What Is It About You Preachers?

by Bob Setzer, Jr.

"So what is it about you preachers? Why is preaching so important to you?"

Someone asked me that after hearing how badly I missed being in the pulpit on Easter. Thankfully, I was where I needed to be that Sunday, by Bambi's side in the immediate aftermath of her mother's death. And I knew the First Baptist family could not be in better hands with Edd Rowell as our guest preacher.

Still for me, not preaching on Easter was a significant loss. Any preacher who doesn't long to be in the pulpit on Easter, passionately proclaiming “Christ is risen indeed!”, really needs to look for a new line of work.

"So what is it about you preachers? Why is preaching so important to you?" Hmm. Let me count the ways.

Time passes a lot more quickly in the pulpit than in the pew! In the pulpit, twenty minutes passes by in a flash; in the pew, twenty minutes can feel like the Chinese water torture. That's why every preacher should have to warm a pew from time to time. It breeds compassion.

• The pulpit, like an eagle's nest high above the valley floor, gives one a unique view of those gathered for worship: All those faces, so eager, so searching, some strained by sadness and loss, some radiant with joy and triumph. In those faces, the cross and resurrection are etched in the sinews of life.
  
• The Celtics spoke of "thin places" where the boundary between heaven and earth was especially thin. For me, the pulpit is my premier "thin place." I'm always surprised by all the ways the Holy Spirit shows up to meet me there: in a flash of insight, the swelling of emotion, some deeply felt connection with an upturned face below.
  
• The sacred calling of living deeply into the life of a particular Christian community--and speaking out of that experience--turns preaching from being a monologue into a symphony sung by many voices. As Carlyle Marney said it, "The preacher listens for seven days for the privilege of speaking 20 minutes on Sunday."

"So what is it about you preachers? Why is preaching so important to you?"

Bottom line, it is a God-breathed passion and calling. Like old Jeremiah, I have known hard times when I was tempted to do something else: "But then there is within me a burning fire shut up in my bones; I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot" (Jeremiah 20:9).

Preaching is the one thing I can’t not do. If and when I find delight in being out of the pulpit on Easter, it will be time to do something else.