Ep 17: The Preacher and the Church

We've spent a lot of time on this podcast talking about the preacher and the text, and the preacher and the Spirit. This episode is about the preacher and the people — because preaching was never meant to happen in isolation.

Here's the truth that anchors everything: the preacher is not a solo practitioner. He or she is a member of the body — placed within it, accountable to it, and called to serve it.

That might sound obvious. But it changes how you think about clarity. Because if preaching is something you do for a body you belong to, then clarity stops being a communication technique and becomes something else entirely. It becomes a form of love for the people you've been entrusted to serve.

What this episode covers:

The preacher as shepherd — The Hebrew word for shepherd in Jeremiah 3:15 — ra'ah — means to tend, to pasture, to feed. The role isn't primarily administrative. It's nutritive. And you feed your people well when the Word is proclaimed clearly. An unclear sermon is a meal your congregation can't actually eat. The food might be nutritious — but if it never makes it off the plate and into them, they leave the table hungry.

The stakes of that are set in Acts 20:28: the flock you feed was purchased with the blood of Christ. There is no more sobering ground a preacher can stand on.

The preacher as mentor — Feeding the flock isn't the only responsibility. The pastor is also called to raise up the preachers coming behind. Paul gave it to Timothy in four generations of a single sentence: What you have heard from me... entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also (2 Timothy 2:2). It doesn't stop with you.

And Jesus gave us the pattern: instruct, observe, go and do, further instruction. Somewhere near you, there's a developing preacher who needs someone to learn from, someone to watch, a chance to practice, and someone to help process it afterward. That someone is you.

The full picture — This episode closes a three-part arc on the theology of preaching. Three foundations, one conclusion: clarity in preaching is not a preference, and it's not just a technique. It is a necessity — demanded by the nature of what's being proclaimed, required by the scope of who's being reached, and owed to the people you've been called to serve.

That last word is the one to land on. Owed. Clarity is something you owe your people. Not because you're a performer who needs to impress them — but because you're a shepherd who's called to feed them.

You belong to your people. Your clarity is how you feed them. Your faithfulness is how you love them. And the preachers you train are how you serve a church that will outlast your own ministry. None of it was ever meant to be carried alone.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

