Ep 18: Whitefield and the Power of Preaching

Last night I watched a movie and came away stirred in a way I wasn't fully expecting.

A Great Awakening — released this past April by Sight and Sound Films — tells the story of the unlikely friendship between George Whitefield and Benjamin Franklin, and Whitefield's role in igniting the First Great Awakening. It's a film about preaching, prayer, passion, and perseverance. And it pressed on something I've been carrying for a long time.

The authority of preaching does not come from my ability to speak or to build a sermon. It comes from the Word of God. I am simply called to preach it.

That's what this episode is about.

Whitefield didn't preach because the conditions were favorable. He preached because he was called to. He preached outdoors when the churches closed their doors to him. He preached to coal miners with blackened faces who had never heard the gospel. He preached across the Atlantic — thirteen crossings between England and the American colonies. He preached until the day he died, literally — his last sermon delivered standing on a barrel outside a tavern in Newburyport, Massachusetts, holding a candle that burned down to a stub as he spoke.

That kind of preaching doesn't come from confidence in your craft. It comes from confidence in what you've been called to proclaim.

There's also the thread of Benjamin Franklin that I can't stop thinking about. Whitefield appealed to Franklin to trust Christ — and Franklin didn't respond in the moment. But decades later, the seed was still working. He remembered Whitefield's words in 1789 and called the Constitutional Convention to pray.

Most preachers will never know the full reach of what they said on a given Sunday. Whitefield didn't know what his last conversation with Franklin would produce. He just preached. He just kept preaching.

Three things to carry into this week: pray before you preach, trust the Word not the outline, and keep preaching — no matter what the days ahead look like.

Preach and pray. Pray and preach. Trusting God will awaken our churches, our nation, and our world.

