What Does It Mean To Preach?

As a young pastor, I have often struggled with the concept of preaching. What exactly is preaching? What exactly am I doing when I stand behind the pulpit? Am I less effective because I don't pound the pulpit and exhort with threats of fire and brimstone? Am I not a good preacher because I don't whip a congregation into a frenzy of emotional excess as the good revival preachers do?

Homiletics -- the art of preaching -- is one of the required classes in seminary for ordained clergy or in the United Methodist Church's Course of Study for local pastors. After taking a class in homiletics and reading texts on the art of preaching and listening to other preachers throughout my life expound on what preaching is and should be, I read with delight this synopsis of preaching from an article about Billy Graham by Rabbi Marc Gellman in Newsweek:

"Mostly I love that he is a great preacher, and preaching is a lost art. Young clergy kids I mentor fill their sermons with psychobabble and pal-talk. Their sermons are just spoken apologies for having to take their congregants’ time. They sadly contribute to a culture where the word “preachy” is a universally understood as criticism. But Billy Graham loved to preach, respected the form and used it to its fullest effect. He understood that preaching is essentially the presentation of a spiritual argument, which means that a sermon must be filled with ideas, not just feelings. To preach you must be smart, you must have faith and you must be able to simplify words without simplifying ideas. A preacher must then move beyond the logic of debate and into the world of personal peril and fear. A great sermon must be heard as if it was addressed only to you, the listener. It must first describe the storm in your life, and then it must offer you a compelling course to get through the storm and into quiet seas of love and hope. That hope must be simple and childlike but never childish. It must be a daring hope that inspires—not just deductively proves—the postulates of its argument, and that hope must be consonant with an ancient religion and not just a passing snapshot of what you decided to believe today. A sermon must be worldly without being trendy, humorous without being irreverent and certain without being arrogant. Understood this way, almost nobody can give a great sermon, and if you attend services regularly, you will certainly confirm that fear. That is why I so admire Billy Graham. He could really preach. "