DeYoung on why Church is Boring...

Church isn't boring because we're not showing enough film clips, or because we play an organ instead of a guitar. It's boring because we neuter [church] of its importance.

DeYoung, Why we love the church, p102

Kluck is Grateful that Church is not like Starbucks...

I, for one, am thankful that I go to a church that isn't trying to be like my coffee shop. I'm glad that someone cares enough about the gospel to preach to me in a powerful and convincing way. A way that has edges. A way that makes me feel uncomfortable. And I'm thankful that my church doesn't do this to make me feel awkward, unloved or unwelcomed, rather, for my sanctification and growth.

Kluck, why we love the church, p69

DeYoung's Concern regarding Church Disillusionment...

I can't help feeling that lurking beneath the surface in much of the current disillusionment with the church is a dis-ease with the traditional message of salvation.

People are passionate about the poor, the environment, and third-world debt. But they seem embarrassed by a violent, bloody atonement for sin, let alone any mention of the afterlife that hangs in the balance.

Deyoung, Why we love the church, p50.

DeYoung on the Necessity of Proclamation...

Mission must involve proclamation - the actual using of words to communicate the gospel so that by putting their faith in Christ, the covenant blessings of Abraham might come to all who believe (Gal 3:14).

We don't want to fall for the old 'deeds not creeds' slogan or the confused aphorism, 'preach the gospel and use words only when necessary.' No matter what he trenmeisters recommend, it is absolutely biblically and eternally necessary that we verbally tell people the gospel and call people to repentance and faith in Jesus Christ.

Luther on Beating the Gospel into the Listener's Head...

Here I must take counsel of the gospel. I must hearken to the gospel, which teacheth me, not what I ought to do, (for that is the proper office of the law), but what Jesus Christ the Son of God hath done for me: to wit, that He suffered and died to deliver me from sin and death. The gospel willeth me to receive this, and to believe it. And this is the truth of the gospel. It is also the principal article of all Christian doctrine, wherein the knowledge of all godliness consisteth. Most necessary it is, therefore, that we should know this article well, teach it unto others, and beat it into their heads continually.

Martin Luther, St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians, 206.

Stephen Um on the Church's Greatest Need...

“I believe the greatest need for today’s American church is for its individual members to make a radical commitment to the centrality of the Gospel as Christ’s finished work for every aspect of their life and mission. We need to have the eyes of our hearts enlightened (Eph 1.18) in order to savor the supremacy of Christ in all things and to move away from anything that chokes or blinds our ability to value his worth and glory.

Jesus perfectly lived the life that we should have lived by transferring his righteousness to his people so that our religious piety or social morality would be exposed for what it is, a form of self-salvation. The church needs to be aware of her tendency to focus on secondary, peripheral issues, that is addressing behavioristic symptoms, rather than on central issues of historic confessional Christianity, namely justification by faith alone on Jesus perfect record which gives us a vital relationship with a Holy God.

The crying need in our churches is for prophetic voices to expose the limitations of all other cultural worldviews (e.g. traditional, modern, or postmodern) while offering an ultimate satisfaction and substitutionary redemption which frees us from all kinds of enslavement. The confidence and humility which Christ’s righteousness provides will enable us to embrace this incarnational responsibility to be secure with ourselves while loving God and others. This commitment to a contextualized gospel will cause the church to be missional and counter cultural, and therefore more relevant and theologically sensitive in deconstructing other philosophical paradigms while illuminating both religious and secular people to engage in an organic relationship with the person of Jesus.”

Owen on the Marks of a Believer's Hatred for Sin...

A man who only opposes the sin in his heart for fear of shame among men or eternal punishment from God would practice the sin if there was no punishment attending it. How does this differ from living in the practice of sin? Those who belong to Christ, and are obedient to the Word of God, have the death of Christ, the love of God, the detestable nature of sin, the preciousness of communion with God, and a deep rooted hatred of sin as sin to oppose all the workings of the lust in their hearts.

John Owen, Mortification of Sin: abridged and simplified by Rushing, p59.

Carson on Man's Natural Drift Towards Ungodliness...

People do not drift toward holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated.

D.A. Carson, Reflections, Christianity Today, 7-31-00.

Spurgeon Demands Passionate Preaching...

We must regard the people as the wood and the sacrifice, well wetted a second and third time by the cares of the week, upon which, like the prophet, we must pray down the fire from heaven. A dull minister creates a dull audience. You cannot expect the office-bearers and members of the church to travel by steam if their own chosen pastor still drives the old broad-wheeled wagon.

CHS, Lectures to my Students, p45

Lloyd Jones Defines Preaching...

What is Preaching? Logic on fire! Eloquent reason! Are these contradictions? Of course they are not. Reason concerning this Truth ought to be mightily eloquent, as you see it in the case of the Apostle Paul and others. It is theology on fire. And a theology which does not take fire, I maintain, is a defective theology; or at least the man's understanding of it is defective. Preaching is theology coming through a man who is on fire. A true understanding and experience of the Truth must lead to this. . . . A man who can speak about these things dispassionately has no right whatsoever to be in a pulpit; and should never be allowed to enter one.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers (Zondervan, 1971), p. 97-98.

