Biblical Preaching
Interviews
Interview with George Wood
Question: What is your perspective of preaching in the AG fellowship?
Response: One of the problems I have when I go to church I hear very few sermons because I’m the one that’s the guest speaker, so my ability to listen and know who’s out there really preaching and what their preaching is, is some what limited. I’d probably look at the broad landscape and say that 1/3 of our church are under fifty and another one-third between fifty and one hundred and many of these are non-growing churches. Typically, those pastors probably fall into a wide number of categories; some that are working hard to advance the church, some of them are bi-vocational and others that may be just marking time. Probably the quality of preaching varies all over the landscape. It depends on the training and background the person has had. Probably with preaching the thing that concerns me the most is the lack of expository preaching throughout the landscape of the Pentecostal church and the Assemblies of God and part of that has come about as a result of the lack of mentoring and teaching. Preaching is like…if you were a building contractor and you laid a brick over here one day, and a brick over here another day, and a brick over here another day our preaching is not moving in any kind of constructive pattern from week to week it’s just impromptu whatever, and it doesn’t nit the people together into the text, get the text into the people, and the people into the text. And if you don’t do that you don’t produce a well- rounded, grounded believer, and so I think the rate of attrition in our church, some of that is really attributable to the lack of an expository pulpit. None of us would say we don’t like biblical sermons because everybody uses the bible as the text but there’s a difference, as you well know, between expository preaching and topical stuff and felt need stuff.
Question: How would you encourage Pentecostal Pastors to begin preaching expository sermons?
I really believe there is a connection between sound preaching, sound Christ centered, biblical preaching, and church growth. It has been one of the under emphasized components of church growth because too many times we are looking for the quick fix. If we can just get this methodology, if we can grab Maxwell’s latest book or so and so’s latest seminar or get the quick fix that we can bypass all the hard stuff. To me good sound preaching is like a football team, you have to size fundamentals, you have to size, blocking, tackling, lifting weights, and all the stuff that makes you a better player. If you’re not willing to do the discipline of study, which is the backbone of preaching then, I don’t see how you can have a growing church. Growing spiritually or numerically.
Question: What do Pentecostals bring to expository preaching that maybe we could stress to our students in order to help them see that these two things: being Pentecostal and exegetically sound do not have to be contradictory but instead enhance one another.
Response: The Pentecostal addition comes with trusting the Holy Spirit to have the text and the event arrive at the same time. I never felt like because I was in a series that somehow I was being unresponsive to the voice of the Holy Spirit. If I felt very prompted to change direction I could switch out of the series for a week, it happened very rarely, but on occasion it did. But I cannot begin to tell you how many people come to me and say pastor I cannot believe that what you covered today is right where I’m at this very moment in my life. I think Pentecostals typically have been more in tune to application. Should be more in tuned to application. How do you take this text and relate it to life? It seems to me that is always the question of expository preaching. How do I get people into the text and how do I get text into the people. Pentecostal preaching is normally headed towards a response. It’s not just sharing information. The first Pentecostal sermon preached by Peter was one that initiated a response. I think that Pentecostal preaching speaks with passion. I think we should be humble about the word Pentecostal and proud about it. There obviously is an edge in Pentecostal preaching if we’re honest and humble about it.