That's still the call.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

I want to start with something personal. Last night I sat down and watched a movie that was released, I think, this last April, and I wasn't really fully prepared for what I was going to experience when I watched it. I've always been fascinated with uh Jonathan Edwards, George Whitfield, some of these John Wesley, Charles Wesley, some of these that back centuries ago experienced an awakening of themselves, and thus from their ministry came an awakening in various parts of the world. The movie is called A Great Awakening. It was released this past April by Sight and Sound Films. You may have seen it, you may not have. I would recommend it if you haven't. But it tells the story of the unlikely friendship between George Whitfield and Benjamin Franklin and Whitfield's role in igniting that first Great Awakening. Now there were moments of fiction in the telling, liberties were taken, as they always are in films and movies, but I was stirred. And something kept coming back to me. There was a conviction that I've held for a long time that that film brought into sharper focus. The authority of preaching does not come from my ability to speak, does not come from my ability to build a sermon. It comes solely from the Word of God. I'm simply just called to preach it. And that's what this episode is about. So welcome to the Clear Preaching Podcast. My name is Jonathan McClintock, and today I want to look at a little bit of history of preaching, but what that has as far as implications for us today as preachers. If you read any books at all about him, George Whitfield was an American an English, I should say, an English minister at the heart of the Great Awakening. A sweeping spiritual renewal had hit England and the American colonies in the 1730s and 40s. A historian Thomas Kidd describes him as the first modern transatlantic celebrity of any kind. I mean, Whitfield had a magnetic personality. He could draw tens of thousands of people with his preaching. Benjamin Franklin was astonished by how far Whitfield's voice could carry when he preached in Philadelphia. And as the story goes, as history goes, Franklin went on to partner with him, publishing many of Whitfield's sermons in the Pennsylvania Gazette, the newspaper, and the printing shop that Benjamin Franklin ran. Think about that pairing for a moment. Franklin, one of America's most skeptical, most rational founding minds, was so compelled by what he heard that he became the preacher's publisher. With all the colonies on the brink of collapse, they could not come together and agree with this these new ideals for this new nation. And here we have Whitfield's thunderous sermons igniting this first great awakening. In fact, Whitfield united a generation. But what really stirred me watching the film wasn't the celebrity of Whitfield or the crowds. But what really stirred me was the cost. It was the opposition and the obstacles that he faced and Whitfield's refusal to stop. There's a scene in one part of the movie where Whitfield decides if they're going to kick him out of the church, not let him preach in a church, he's going to preach in the open air. And so you see him crafting this pulpit, this podium with a little bit raised so he could build it and step up on it and just preach anywhere. And as he makes his way to this coal mining camp, all these families, from young kids to older people, they're dirty, they're covered in black soot from the coal mines. And as Whitfield begins to just preach to them, these men ref reject him and pick up rocks and pieces of coal and throw them at Whitfield. And it was such an amazing, of course, you know, it's it's a film, it's a movie, so there's uh probably some dramatic things the way it's all set up, but it was just so impacting as he cowers under these rocks and coal being thrown at him, and as they stop throwing, he shakes himself and turns his face towards them again. His eye is cut, blood's pouring out of his mouth, he spits blood, and then he begins preaching again. Whitfield didn't preach because the conditions were favorable. He preached because he was called to. We've got a lot of favorable conditions. I know the world's changing. But many of us enjoy nice air-conditioned buildings in the summer and heated buildings in the winter, and some enjoy massive campuses with incredible facilities. He preached outdoors. He preached when the churches closed their doors to him. He preached to miners with soot covered faces who had never heard the gospel. He preached across the Atlantic. Thirteen crossings he made between England and the American colonies, and he preached until the day he died, literally. He gave his last sermon the night before his death in 1770, standing on a barrel outside a tavern in Newberryport, Massachusetts, holding a candle that burned down to a stub as he preached. Now that kind of preaching doesn't come from the confidence in your craft. It comes from confidence in what you've been called to proclaim. And here's what this movie pressed on me and what I want to name directly for every preacher listening to this today. There is a temptation, especially as you develop as a communicator, to locate the authority of your preaching in your preparation, to think that the authority of your preaching is in your outline or in your wonderful illustrations and stories, or even in the clarity of your structure. And none of these things are nothing. This entire podcast, things that you've heard me say, is built on the conviction that clarity matters, that structure matters, that language matters, but clarity is not the source of power. The word of God is. And Whitfield understood that. He was not polished academia. Of course, he went to, he did go to Oxford, and he was trained in oratory through the arts of acting. He did have some training. But his life was transformed when he came in contact with men like Charles and John Wesley, who created the holy club there at Oxford. These men who set themselves apart from the others, pursuing God and his word, serving the poor. And it was there that Whitfield was gripped by the word and then compelled by the Spirit and became unafraid to open his mouth in the middle of a field to whoever would listen. See, the power wasn't in the method, it was in the message. And the Great Awakening didn't happen because the preaching was technically excellent. It happened because the preaching was spiritually authoritative, rooted in the word, carried by prayer and delivered without apology. Think about that. Rooted in the word, carried by prayer and delivered without apology. God help us to carry that same conviction into our preaching today. And there's one thread in this movie I can't stop thinking about. The last time it seems that Whitfield and Franklin were together, Whitfield made a strong appeal to Benjamin Franklin to trust in Jesus for salvation, to give his life to Jesus. But Franklin, a well-known deist, didn't accept the divinity of Christ in that moment. But as he remembered Whitfield's words in 1789, decades later, history does tell us that there appears Benjamin Franklin had a change of heart and turned to God through Jesus. And then went on to call the Constitutional Convention to pray. And through that the Constitution was adopted and our nation found its grip. There's a preaching lesson buried in that timeline. Whitfield preached to Franklin. And though Franklin didn't respond in the moment, but decades later the seed was still working. You see, most preachers, most of us will never know the full reach of what we said on a given Sunday. You won't know fully who was in the room. You won't know what word or concept landed. You won't know what the audience carried home. You won't know what came back to them at two o'clock in the morning six months later. Whitfield didn't know that his last conversation with Franklin would echo through the Constitutional Convention. He just preached and he just kept preaching. And the movie's closing message is this God can change the world through the work of willing hearts. And we believe he'll do it again. And that's not really about nostalgia. That's a promise that involves you and I. When I watched the movie, I came away challenged. Challenged to be a voice, unafraid to proclaim truth even in the face of uncertain days. You see, this moment that we're living in is not so much different from the one Whitfield inhabited. There is spiritual confusion all around us. There is cultural noise bombarding us. There are voices competing for the attention of your congregation every single day, and into all of that the call has not changed. Preach the word in season and out of season, in a building or in a field, to an audience of thousands or a room of a few. Now three things I want you to carry into this next week. First of all, pray before you preach, not as a ritual. Whitfield exemplified this. These preachers that God has used to make an impact exemplified this. Prayer not as a ritual, but as a dependency. Whitfield's power was inseparable from his prayer life. You see, the sermon you prepare and study is not the sermon that lands in the room. See, the spirit does something between your desk and the pulpit that no preparation can replicate. Make space for the prayer and for the spirit. Secondly, trust the word, not the outline. Your clarity of structure, your take home truth, your opening, your closing, those are disciplines that serve the word, that help in the process, but there are never a substitute for it. So when you stand up Sunday morning, you're not presenting your analysis of a text, you are delivering the living God, His Word, to people who desperately need it. And then lastly, three, keep preaching. The truth is the days ahead may be uncertain. The cultural moment may be hostile. The room may be harder and harder to reach than it used to be. Whitfield didn't stop when the churches locked him out and kicked him out. He took it to the streets. You belong in the pulpit, so stay there. God has called you. So preach and pray. Pray and preach, trusting that God will awaken our churches, our nation, and our world. That is still the call.