmission of the gospel across generations.
Methods change. Historical contexts shift. Communication tools multiply. Yet the church’s fundamental need remains the same: men called by God opening the Scriptures before the people and faithfully proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Perhaps this is why periods of greatest spiritual vigor in the history of the church have almost always been connected to the recovery of the preached Word. For, in the end, the church continues to be built in the same way it began: through the proclamation of Scripture.
Gilson Santos has been a Baptist evangelical minister for nearly forty years. He serves as pastor and missionary in Portugal, where he ministers at the First Baptist Church of Lisbon, at Martin Bucer Seminary, and within the Reformed Network. He holds degrees in History, Theology, and Psychology, with postgraduate studies at Mackenzie Presbyterian University and at the Faculty of Medical Sciences of Santa Casa de São Paulo. He directs the Poimênica Institute. He is married to Nadir, father of two daughters, and grandfather of two grandchildren.
