Alec Motyer: Preaching? Simple Teaching on Simply Preaching

Alec Motyer is a great Bible teacher, a fine scholar particularly in Old Testament studies and an attractive writer. Countless Christians and ministers in particular will have appreciated his preaching and writing over the last fifty years or so. And he is still going strong.

His latest book is on preaching (title as above, Christian Focus, 2013).In fourteen short chapters he covers the task of producing and preaching a sermon. There is a helpful chapter on 'spirituality' to remind us of the prior need of feeding ourselves with the Word and prayer. Finally, ten appendices give us a series of devotional studies in six or seven parts on various themes or passages of Scripture. I can see these being turned into sermons or sermon series in many pulpits.

It is a refreshing read. He is concerned to help preachers not to preach 'muddled' sermons. He begins with a reminder of the wonderful Word we have and the power of the Holy Spirit given to the church at Pentecost. Preaching is our great task. Another chapter looks at some of the words used for 'communicating' the gospel in the New Testament (he reckons 97).

The bulk of the book looks at six stages of sermon preparation: examination, analysis, orientation, harvesting, presentation and application. For me the most challenging was the chapter on 'examination', the simple message being: work hard at exegesis.

A revitalising book for preachers at any stage. Three reservations may be worth mentioning:

1. He commends, occasionally though not as a rule, what he calls 'concordance' preaching - word studies. Well, maybe occasionally. But perhaps this betrays Motyer's early Brethren influences! This may lead to an interesting Bible study, but too often it is likely to lead to Biblical antiquarianism or sentimentalism (though, I am sure, not when Motyer himself does it).

This does lead to the reflection that few books on preaching discuss the importance of theology, especially systematic theology, in preaching. The best preacher will be the one who has a good systematic theology, especially if it is not allowed to obtrude too obviously. Books on preaching major (not unnaturally) on dealing with the text, and very necessarily so and helpfully so (for the most part). But what about the importance of the preacher's grasp of the message and doctrine of Scripture as a whole and his ability to analyse his text in the light of that theology? Insight into the individual text comes from that more, one might say, than from concordance studies.

2. He is obviously very nervous about usurping the role of the Holy Spirit in promoting a response to the preaching. He reminds us that of 97 words for communicating the Word, 56 are declarative and the main task for the preacher is to make the truth plain. He almost gives the impression that, that done, response will take care of itself under the operation of the Spirit. He allows that there are words such as appeal, plead, encourage, persuade, convince. He does not give them anything like the same weight though as words for proclamation, teaching and speaking. The impression is given of little affective pressing of the message home to people's consciences. He is no doubt right to say this can be abused and overdone, but Motyer's danger one feels is underdoing it. Is it his Anglican background influencing him here?

3. His view of evangelism appears to be that it is a gift that some have and others don't and that he, as one of the 'don't haves', cannot be expected to preach an evangelistic sermon, but rather 'take those passages of the Bible where the evangelistic message is particularly plain and expound them and let them "run out" into whatever ending, including the evangelistic appeal, they demand'. This, with respect, is a cop-out and closely related to the problem mentioned above of not seeing the Bible as a whole as a message of salvation with a coherent theology and every text needing to be seen in the light of that message. The present generation is blighted with younger preachers who simply think that to 'teach the Bible' is to take the text in its immediate setting and if it is evangelistic, then fine - take people to Christ - but if it is not, then it is a kind of imposition on the text to preach evangelistically from it. This is a myopic view of Scripture, closely related to the 'biblical theology' movement.

One hopes that this book, good as it is in many ways, will not have too great an impact in these particular areas.