A book review of David Christensen’s newest book, A Philosophy of Pastoral Preaching: Shepherding God’s People with God’s Word in One Place, came out in The Journal of the Evangelical Homiletics Society in the September 2024 edition.
A Philosophy of Pastoral Preaching: Shepherding God’s People with God’s Word in One Place. By David A. Christensen. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2023. 978-1-6667-7194-7, 196 pp., $28.00.
Reviewer: Jeff Smoak, Bishop Branch Baptist Church, Central, SC.
David A. Christensen is the founder and president of The Rephidim Project, a ministry devoted to equipping pastors for expository preaching. He holds a Th.M. and D.Min. and has been a pastor and homiletics professor for over thirty years. In A Philosophy of Pastoral Preaching, Christensen’s thesis is that pastoral care is not separate from preaching, but instead, preaching is the engine that drives all aspects of pastoral ministry. He explores preaching’s contribution to community formation, worship, discipleship, Bible exposition, and spiritual transformation.
Christensen defines pastoral preaching as “the building of a local community of faith in corporate worship by growing healthy disciples to become like Christ through biblical exposition empowered by the Holy Spirit while awaiting the return of Christ to the glory of God” (17). He asserts that this definition limits pastoral preaching to communities of faith that are small enough for the pastor to know the people and the people to know the pastor. He claims that one implication is that megachurch pastors cannot preach pastorally to thousands of people. His focus on the context of the congregation drives much of his thesis.
Christensen’s definition of pastoral preaching is grounded in his distinction between missional preaching to unbelievers and pastoral preaching to the church. The way he presents the difference between missional and pastoral preaching may be one of the book’s weaker points. He cites several of Jesus’ sermons as examples of missional preaching. However, we must recall that the record of Jesus’ preaching in the Gospels was ultimately written for the pastoral needs of the church. Further, pastoral ministry should also include evangelism (2 Tim. 4:5), which can be included in Sunday morning sermons. Christensen does not directly refute evangelism’s place on Sunday mornings, but his larger point, and rightly so, is that pastors should not turn Sunday mornings into purely evangelistic events. Preaching should edify the church, fuel the church’s pastoral ministry, and equip the saints for ministry.
A Philosophy of Pastoral Preaching provides a lot of depth and helpful insights in a short volume. Its author differentiates between pastoral and missional preaching but without ignoring the gospel. He exhorts pastors to preach the “big gospel” that includes both the crown of Christ and the cross of Christ, by which he means the gospel is not limited to the good news of justification; the gospel is also the good news of Christ’s reign and redemption of His creation now and at the Parousia. Pastoral preaching must be grounded in the gospel because the Christian life is impossible without the gospel, and the gospel has implications for how Christians live daily. Christensen blends scholarship and practical experience to achieve depth and concision as he connects the gospel to community formation, worship, discipleship, Bible exposition, and spiritual formation.
The book challenges readers to assess their practice of preaching. Even seasoned pastors will find the book both encouraging and exhortative. Christensen challenges popular trends in evangelical preaching that create man-centered messages more that God-centered messages. His work gives a framework by which pastors could assess if their preaching is
Expository and based on solid exegesis as opposed to eisegesis. Pastors can use Christensen’s framework as a rubric to assess their focus and intended goals in preaching.
As a reader, I found the book engaging and thought-provoking. While I would have appreciated a final chapter that demonstrates how the author might integrate the various areas of pastoral ministry into one sermon, I found the chapter on spiritual formation particularly helpful. It not only exhorts the pastor to preach for the spiritual formation of the congregation but also focuses on the pastor’s spiritual transformation and prayer life.
I recommend this book for pastors and as a required textbook for preachers in training. I know that I would have benefited from it as a young pastor if I had read it in seminary. It helps pastors assess their preaching to gauge their own spiritual maturity, ministry vision, and strategies.
