Pastoral Search Committees / PNC’s / Pulpit nominating committees usually say their first goal is a pastor who preaches well. Yet, few evaluate sermons against any objective criteria.
Below is an excerpt of material I wrote that gives suggestions for how search committees should evaluate sermons.
If you would like more information, you can e-mail me at chris at theredbrickchurch.org.
No sane person wants to sit under preaching that is boring. So, whenever we encourage people to value expository preaching, we ought to also explain to them why, by definition, expository preaching should not be irrelevant and dull.
In a sentence, expository preaching should not be boring because it is about showing how God’s timeless truth intersects with life today. If a particular sermon is just a survey of technical details and a lecture about the Ancient Near East, then that is not expository preaching.
Arguably, the most strategic decision that a local church makes is calling a preaching pastor. When a local church calls a lead or senior pastor, they almost always want a pastor who will preach with excellence. Yet, often pastoral search committees do not know how to go about achieving that goal.
Unfortunately, there are essentially no resources available designed to help pastoral search committees / pulpit nominating committees succeed in calling an excellent preaching pastor.
Books and resources designed for pastoral search committees / pulpit nominating committees focus on areas other than preaching, and these areas are important. Yet preaching is the center of what their next pastor will do, and there is nothing available to help churches call a pastor who will preach with excellence.
You can read the below excerpt from my doctoral thesis which focused on developing a resource that will help local churches call a pastor who will preach with excellence. . . This is the introduction to my entire thesis – – it introduces the problem. So, it is written in a technical way – – It is not a portion of the manual I developed.
I am praying that the manual/resource I developed might serve a local church looking for their next preaching pastor.
Even if you argue that Esther was forced to spend the night with the king, the fact remains that she kept her identity a secret and that she won the contest. She may have been forced to spend the night with the king (though we do not know that is the case). She did not have to conceal her identity and surely she did not have to win . . .
What is the point?