Tim Keller Answers ‘10 Questions for Expositors’
The Unashamed Workman has posted an interview with Tim Keller, on “10 Questions for Expositors.”
He asks:
- Where do you place the importance of preaching in the grand scheme of church life?
- In a paragraph, how did you discover your gifts in preaching?
- How long (on average) does it take you to prepare a sermon?
- Is it important to you that a sermon contain one major theme or idea? If so, how do you crystallise it?
- What is the most important aspect of a preacher’s style and what should he avoid?
- What notes, if any, do you use?
- What are the greatest perils that preacher must avoid?
- How do you fight to balance preparation for preaching with other important responsibilities (eg. pastoral care, leadership responsibilities)?
- What books on preaching, or exemplars of it, have you found most influential in your own preaching?
- What steps do you take to nurture or encourage developing or future preachers?
Here are my highlights:
5. What is the most important aspect of a preacher’s style and what should he avoid?
He should combine warmth and authority/force. That is hard to do, since tempermentally we incline one way or the other. (And many, many of us show neither warmth nor force in preaching.)
7. What are the greatest perils that preacher must avoid?
This seems to me too big a question to tackle here. Virtually everything a preacher ought to do has an corresponding peril-to-avoid. For examples, preaching should be Biblical, clear (for the mind), practical (for the will), vivid (for the heart,) warm, forceful, and Christo-centric. You should avoid the opposites of all these things.
8. How do you fight to balance preparation for preaching with other important responsibilities (eg. pastoral care, leadership responsibilities)
See my remarks on #3 above. It is a very great mistake to pit pastoral care and leadership against preaching preparation. It is only through doing people-work that you become the preacher you need to be–someone who knows sin, how the heart works, what people’s struggles are, and so on. Pastoral care and leadership is to some degree sermon prep. More accurately, it is preparing the preacher, not just the sermon. Prayer also prepares the preacher, not just the sermon.
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Tim Keller is the author of the critically acclaimed “The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism.”
You can also see an abbreviated lecture on the book at Google’s campus.
My name is Aaron Rathburn. I am a senior in philosophy at Calvin College, and formerly studied at Trinity School of Theology (Wales, UK). I am a husband, and father of two. This site is a collection of musings on theology, culture, and more. 
Homiletics and Expository Preaching were the most surprisingly hard classes I’ve ever taken. There is a lot more to a sermon than simply picking out a verse or two and making a speech. I learned that the hard way. Mine kept coming out like lectures. LOL.
Hehe, yeah— When I was a youth pastor, I started out “lecturing” as well, I think. One of the best books ever is “Christ-Centered Preaching: Redeeming the Expository Sermon,” by Brian Chapell. I highly recommend what little I have thus far read!
If I may, one of my favorites is Michael Quicke’s 360 Degree Preaching – it’s just a good read. My other favorite is Sidney Greidnus’s The Modern Preacher and the Ancient Text.
I too has the problem of nearly giving an exegetical lecture but I think that can be avoided when we move past the need to say the specific words “Greek” or “Hebrew” – instead just explain what the Greek or Hebrew say/means without saying the words “Greek” or “Hebrew.”
You are right though – Biblical Preaching is just not easy to do.
Thanks for the recommendations, Brian =D.
Yeah, I think when some people hear even the word “Greek” or “Hebrew” (or “theology”) their minds just go numb.