Notes on gospel-centered preaching by Dick Kaufmann

Dick Kaufmann is the pastor of Harbor Presbyterian, a network of new churches in San Diego. Formerly he was executive pastor for Tim Keller at Manhattan’s Redeemer Church. Today I listened to his presentation at the Acts29 San Diego Boot Camp held a couple of weeks ago, entitled Gospel-Centered preaching, and I think that this piece is just as important as Mike Goheen’s on missional ecclesiology.

Kaufmann not only outlined a very practical methodology for sermon preparation - valuable stuff indeed - but he also spoke about the primary audiences of preaching. The first and most important of these is the preacher himself. Using himself and his own idols and mistakes as examples, Kaufmann talked in detail about the process of sermon preparation as spiritual edification for the church, beginning with the preacher, who is the first audience of the sermon.

That’s getting the cart before the horse, however, and I’ll return to it in a moment. Kaufmann listed the typical sorts of preaching one sees in many churches — topical sermons are probably most common. The problem with these is that topical sermons, no matter how relevant and helpful they may be, may not bring forth the Gospel. It is not utterly without value to bring Biblical values to bear on the various aspects of our life, but the unfortunate fact of such sermons, even if they include a gospel presentation as a tacked-on addendum at the end, is that they are really religious and moralistic. By this latter he explained that applying biblical values as behavioral and practical standards don’t really bring the gospel to bear — these sorts of sermons are really just exhortations to do better, try harder.

Gospel sermons try to bring the supernatural power of Christ, his death and resurrection to bear on the real lives of the hearers, because the gospel is not just what saves us, it is what we grow by and what sanctifies us, too, regardless of where we are in the walk of faith.

Kaufmann talked about what he called textual preaching, which is similar to expositional preaching in that it chooses a biblical text and preaches through it. However Kaufmann says rather than just a dissection of the text designed primarily to impart information to the hearers, gospel-centered textual preaching seeks to look at the big-picture issue of the text involved, try to find the narrative of the passage in question, the main idea, and then how this idea relates to the gospel.

But perhaps the most valuable part was when he spoke about the recipients of preaching — these are broken down into primarily four categories - we need to preach to unbelievers, to believers, and to religious people who don’t know they’re really unbelievers (these are in first, second and third positions) and the “zeroth” place is the preacher himself who needs to hear the gospel from the text.

Questions to ask when preaching to yourself include some of the following:

Why am I preaching this? Why do I preach at all? Is it because I want the approval of men? Is it because I want popularity or power, or something else? What is the sin underneath my sin? One way of finding this out is determining what will I be willing to trade for what — will I give up security or comfort for approval, for instance? [remember Kaufmann's idols of the Western heart, posted by Drew Goodmanson, refers to this same talk.] The thing for which I am willing to swap or forego all others is the chief idol of my heart and probably the main area where I need the gospel applied in my life. Functional Christs will always try to displace the real Christ, and I need to always be seeking to identify them for what they are.

The external audience, as stated before, includes unbelievers, believers, and religious folk, and the gospel needs to be clearly set forth and moralism broken down for all of them for the sake of the effect this has on each. The unbeliever generally has some preconceived idea of what constitutes Christianity - this is usually a caricature of Bible Belt moralism. The unbeliever needs to hear what he has rejected (the negative aspect) and how the gospel is completely different (the positive aspect.) The believer needs gospel reinforcement, to have the gospel applied in every area of life. And the religious person needs to see where he is relying on his own moral rectitude or piety for his salvation rather than the gospel, how his righteousness has become the very sin he most needs to repent of. This is why it is so vital to always, always preach the gospel - and this is a point which you will see in this blog (and in the future church we’ll be planting) again and again.