You know, we spend a lot of time on this podcast talking about the preacher and the text and the preacher and the spirit, but today I want to talk about the preacher and the people God has called us to preach and minister to. Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Clear Preaching Podcast. My name is Jonathan McClintock, and today we're going to look at the preacher and the congregation. Before we do that, if you're not yet following us on social media, you can go to Instagram and search Clear Preaching Academy and follow us there. Or on Facebook, you can follow us there at my name, Jonathan McClintock. On those, at the on the bios of each of those social media contacts, there are several links you can go to to explore some of the things that we offer, some tools that we have. There's a clear preaching assessment that you can take. There's a link there for that too. There, you can join our weekly Clarity email list where you will get an email every Tuesday into your inbox about preaching and this clear preaching framework. You can also check out our Clear Preaching Academy. There's a link there to check that out at ClearPreaching.com slash join the Academy. Let's look today about the preacher and the people, because preaching was never meant to happen in isolation. In fact, the truth is the preacher is not a solo practitioner. He or she is a member of the body. We do not stand outside the body. We are not a separate member outside the body. We are placed within it. We're accountable to it. And in fact, we are called to serve the body of Christ and the local congregation, the local body that we've been called to. Now that might sound obvious, but it changes how each of us should think about this idea of clarity. Because if preaching is something that you or I do for a body we belong to, then clarity stops being a communication technique and becomes something else entirely. In fact, clarity moves beyond technique and it becomes a form really of how to best love the people that we've been entrusted to serve. And that's what I want, that's the angle I want to come at today. The preacher belongs to the church. We serve the church. And the church, that local body, deserves a preacher who has been trained to serve it well. You can go to seminary, go to Bible school, and you can take classes on how to be a pastor, how to serve that congregation. You can learn from wonderful people, have great experience, and some of those times of training in the classroom cannot be can't uh can't be exchanged. There's something wonderful to hear a minister who's in preaching or pastoring for decades, hear them talk about their experience. That's a wonderful opportunity for training there. But what we must understand also is that as a preacher, there are some things that we need to keep in mind when it comes to how we serve our congregation best, how we feed them best, how we can do that as preachers, because there is a skill to be learned. It's something we need to spend time crafting in our own lives. So let's start with what the church actually needs from that man or woman in the pulpit. Now, first of all, the pastor's primary responsibility is to open the scriptures through teaching and preaching. Someone once said that the office of teaching is committed to pastors for no other purpose than that God alone may be heard there. This office of teaching and preaching the word is so that people can hear God's voice. Yes, they can read the word of God alone, they can pray alone, and we need to teach our people to hear God's voice for themselves. But there's something about the man, a woman of God stepping into that pulpit and delivering the word of God to help the people hear God's word. That's a high bar. We preach so that God is heard. We preach so that his voice is heard, not that we are heard. And when Paul lists the qualifications for pastoral leadership or elders or bishops, 1 Timothy and then Titus, almost all of them are about character, which is so very important. The character of the preacher, how the preacher carries himself, how the preacher carries himself inside the church and outside the church. Almost all of them, the qualification Paul mentions to both Timothy and Titus are about character. Cannot misstate that, cannot overlook that. But one of them, at least one of them, is about competency. And Paul tells Timothy and Titus that that bishop, that elder, that pastor, that leader of the church must be apt to teach or have the ability to teach. In fact, Paul later says that those who work hard at preaching and teaching are worthy of double honor. We ought to work hard at the craft of preaching. The craft of preaching is not something that we should settle into and just do it out of habit and never work to improve and never work to get better or to grow. In fact, this calling of a preacher ought to be, it'll be a lifelong learning place for us as preachers and pastors. The work of the word is central. It's not peripheral. It needs to be at the very heart of what we do. You've heard me say it before, and I will, I'll continue to say it, and I want it for you too, that I want the best sermon I preach to be the last sermon I preach. This next sermon that I'm going to preach on Sunday, Lord willing, the Lord continues to delay his coming, and he gives me the privilege to once again step into the pulpit at the church I pastor. I want that message to be the best one I have ever preached before in my life. That will not just come by happen chance. That will come because I work at it, because I'm being shaped. And, you know, inside the preaching academy, clear preaching academy, we are working and iron, sharpening iron, trying to build each other so we because we want to be better every week that we preach God's word. And our people deserve that. Our people deserve preachers who are preaching and striving to better communicate, be more clear, to be able to communicate the word of God in a more clear way so people can be fed. Here's the image I want you to sit with today, because it really reframes this whole task as a preacher, as a pastor. Listen to God's promise to Jeremiah, Jeremiah chapter 3, verse 15. And I will give you shepherds after my own heart, or other translations, I will give you pastors who will feed you with knowledge and understanding. Now that Hebrew word for shepherd is the word ra'ah, and it means to tend or to pasture or to feed. So the role of a pastor is not primarily administrative. The role of a spiritual shepherd is not primarily administrative, though there are those roles, there are those responsibilities that we have. But we've got to keep the main thing, the main thing. The primary is not administrative, the primary