One of the best and most basic models for training preachers is The Five Looks, devised by Andrew Reid: Look Up (in prayer and faith); Look Down (in exegesis); Look Back and Forward (with biblical theology); and Look Here (in application). In our Langham training this model is often used to help develop sermons which target three criteria: faithful to the biblical passage; clear in presentation; and relevant to the audience. Effective preaching is about thinking the right thoughts and doing the right things.

However, if this is what training preachers is all about, then we have a problem. It is inadequate, incomplete. There is more to preaching than the sermon. There is also the preacher. Effective preaching is about thinking the right thoughts, doing the right things and becoming the right person. This is why, in our Langham training, we have added two further criteria into the curriculum: confident in conviction and Christ-like in character. 

And with the ‘Five Looks’, there needs to be a Sixth Look added, the one about which we are reminded with books sold online by Amazon: the look inside. And speaking of books, not only can our models of training omit the ‘look inside’, so can our authors and publishers.

But in recent years, a delightful exception has become available: Lewis Allen’s The Preacher’s Catechism (Crossway, 2018). As the title suggests, the book is reminiscent of a catechism, with 43 brief chapters (each can be read in 10 minutes) sparked by an opening Queston and Answer. So, for example:

Chapter 4   By the Book
Q. What do the Scriptures primarily teach?
A. The Scriptures are all about Jesus, the one to be proclaimed, trusted and praised.

Then, in the chapter which follows, there is often a probing engagement with a passage from Scripture.

The author focuses on the soul of the preacher and how to nurture it with the right motivations and aspirations. It is stacked with quotable quotes, generational gems and transformational truths. When I finished, I had two immediate responses (similar to when I finished that Plantinga classic): (a) I gotta turn-around and read it all again; and (b) I gotta graft this stuff into the notes for my preaching training. It is destined to be a little classic.

The book is designed for those in ‘full-time Word ministry’ (22) and so could easily be read quietly by such people individually or, better still, it could be read aloud in teaching teams, or in small clusters of preachers (what in Langham we call ‘preaching clubs’, ‘fellowships’ or, in Latin America, escuelitas).

Here, let me give you a taste of the wisdom across the pages:

1. On preaching Christ from all of Scripture:
My own conviction is that we need to be sensitive to what the text is saying in its context, and then fully alive to the progress of redemptive history in which that text (and context) finds its place … So wherever you see tears, beauty, riches, or worship in the Bible, you are seeing glimpses of the One in whom all these things find their ultimate value and significance … Let this sink in, and let it shape your Bible reading and your preaching ministry. No text is ever properly handled if people aren’t led into its truth that Jesus is centre-stage in God’s drama. We must therefore read Scripture expecting to see him, his unfolding victory, and his tender grace in all its pages (44, 45, 46).

2. On ‘when is a call mistaken? when is a call valid?’ (just the six headings, 56-58):
You’re not called just because you enjoy preaching.
You’re not called just because people like your preaching.
You’re not even called because you feel compelled to preach.
You’re called when you feel overwhelmed by preaching.
You’re called when you have a deep love for those who need God’s Word.
You’re called when you are ready to suffer in the service of God’s Word.

3. On suffering and success:
Suffering is often a powerful test of who we really are. Suffering exposes our values, our faith and our hearts. Yet, another test is arguably more effective for exposing who we really are, and that is success. It’s as we experience success that we discover why we’re really preaching. Success tests us to see if we are proud or if we really are humble, thankful, and trusting (87) … Every preacher must work and pray to be successful in his ministry. We need to expose that false piety which makes peace with failure under the guise of ‘being faithful’ (89-90).

4. On being willing to be ‘unspectacular and unnoticed’:
[NB: I read this as I was absorbing Francis Schaeffer’s No Little People, No Little Places]
Unspectacular does not equal dull. Dull preachers must learn to communicate God’s Word engagingly, or must work out what they have been called to do, which actually might not be preaching. But none of us is called to unholy attention seeking. Are you a pulpit show-off? Do you like leaving the whiff of your personality, rather than the aroma of Christ? Are you willing to preach where the congregations are small and ‘unstrategic’? More than that, could you give your life’s ministry to an unremarkable place, to pursue what might be an unnoticed ministry? (129).

