It is really quite difficult to determine a suitable title for this piece. I don't want it to sound like I have all the answers, because I don't and never will have, and in any case there are many who might read this who are far better preachers than I. I don't want to indicate that preaching in our time is in a total mess, because there are very good preachers about, including men whose names do not feature on the conference agenda or 'best-known preachers' list. Last but not least, everything I say is a generalisation; there are always exceptions to be found somewhere!

Still, having said that, both at home in the UK and here in Zambia there are good men who know their doctrine who are not moving the hearts and minds of the people of God, unless one considers movement in the direction of sleep or disappointment to be desirable. Zambia is a several thousand miles from the UK geographically and in a different condition in several important respects (and in some of those respects, in a better condition!). But in the Reformed world at least there are several similarities that link Zambia and the UK; Reformed theology takes several variant forms and these transfer easily to Africa. The Reformed movement is growing in strength and influence among evangelicals. Reformed worship is certainly more conservative than most other evangelical streams.

The Baptist movement in Zambia is strong and largely evangelical, and Reformed Baptists are doing well here. There are very successful Reformed ministries in place in Lusaka and other large centres. It may be easier to hear Reformed ministry in a medium-sized Zambian town than it is in the UK. In terms of Bible translations, the NIV dominates in Zambia in a way it never has in the UK among the Reformed, but that is because it is easier to obtain than anything else and its English is accessible. Among pastors the ESV is increasingly known and appreciated - the Reformed Baptist pastor in Chingola preaches from it although his congregation mostly has the NIV. The KJV has little access in spite of the TBS sending out copies: its archaic English really is another language for most Zambians. The TBS will no doubt continue to publish how many copies of the KJV it sends to Zambia and other countries. What the statistics don't say is how many of those copies gather dust. All the TBS needs to do is publish something along the lines of the NKJV, using the translation principles they think are right, and they would be doing a much greater work.

But what about the preaching? In both Reformed and evangelical churches in Zambia, there is good preaching to be heard in the sense of exposition of the text and in the sense of application of the text to the hearers lives. What is noticeably lacking is a Christ-centred message. Gospel sermons are 'reserved' for evangelistic campaigns and special crusades. The Christ-centredness of the Reformers and their successors has somehow not transferred to Zambia. Congregations are getting a great deal of 'the patriarchs did this and so should you' (or not, depending on the patriarch and the incident!), a lot of careful exposition of the text in a direct sense, and not a lot of the glory and sweetness and saving grace of the One who ought to be at the heart of all preaching.

Sadly, that is the case in many UK churches. Having friends in different parts of the UK is a great advantage when you want to get a sense of how people perceive the ministry they are getting, and the simple fact is that we have a good number of 'sound,' doctrinally correct preachers who are not having the impact they should. There are dull and hard-hearted hearers, of course, but one does not have to go too far or even think too hard to realise that something is wrong. In this sense, Zambia and the UK are nearer than one might think.

Finding a solution is not easy, especially when quite a few people want to deny there is a problem! One thing we need is more people willing to pray for preachers in a serious way. It is well enough to identify the problem, and quite another to decide that the answer is to dispose of the present preacher and simply get another. The diagnosis may be right, but the cure is wrong. There needs to be a work of the Holy Spirit in the minds and hearts of both congregation and minister, and the whole issue needs to be handled with grace and a desire to honour the name of the Lord. Ministers can repent and congregations can learn to discern properly what they are listening to.

In the grace of God our age is not without men who can guide us in all of this. Professor Edward Donnelly in Ulster, Sinclair Ferguson, John Piper, Art Azurdia (at the Aberystwyth Conference this year, I think), Charles Mahaney and many others spring to mind. Strangely enough, the older writers are a great help too if only we will read them with open eyes.

Suppose you could ask Jonathan Edwards what the purpose of preaching is. What do you think he would answer? Try this from his 'Religious Affections:'
. . . . to promote those two affections in them [the congregation], which are spoken of in the text, love and joy: “Christ gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; that the body of Christ might be edified in love,”. Eph. iv. 11, 12, 16. The apostle, in instructing and counselling Timothy, concerning the work of the ministry, informs him, that the great end of that word which a minister is to preach, is love or charity. And God has appointed preaching as a means to promote in the saints joy: therefore ministers are called helpers of their joy.

'Helpers of their joy!' I wonder how often I have failed that as a test of the ministry I have delivered, or rather, I don't wonder. I know I have very often failed. But Edwards is himself a helper - he suggests the remedy. In 'Religious Affections' Edwards makes a careful case that true religion must move the heart as well as the mind. His concern is that some of the men of his day saw excess in the response people made to passionate preaching in times of true revival. He does not seek to excuse the preaching as being all correct, and he certainly is not defending excess. Where his concern finds focus is in the response to excess, which in his day was to reject any heart-moving and passionate ministry and to put in its place 'solid' doctrine presented in a way that addressed the mind but not the heart:


. . . of late, instead of esteeming and admiring all religious affections, without distinction, it is much more prevalent to reject and discard all without distinction. Herein appears the subtilty of Satan. While he saw that affections were much in vogue, knowing the greater part were not versed in such things, and had not had much experience of great religious affections, enabling them to judge well, and to distinguish between true and false; then he knew he could best play his game, by sowing tares amongst the wheat, and mingling false affections with the works of God’s Spirit. He knew this to be a likely way to delude and eternally ruin many souls, and greatly to wound religion in the saints, and entangle them in a dreadful wilderness, and by and by to bring all religion into disrepute.

Edwards doesn't mince his words, however, when he turns to the opposite error of discarding the affections:

We may hence learn how great their error is, who are for discarding all religious affections, as having nothing solid or substantial in them. There seems to be too much of a disposition this way prevailing at this time. . . . .
He who has no religious affection, is in a state of spiritual death, and is wholly destitute of the powerful, quickening, saving influences of the Spirit of God upon his heart. As there is no true religion where there is nothing else but affection, so there is no true religion where there is no religious affection.

Edwards case is mainly directed to ministers, and he is radically against 'sound and solid' preaching where the solidity is similar to that of suet pudding. He wants Christ-centred preaching, he wants the preacher's heart as well as his mind fully engaged and he wants the preaching to be such that it aims for the hearers hearts and minds, by the grace of God.

Edwards is not an easy read for many, but it seems to me it would be worth making the effort. Reformed teaching is without doubt the clearest expression of the intention of the word of God available in our day. An urgent need is that that teaching be always consciously Christ-centred, and it is the preachers duty to ensure that it is so. Only the preaching of the Lord Jesus Christ will really move hearts. Without hearts moved by what is being taught, a people addressed by preachers who are clear that a heart-moving ministry that brings love and joy to its hearers is vital, the Reformed teaching of our day in both Zambia and the UK will nevertheless be barren in a real and lasting sense. The message is far too valuable for us to even think of that being allowed to happen. More than that, the souls we have been given now and the people that we might reach ought to be precious to us in a very sense. Whatever pains a preaching ministry may involve, it is as nothing compared to the suffering of the Lord Jesus Christ to win the souls to whom the preaching should be directed.