Since my retirement from public ministry I find myself listening to preachers online as well as in person. I appreciate the preparation that lies behind their sermons and try not to be too critical. What I sometimes miss is gravitas: a sense of seriousness or importance and passion: enthusiasm or zeal. I want the sermon to grab my attention, compel me to listen and persuade me to believe and to act. It has to overcome my lethargy and wandering thoughts.  In my book on John Stott’s teaching he has this to say about the preacher as witness.

 “Jesus Christ stands on trial at the bar of world opinion. Secular, godless, non-Christian society, now uncommitted, now hostile, is in the role of judge. The devil accuses him with many ugly lies. The Holy Spirit is the counsel for the defense. He calls us to be witnesses to substantiate his case.” Christian preachers testify for Christ, defending and commending him to the world. The world is sometimes apathetic and indifferent, and sometimes aggressive and rebellious. The preacher is called to give witness to an unbelieving world’s opposition to Christ. “Christian witness is testimony to Jesus (Acts 4:33). So much so-called testimony today is really autobiography and even sometimes thinly disguised self-advertisement.”

The preacher’s witness is drawn from the Scripture and inspired by the Spirit. The witness must have a personal experience, first-hand knowledge of Jesus Christ. It cannot be second-hand or from hearsay.

Our task is not to lecture about Jesus with philosophical detachment. We have become personally involved in him. His revelation and redemption have changed our lives. Our eyes have been opened to see him, and our ears unstopped to hear him, as our Savior and Lord. “It is quite futile saying to people ‘Go to the Cross.’ We must be able to say ‘Come to the Cross’. And there are only two voices which can issue that invitation with effect. One is the voice of the Sinless Redeemer, with which we cannot speak; the other is the voice of the forgiven sinner, who knows himself forgiven. That is our part.” (William Temple)

There is no greater need for the preacher than that he should know God. I care not about his lack of eloquence and artistry, about his ill-constructed discourse or his poorly enunciated message, if only it is evident that God is a reality to him and that he has learned to abide in Christ. The preparation of the heart is of far greater importance than the preparation of the sermon. The preacher’s words, however clear and forceful, will not ring true unless he speaks from conviction born of experience. Many sermons which conform to all the best homiletical rules yet have a hollow sound. There is something indefinably perfunctory about the preacher. The matter of his sermon gives evidence of a well-stocked, well-disciplined mind; he has a good voice, a fine bearing, and restrained gestures; but somehow his heart is not in his message….The preaching of a witness has a spontaneity about it, and infectious warmth, a simply directness, a depth of reality, which are all due to an intimate knowledge of God. So we must hunger and thirst after him…We shall remember that the real preparation of a sermon is not the few hours which are specifically devoted to it, but the whole stream of the preacher’s experience thus far, of which the sermon is a distilled drop. As E.M. Bounds has put it, “the man, the whole man, lies behind the sermon. Preaching is not the performance of an hour. It is the outflow of a life. It takes twenty years to make a sermon, because it takes twenty years to make a man.” (Power Through Prayer, p.11)

The witness should not draw attention to himself but to Christ. Stott described the painting by William Westall which hangs on the east wall of All Souls Church above the Communion Table. It measures about twelve feet by nine and dominates the interior of the church. It was presented by King George IV when the church was consecrated in 1824.

It depicts the Lord Jesus, manacled but majestic, surrounded by evil-looking priests and coarse soldiers who mock at him. All round his head are the hands of these men, pointing to the object of their derision. I see in this picture a symbol of our ministry. Jesus Christ is the center of our message. We are but signposts pointing to him. What those soldiers and priests in the picture do in scorn and hatred we do in love and worship. And the more our vision is filled with him, the less shall we lapse into self-centered vanity.

(Ted Schroder, JOHN STOTT: A SUMMARY OF HIS TEACHING, pp.70,71)