Spurgeon on the Compulsion to Preach...

A man who has really within him the inspiration of the Holy Ghost calling him to preach, cannot help it - he must preach. As fire within his bones, so will that influence be, until it blazes forth. Friends may check him, foes criticize him, despisers sneer at him, the man is indomitable; he must preach if he has the call of heaven.

CHS quoted in Dallimore's biography, p30

Susannah Spurgeon on her Husband...

Susannah's tribute to her deceased husband, CH Spurgeon,

'He lived in His embrace'

quoted in Dallimore's biography of Spurgeon, p28

Spurgeon on Having a Passion for Listeners...

"I remember, when I have preached at different times in the country, and sometimes here, that my whole soul has agonized over men, every nerve of my body has been strained and I could have wept my very being out of my eyes and carried my whole frame away in a flood of tears, if I could but win souls"

Arnold Dallimore, Spurgeon, (Chicago: Moody Press, 1984), p. 198.

Spurgeon on What made him a Gospel-Centred Preacher...

Dallimore tells us in his excellent bio of Spurgeon, 'After going to Newmarket [Spurgeon] attended services at one church, then another, hoping he might hear something that would help remove his burden.

" One man preached divine sovereignty but what was that sublime truth to a poor sinner who wished to know what he must do to be saved. There was another admirable man who preached about the law, but what was the use of ploughing up ground that needed to be sown? Another was a practical preacher, but it was very much like a commanding officerteaching the manouvres of war to a set of men without feet; what I wanted was to know 'how can i get my sins forgiven?' and they never told me that."

CHS in Dallimore's Spurgeon, a New Biography, p18.

Spurgeon on those who Think Lightly of Sin...

Too many think lightly of sin, and therefore think lightly of the Saviour. He who has stood before God, convicted and condemned, with the rope about his neck, is the man to weep for joy when he is pardoned, to hate the evil which has been forgiven him, and to live to the honour of the Redeemer by whose blood he has been cleansed.

CHS, autobiography, 1890

Piper says Preaching is Expository Exultation...

The reason the Word of God takes the form of preaching in worship is that true preaching is the kind of speech that consistently united these two aspects of worship (seeing and savouring God) both in the way it is done and in the aims that it has.

When Paul says to Timothy in 2 Tim 4:2, 'Preach the Word', the term he uses for 'Preach' is a word for 'herald', or 'announce' or 'proclaim' (keruxon). It is not the word for 'teach' or 'explain'... Preaching is a public exortation over the truth that it brings. It is not disinterested or cool or neutral. It is not mere explanation. It is manifestly passionate about what it says.

Nevertheless, this heralding contains teaching... Paul says preach the word... reprove, rebuke, and exhort with complete patience and teaching. So preaching is expository: it deals with the Word of God. True preaching is not the opinion of mere man. It is the faithful exposition of God's Word.

Piper - Supremacy of God in Preaching p11.

Piper on Seeing & Savouring God in worship...

There are always two parts to true worship. There is seeing God and there is savouring God. You can't separate these. You must see him to savour him. And if you don't savour him when you see him, you insult him. In true worship, there is always understanding with the mind and feeling with the heart.

John Piper, The Supremacy of God in Preaching, p10.

Spurgeon on the Minister's Self-Watch...

Every workman knows the necessity of keeping his tools in a good state of repair. If the workman loses the edge from his axe, he knows that there will be greater draught upon his energies, or his work will be badly done.

The truth is, 'we [pastors] shall be likely to accomplish most when we are in our best spiritual condition; or in other words, we shall usually do our Lord's work best when our gifts and graces are in good order, and we shall do our worst when they are most out of trim.'

Spurgeon uses the illustration of an express train that is rendered useless all because one small screw is missing, and says... 'a man in all other respects fitted to be useful, may be by some small defect be exceedingly hindered, or even rendered utterly useless.'

'It is a terrible thing when the healing balm loses its efficacy through the blunderer who administers it. You know all those injurious effects frequently produced upon water through flowing along leaden pipes; even so the gospel itself, in flowing through men who are spiritually unhealthy, may be debased until it grows injurious to their hearers.'

CHS - Lectures to my Students, p7

Keller Pleads with Preachers to Let the Word drive them to the Pulpit...

Do not let the pulpit drive you to the Word;

Let the Word drive you to the pulpit.

Sourced from Gospel Coalition 2009 Conference - Tim Keller quoting Ed Clowney during Panel Discussion.

Criswell says Passion is the Essence of Preaching...

The sermon is no essay to be read for optional opinion, for people to casually consider. It is confrontation with Almighty God. It is to be delivered with burning passion in the authority of the Holy Spirit.

You cannot read the New Testament without sensing that the preachers were electrified by the power of the Gospel and swept off their feet by the wonder of the great revelation which had been committed to their trust. There is something wrong if a man charged with the greatest news in the world can be listless and rigid and dull. Who is going to believe that the glad tidings brought by the preachers means literally more that anything else on earth if they are presented with no verve or fire or attack, and if the man himself is apathetic, uninspired, afflicted with spiritual coma in unsaying by his attitude what he says in words.

W.A. Criswell, Criswell's Guidebook for Pastors, quoted in Preaching with Passion, p12