is not organizational. The primary requirement for a pastor, a shepherd, is nutritive, nutrition. The shepherd is called to feed the church of God. And the New Testament pastor feeds the congregation not with bread, but with the word. Now, if you connect that to this idea of clarity that you hear me talk about over and over and over again, this is the whole point. You feed your people well when the word is proclaimed clearly, when they can follow it, when they can understand it. I was one of the greatest compliments I've ever received. I got this past Sunday, and it was a young man who's been visiting our church, and he he talked to me and shared a little bit, and he said, I've really enjoyed the preaching the last few weeks. He said, A lot of preachers, I try to take notes, and I can't really follow, but for you, it's just I can follow and take notes. I take that as a great compliment. Not that I claim to be the greatest preacher. I am not. There are greater preachers, so many great. I just fill my role in my local church, and I am so pleased to be able to do that. But I took that as such a great compliment. What he was in a sense saying is that you're preaching clearly. You're preaching in a way I can follow, you're preaching in a way I can take notes, you're preaching in a way I can eat, I can feed on the Word of God. An unclear sermon is a meal your people can't actually eat. The food might be nutritious, but if it never makes it off the plate and into them, into their hearts and their minds, they leave the table hungry. Calar said it beautifully. He said, Nothing but a regular diet of the Word of God can nourish a congregation on God's intention. Nothing but a regular, systematic diet of God's word can truly nourish a congregation on what God wants them to eat. As a preacher, as a pastor, you're running the kitchen. You're the chef, you're in charge. Clarity helps determine whether the food actually gets eaten. Nobody wants a plate set before them that looks like, well, I guess there are people that like soups that are just all mixed together. Okay, there are those meals. Okay, bad metaphor. That's the worst thing to do in preaching, is give a bad metaphor. But don't you love eating a plate that's organized? Maybe you're that type of person. You don't want the meat touching the potatoes or the vegetables leaning over into the potatoes or the rice kind of amess and it's over into the vegetables. Clarity helps determine where the food actually gets eaten or not. And Paul, he raises the stakes one more level in his charge to the Ephesian elders. In Acts chapter 20, Paul tells them, pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock to care for the church of God or to feed the church of God which he has purchased with his own blood. That flock, that group of people that you shepherd was purchased with the blood of Christ. There is no more sobering ground a preacher can stand on than to recognize the people we are feeding were purchased by the blood of God manifest in flesh. The stakes then of clear proclamation, of clear preaching, are set then. The stakes are set by the price that was paid for the people in the room. But here's the part most preachers forget. Feeding the flock isn't our only job. You also have to, and I believe this is important for pastors. Yes, feed the church of God, but also raise up preachers behind you that also know how to feed the church of God. Here's a responsibility that's easy to neglect because it's never urgent. The pastor is called to promote a culture of discipleship, to mentor the preachers and the leaders coming up behind him. This principle runs all through scripture. Jesus commanded his disciples to make disciples. He said, Go make disciples, teach ye them to observe all that I've commanded. We see Paul handing this to Timothy directly. He tells Timothy, What you've heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust it to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. Second Timothy two, verse two. Count the generations in that one verse. Paul says, Timothy, you've heard from me in the presence of many witnesses. Now you entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. Four generations. Paul, Timothy, the elders and the people he's teaching, and then the ones they will teach. Four generations in one single sentence. The one who's been trained is responsible to train others. And then it doesn't stop with you or I. In fact, if you look through the gospels, Jesus gives us this actual pattern for how this mentoring is done. There's four movements that we can kind of see in how Jesus formed his disciples, these four movements of mentorship, if you want to put them that way. The first one is the movement of instruction. Instruct. Jesus called the disciples. And then immediately as they began following, he begins teaching them and working in their presence, and they watched real ministry from day one. He taught them. He taught them before he taught the crowds. He instructed these, he was mentoring. The second movement of mentoring is observing or observation. Not only did he teach them, but they watched him over an extended time. They followed him and watched him work with others, watched him teach others, watched him minister to others. They were not passively, but knowing that what they were watching would one day be what they did. He was pouring into them instruction and then observation. And then the third movement of this mentoring was the going and doing. Jesus then gave them power and sent them out to proclaim the kingdom themselves. Luke 9, we see it. Instruction gave way to observation, then observation gave way to practice, and they actually went out and did it. So these first three movements of mentorship: the instruction, the observation, and then the practice. But then there was a fourth movement in this mentoring of Jesus to his disciples that is so very important. And I think it's where a lot of pastors begin to fumble the ball because it's a skill that is that's got to be developed. It's taken me, I'm still not there, but 16 years of teaching, preaching, and instructing other preachers to preach, the skill that I had to work on, have had to work on the most, and I'm still tweaking it and working on it, is this skill of feedback. When somebody gets up and preaches, to actually have something constructive to say, to actually have some specific things to point out to help them so they can see where they perhaps faltered or perhaps didn't say it in the way it could have been, or didn't see a movement that could have been made, and being able to give them clear and feedback. So Jesus gives, after the instruction and the observation and the going and doing, they come