It’s so important for people to understand that preaching the gospel requires a complete shift of categories. Preaching the gospel is not like anything else. Preaching is unto itself, because preaching is inhabited by and worked by the agency about whom we are preaching. We are not speaking under our own strength. We are not summing up our rhetorical gifts. We are not sharing our personal experiences either, except with reservations, under certain circumstances, and with care. This is because at all times during the sermon, we are actually being used by the power of the Word of God, which is unlike any other power that the world has ever known. And this idea that God speaks and lives through God’s own Word transmitted through human beings is unique to Christianity. That’s what can happen in any sermon. However dignified and mainline it may be, the sermon is the opportunity for the power of the Holy Spirit to make Jesus alive with us – well, not making him alive, because he is alive, but manifesting him, alive, in the preacher’s speaking.

When you set out to proclaim the gospel, spare us your personal anecdotes and opinions.