The quote below is from the opening sentences of Chapter 1 in T. David Gordon's new book, Why Johnny Can't Preach: The Media Have Shaped the Messengers, which I highly recommend for both preachers and hearers of preaching. It is a brief (only 108 pages) but needed addition to the ongoing conversation and discussion about preaching today.What Gordon says below is something that we all must lament and, more, something that we must strive to correct. Preachers must become more faithful to their God-ordained task, and churches must demand more faithfulness from their preachers. Otherwise, these same sentences are going to be written again by the next generation.
Sadly, I think most of us would have to agree with and could even confirm what he says here:
Part of me wishes to avoid proving the sordid truth: that preaching today is ordinarily poor. But I have come to recognize that many, many individuals today have never been under a steady diet of competent preaching. As a consequence, they are satisfied with what they hear because they have nothing better with which to compare it. Therefore, for many individuals, the kettle in which they live has always been at the boiling point, and they've simply adjusted to it. As starving children in Manila sift through the landfill for food, Christians in many churches today have never experienced genuinely soul-nourishing preaching, and so they just pick away at what is available to them, trying to find a morsel of spiritual sustenance or helpful counsel here or there.
