Alistair Begg on Market-Driven Preaching

[Marrow Man]

The following video is from a conference message delivered by Alister Begg more than 10 years ago. He rightly analyzes the problem with popular entertainment-driven “worship” services in that they fail to make proper use of preaching as God’s chosen way of communicating the gospel.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYs4AF8S0oA]YouTube - The Gospel In Contemporary Culture (Alistair Begg 1998)[/ame]

Here's a quote:

People … have assumed that preaching is analogous to a marketing exercise, and what you have in the preaching event, we’re told, is a product, namely the Gospel; consumers, namely the congregation; salesmen, the preacher. And the job of the preacher is to overcome consumer resistance and persuade people to buy his product. And many, many, many younger men have begun to labor in pastoral ministry with that as a model.

It is a recipe for the worst kind of disappointment, eventually. Because what do we discover when we turn to the Bible? We discover that according to Paul there is one overwhelming reason why the analogy is no good. And that is because the preacher doesn’t overcome consumer resistance. The preacher cannot overcome consumer resistance. 2 Corinthians 4 says that the Gospel is veiled to those who do not believe.

When Jesus told the parable of the sower, there was one sower and four soils. If it was told today in marketing terms it would be completely the reverse, wouldn’t it? Namely, you would have one soil and four sowers.

Sower number one goes up and does quite a good job, but not a very good job and nothing happens.

Sower number two, he goes up and he’s a little more skillful in the way he does it, and he has a bit of a better response.

Sower number three goes up, and he’s been doing some church growth reading and some marketing analysis and his thing is really beginning to take off.

But number four, he has got all of the technology and all the marketing strategy down, and he knows how to overcome consumer resistance and, hey, presto, look at his field!

Do we really believe that Christian conversion is the result of human persuasion? Absolutely not. God said let light shine out of darkness. See, much of the trouble with our contemporary preaching is that it is built on the fallacious assumption that anybody can and will respond to the Gospel if it’s only presented to them in a proper fashion….

Preaching will be effective…because it is God’s chosen method by which he opens people’s eyes and brings them to an awareness of his grace. And that is why it will demand from us 110 percent committed devotion.

 

[21st Century Calvinist]

Thanks for posting this, Pastor Tim.

 

[KMK]

I would add one thing to what is written above and that is this: Those churches who hold back the gospel in order to attract unbelievers are actually yoking themselves with the unbeliever. They enter into an unspoken covenant which says, "We won't offend you with the Gospel and you will give us your attendance and offerings."

 

[Marrow Man]

Excellent point, Ken.