Craig Brian Larson - Inspirational Preaching

When I was a fumbling, insecure young seminarian, I often wondered if I would ever make it in the pastoral ministry. I had some raw promise, but on most days I felt like quitting seminary and going back to the business world.

Then I met Doc. His real name was Dr. C. Philip Hinerman, the senior pastor of Park Avenue United Methodist Church in Minneapolis. Park was one of the first churches in the United States to forge a deep unity across racial and socioeconomic lines. During my four years at Park, Doc befriended me, serving as my mentor, spiritual father, and preaching model. Doc had an irrepressible (and what I considered a nave) belief that God would do great things through my life and my preaching. On numerous occasions, as Doc spotted me in the distance, he would sweep his arm in the air and proclaim, Hail, Mathew Woodley, the great one! At first I would look behind me to see if there was another Mathew Woodley on my tail. But there wasnt; Doc really did call me the great one. Then I thought that he must be teasing me, but he meant it.

Doc brought the same spirit into his preaching. No matter where he started in the Bible, Doc would take all of ussaints and sinners, the saved and unsaved, blacks and whites, rich and pooron a journey straight to the cross. Ill never forget the sermon he preached on the life of Ahithophel, the adviser to Davids son Absalom who committed suicide after Absalom rejected his counsel (2 Sam. 17:123). Its a tragic and apparently hopeless story. But somehow as soon as Doc finished preaching on that obscure Old Testament antihero, people started streaming toward the front of the church to repent and trust Jesus. I should have stopped to analyze Docs homiletical approach, but I was rushing to the altar to receive prayer for myself.

Doc inspired people. By the time he finished a sermon, we didnt have to follow Jesus; we wanted to follow Jesus. Every week Doc fanned the flames in our hearts, and every week sitting under Docs preaching made us love Jesus with a little bit more intensity.

Theres something special about the preachers who have inspired us. Like Doc, in one sense, theyre utterly infectious. Of course in Docs case, to borrow a phrase from C. S. Lewis, this is the good infection. When were around inspirational preachers, we catch something from them. We catch their passion for a specific biblical text or theme. We catch their love for God. We catch a spiritual reality in their livesnamely, that they know and feel the beauty of the gospel.

Of course we arent just catching a feeling from these preachers. Somehow they combine deep passion with biblical exposition, so by the time they finish a sermon, our minds have been informed and our wills have been quickened. Perhaps in some small way, inspirational preachers give us a dose of what those first disciples said about our Lord on that dusty road to Emmaus: Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us? (Luke 24:32).

The short introductions Ive written for each chapter explain how each author in this book possesses a Doc-like spirit. Ultimately the ability to inspire people through preaching flows from one thing: leading people into the presence of Christ. In this sense inspirational preachers dont belong to some elite group. You dont have to twist yourself into some mold of hyperenergetic, caffeine-charged, ultraextroverted superpreachers. As Gordon MacDonald shares in this book, A soul-deep sermon can come from the lips of a simple, stammering, uneducated person, or from the heart and mind of a Rhodes scholar. This book provides hope for all kinds of preachers with all kinds of personality types.