Proclaimer Blog
How your preaching reveals your bias
An interesting conversation with a colleague today about preaching bias. None of us, of course, would say that we don't attempt to preach a particular passage faithfully. We study it, we think about context, big ideas, outlines, aims and so on. And in any short period of time, we would probably expect to see preaching that reflected the weight of, say, Hebrews, were we to preach through Hebrews.
But what about in the longer term. What about if you were to, let's say, stand back and examine 5 years worth of preaching? What then? I think an evaluation of your preaching over that time would reveal your bias. Measure it up against the weight of Scripture. It's an interesting idea. Too often we measure our faithfulness in terms of the short term – was that sermon I preached faithful to the passage? We nedd that, of course. But we also need the kind of assessment which looks at preaching in the longer term.
If someone attended my church for five years would they hear the whole counsel of God in the same weight as the Scriptures teach. Would they only ever hear about grace and never about the obedience that comes from faith? Would they hear too much on the sovereignty and character of God and not much on the loving relationship he longs to have with his children?
I find that a particularly examining question. Because, standing back (and even with the difficulty of being objective in assessing oneself) I can see that my preaching reveals my bias. What is yours? And how are you going to correct it?