John Stott on Preaching

There is an urgent need for courageous preachers in the pulpits of the world today, like the apostles in the early Church who ‘were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God with boldness’. (Acts 4: 31, cf. v. 13) Neither men-pleasers nor time-servers ever make good preachers. We are called to the sacred task of biblical exposition, and commissioned to proclaim what God has said, not what human beings want to hear. Many modern churchmen suffer from a malady called ‘itching ears’, which induces them to ‘accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings’. (2 Tim. 4: 3) But we have no liberty to scratch their itch or pander to their likings. Rather are we to resemble Paul in Ephesus who resisted this very temptation and twice insisted that he ‘did not shrink from declaring’ to them what had to be declared, namely ‘anything that was profitable’ for them and indeed ‘the whole counsel of God’. (Acts 20: 20, 27) We have to beware of selecting our texts and topics - even unconsciously - according to personal prejudice or popular fashion. The medicine of the gospel has been prescribed by the Good Physician; we may neither dilute it nor add ingredients to make it more palatable; we must serve it neat. Nor need we fear that people will not take it. To be sure, some may leave, but most will respond. ‘People are driven from the Church,’ commented George Buttrick, ‘not so much by stern truth that makes them uneasy as by weak nothings that make them contemptuous.’

‘Courage,’ said Phillips Brooks in his 1877 Yale Lectures, ... is the indispensable requisite of any true ministry ... If you are afraid of men and a slave to their opinion, go and do something else. Go and make shoes to fit them. Go even and paint pictures which you know are bad but which suit their bad taste. But do not keep on all your life preaching sermons which shall say not what God sent you to declare, but what they hire you to say. Be courageous. Be independent.'

Truly, ‘the fear of man lays a snare’ (Prov. 29: 25), and many preachers get caught in it. But once ensnared, we are no longer free; we have become the obsequious servants of public opinion.*

*Stott, John R. W. (1994-01-01). Between Two Worlds: The Challenge of Preaching Today (pp. 299-300). Eerdmans Publishing Co - A. Kindle Edition.