back and he gives them, number four, further instruction. When they returned, he didn't just celebrate. He did say, I rejoice, and I saw Satan fall like lightning. But he instructed. Do not rejoice, he says, chapter 10, verse 20 of Luke, do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but that your names are written in heaven. Don't miss what makes this last step so powerful. The 72 came back thrilled. And Jesus essentially said, You did well. Pat him on the back, you did great. How you did that was wonderful. But let me show you something you almost missed. Don't rejoice because of this, but remember this. That kind of correction given right after the doing while the experience is still fresh, is the kind of formation that produces preachers who don't just perform a task, but understand ultimately what that task was for. So here's the challenge. Instruct, observe, go and do further instruction. Now that's not necessarily a program we bolt into our ministry. It's one of our central responsibilities as a pastor. Somewhere near you, somewhere near me, there's a developing preacher who just needs someone to learn from, someone to watch, a chance to practice, and then someone to help them process it afterwards. And that someone, if you're leading, it's you. Okay, so where does this leave us today? Let's step back and see the full theology of preaching. We've been, this last three podcast episodes, we've been kind of building on this full theology of preaching. And it rests on three foundations, but they all kind of converge here. We looked at the authority of Scripture, and that authority of scripture tells us why preaching must be clear, that we're handling the very breath of God, and that authority demands the clearest possible communication. And then a theology of preaching tells us what preaching is and what it's for, that God works through the proclaimed word, and for every kind of listener with purposes that run from reconciliation all the way to maturity, the weight of God's word and what God's word and preaching is for. And then thirdly, it's ecclesiology. That study of how the church works and the church and God's mission. That's really today's podcast, because this idea places the preacher within the body. You and I are shepherds who feed and mentors who train. So you put all these together and you reach one conclusion that I want to be the takeaway of these last three episodes, that clarity in preaching is not a preference. And it's it's not a technique, though there are techniques to use, but it's it's a necessary. It's a necessary thing. Demanded by the very nature of what's being proclaimed, required by the scope of who's being reached, these people that have been, that we've been called to serve, that have been purchased by the blood of God, manifested flesh. We owe it to them. Clarity is something you and I owe our congregation. Not because we're performers who need to impress them. No, that's not what it's about. It's because I'm a shepherd who's called to feed me. And when we labor to be clear, we're loving them. When we work hard on the message and we work hard on the study, and we work hard on the building, and we work, we work hard to make sure it's structured in such a way that it can be clear. When we're not careless with clarity, however faithful our content, we can't be careless. Because even if our content is great, if we're careless with clarity, we've left them hungry at a table set with the word of God. So here's what I want you to do, challenge you to do with all this. And whichever one you see is most crucial for you right now. Maybe you've been preaching but not feeding. You haven't been putting the effort into the preparation of the sermon to make it clear. You've been preaching, but they haven't really been getting fed like they could if the message was clear. If that's you, then just be honest. Look at your sermon and ask have I made this clear enough to actually feed my people when you're preparing for this coming Sunday? Or only clear enough to satisfy myself. Are the notes on paper and I feel like I'm done? Or is it really clear? Because clarity is how the meal gets eaten. Or maybe the second one is you've been feeding, but not raising anyone. And if that's the case, then identify someone, some developing preacher under your care. Don't build a you don't have to build a program for them, some uh step by step. If you want to go that route, then build the program, but just take the first step. Maybe let them in on the inside of what you're studying this week and how you're preparing and what you're how you're going about it. Instruct, observe, let them go and do, and then give further instruction. Start that cycle with somebody today. Because remember, we're not solo practitioners. We belong to a body to feed it and to make sure it has faithful preachers after you and I are gone. Now, one last word before I close. This is the final episode that I've drawn from a course that's already in the Clear Preaching Academy. It's longer than what I've given you here in this podcast. I just want to give you a little piece of it, but there is the complete lesson, complete course inside the Clear Preaching Academy, a complete theology of preaching from the authority of the Word through the work of the Spirit to the preacher's place in the church. There's a reason the academy itself is built as a community and not just a course library, because preachers were never meant to do this. Yes, when you step in the academy, there'll be some courses and it's a it's a compilation of courses that are growing by the month. More and more courses to be added. But really, the Clear Preaching Academy is about more than that. You can go through the courses and they're there for you to learn, but it's about getting preachers together so they don't have to carry the calling alone. Preachers that can get in a room together, sharpen one another, and encourage one another. Preachers that can get on a Zoom call some evening each month and really hear from one another and build one another. So I just want to invite you to check it out. Clearpreaching.com slash join the academy. Inside of you, you're going to be surrounded by other preachers doing the same work, watching and sharpening and helping each other grow. It's open now. Clearpreaching.com slash join the academy. Here's what I'll leave with you today. You belong to your people. We serve the people God's given us. Your clarity is how you feed them, and your faithfulness is how you love them. And the preachers you train are how you serve a church that will outlast your own ministry. None of it was ever to be meant to be carried alone. I'm pulling for you, and I'll see you next week.