Preaching vs pulpiteering
I've never really agreed with the evangelical emphasis on preaching, and never quite understood how evangelicals can make so much more of this form rather than of other forms of teaching. It seems to me that the emphasis on public preaching (or, should I say, perhaps, ‘pulpiteering’, as opposed to private and personal ministry through, for example, conversation or Bible study groups) is quite unbiblical.
So I was heartened to pick up Richard Baxter’s old but still revolutionary work The Reformed Pastor recently to discover that he agrees with me. He makes this sharp and relevant observation about ministry through conversation (or, as he calls it, ‘interlocution’):
I hope there are none so silly as to think this conference is not preaching. What? doth the number we speak to make it preaching? Or doth interlocution make it none? Surely a man may as truly preach to one, as to a thousand. And ... if you examine, you will find that most of the preaching recorded in the New Testament, was by conference, and frequently interlocutory, and that with one or two, fewer or more, as opportunity served. Thus Christ himself did most commonly preach.
(Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor, Banner of Truth, 1974 [1656] p. 228.)
Baxter gets around the difficulty I'm thinking about by redefining preaching, which is fair enough, I suppose. Here is an extract from RH Mounce's article on ‘Preaching’ in The New Bible Dictionary (InterVarsity Press, Leicester, 1962):
The choice of verbs in the Greek New Testament for the activity of preaching points us back to its original meaning. The most characteristic (occurring more than sixty times) is kerysso, to ‘proclaim as a herald’. In the ancient world the herald was a figure of considerable importance ... A man of integrity and character, he was employed by the king or State to make all public proclamations. Preaching is heralding; the message proclaimed is the glad tidings of salvation. While kerysso tells us something about the activity of preaching, euangelizomai, ‘to bring good news’ (from the primitive eus, ‘good’ and the verb angello ‘to announce’), a common verb, used over fifty times in the New Testament, emphasizes the quality of the message itself. It is worthy of note that the RV has not followed the AV in those places where it translates the verbs diangello, laleo, katangello and dialegomai by ‘to preach’. This helps to bring into sharper focus the basic meaning of preaching.
This excerpt assists us in seeing Richard Baxter's 1656 comment in its correct polemical context. It's almost certain that Baxter was working off the 1611 AV (Authorised Version) translation of the Bible when he spoke of ‘preaching’. However, the excerpt also highlights the wide New Testament vocabulary that revolves around the function of teaching: it's not just proclaiming (or ‘preaching’), but it also includes evangelizing, announcing, speaking, declaring, dialoguing (or possibly disputing, arguing, reasoning, or debating), not to mention plain old didasko—teaching. Each and every one of these teaching activities (and more) come with dominical and apostolic authority, and precedent, and therefore they should alert us to the wide range of possibilities for authoritatively communicating the divine and inerrant word of God to our hearers (which, incidentally, includes the humble task of being a writer—another piece of authoritative communication that the New Testament authors seem to have found time for!).
(I know that Klaas Runia makes a virtually identical point about the New Testament vocabulary of 'teaching' in his book The Sermon Under Attack which came out of his 1983 Moore College lectures. But do you think I could find it while I was writing this? At least my desk is just marginally tidier here in the Matthias Media office. But I just wasted 20 minutes of my life looking for the Runia book. No way would Richard Baxter approve of that. There's gospel ministry to be getting on with, and here am I trying to footnote!)