I began preaching at the age of 16 following some encouragement from my youth leader to “give it a go”. I was full of enthusiasm and passion, but with very little understanding or indeed character. As a result I made many mistakes. Today, having been preaching for 11 years, I am all too aware that every time I step up to preach I make other mistakes: I cultivate wrong attitudes, bad habits, and incorrect approaches. The problem is that at the moment I am largely unaware of what I am doing wrong.
That’s why this book is so helpful. Written by someone familiar with the preaching task, and also aware of its pitfalls, ‘Preachers, keep yourself from idols’, is a helpful exploration of the particularly attitudes that readily take the place of God in the pulpit, and as a result take us off track. By reviewing the idols that most preachers are vulnerable to in four headings: the self, the age, the task, and the ministry, Derek gives practical wisdom on how to dodge the idols. But he does so in a way that avoids simply throwing the God-given baby out with the idolatrous bathwater. He speaks as much about the right biblical place of authority, success, and entertainment, as he does condemn their improper use, and thus presents a good balanced view of the preaching task.
The chapters I found most helpful for my own preaching attitudes, were on the idols of immediacy and secularization. Immediacy, he argues, is the desire in preaching “for every sermon we preach to be instantly persuasive and have a direct and instant impact. Furthermore, this impact must be demonstrable in measurable ways”, so that we end up measuring our effectiveness in terms of the response we get to an appeal, the number who come forward for prayer, or who seek counsel afterwards. There is of course a place for calling for a response, but we have to understand that in the context of our instant age. Becoming a follower of Christ is a decisive event, but our spiritual and moral re-education is a long, patient process, like the growth of a child into adulthood. Tidball at times is very honest about his own struggle with the temptation of immediacy: “it is probably largely self-inflicted, but I feel the pressure every week to bow down at the shrine of immediacy and use my gifts and whatever eloquence I have to provoke a measurable response. The pressure is generated by the old sin of pride and it builds up a head of steam as a result of the damaging desire to compare myself to others, rather than being content with the unique ministry I have through Christ”.
In ‘Secularization’, Tidball has us wrestling with the idols of the age, namely, pluralism, relativism, and securalization in the church. We are tempted in each of these to bow down to the prevailing worldview rather than the authority of Scripture. The ideology of Pluralism means that because there is perceived in our society to be no such thing as ‘Absolute Truth’, only several equally valuable ‘truths’, we turn our convictions into mere opinions. Thus we react either by succumbing to the ideology and watering down the exclusive claims of the Gospel, or we become even more dogmatic and unreasoning in our approach to other views. Similarly, in handling relativism, the belief that lifestyle choice is an individual preference and cannot be deemed right or wrong, preachers are tempted to endorse the latest public opinion, or else have a kneejerk reaction that simply isolates people as makes them seem arrogant. Our approach, Tidball argues should be like the Apostle Paul who implored, persuaded, and urged, rather than compromising or condemning. We need to be courageous and humble at the same time.
This is a book that helps those engaged in preaching to reflect on their own motivations and attitudes when it comes to the task, and also to reflect on the world they live in. It highlights the ways preachers can be distracted from Christ, but also gives helpful ways that preachers can continue to keep Him central in their ministry.