5. On how ‘contentment rescues a heart, and a ministry’:
(a) Believe that God is who he is … John Newton once made the stunning comment ‘Everything is necessary that God sends your way; nothing can be necessary that He withholds’. That is your life as disciple and preacher. Unbelief tells us that God has withheld the good and sent the bad, and our hearts rebel in covetous desires. They are our wretched efforts to get the good that we believe that God is withholding … 
(b) Identify your discontentment, and starve it … (159-160).

6. On the sacraments (which, together with the discussion of the Ten Commandments, one by one, and the Lord’s Prayer are among the highlights of the book):
A glance around evangelical churches shows that the sacraments are the church’s Cinderellas – tolerated, patronized, and even put to work, but little loved and even less gloried in. We love to celebrate a baptism and share the joy of grace in a person’s life: but do we teach the saints to live in the light of their baptism, and to draw strength from the fact that they bear the name of the Trinity? And are our Supper services more obligation than celebration, something we would feel embarassed to leave out of our worship, rather than something we love to share together? (180) … We must recover our belief that the pulpit needs to share its message with the baptistery and the Table, and that they must be given their rightful places in the drama of redeeming grace. The sacraments are God’s appointed preachers, too, and God has given them in order to proclaim Christ to us (181) … The family of God needs the Supper. We preachers need the Supper. Our God of words is also the Lord of signs (187).

7. A prayer of Anselm (1033-1109):
Come now, little man, turn aside for a while from your daily employment, escape for a moment from the tumult of your thoughts. Put aside your weighty cares, let your burdensome distractions wait. Free yourself for a while for God and rest awhile in Him. Enter the inner chamber of your soul, shut out everything except God and that which can help you in seeking him, and when you have shut the door, seek him. Now, my whole heart, say to God, ‘I seek your face, Lord, it is your face I seek’. (191-192).

8. On the value of prayer in the life of the preacher:
Only a living, honest relationship with God nurtured and expressed in prayer will keep us from hellish hypocrisy and fill us with the life of Christ (193) …
What happens when you open your heart to God and pray?
(a) You care. As you pray for God’s kingdom, his people, and the needs of the lost, you begin to care. God starts to work on your priorities and your compassion …
(b) You find you have nothing to complain about. Prayerlessness contracts your life and ministry to the size of your abilities …
(c) God gets to work on your worries. When you don’t pray you get worried. Prayerlessness is abandoning ourselves either to fate or, worse, to ourselves. No wonder we find life stressful when prayer dries up. Prayer is recapturing a Christ-centred worldview, in which to celebrate again his loving rule … 
(d) You get refreshed (193, 194, 195).

9. On the ‘post-sermon meal’:
What’s your post-sermon meal? It might be a Sunday roast or a Sunday evening egg on toast. But what else? Do you chew on your frustrations at yourself, your listeners, or your general lot in life? Do you endlessly rerun the sermon and the conversations that followed it, picking it all apart, looking for scraps for encouragement? And then what about your conversation? Are you distant, irritable, and best left alone, or endlessly talkative after you’ve preached? How you think and behave after you’ve preached says everything about what you believe about preaching (201-202) … Whether we’ve soared or crashed in our preaching, we are weak men, driven by thoughts and emotions that are all the stronger once the sermon’s done. Temptations assault us, such as pride, despair, moroseness, and irritability. Of all people hearing the sermon, we ourselves are the most tempted to go home doubting it (203).

10. On the life of the preacher:
Our fretful Saturdays, overwhelming Sundays, and washed-out Mondays might be less a symptom of zealous gospel faith and labor, and more a sign that we are anxiously slaving for God and man with little confidence and pleasure in God’s sheer goodness. We are wrong, dangerously wrong. He is not that sort of God. Ministry is not that sort of work. Preaching is the declaration of the God we know. Preaching is one broken sinner saying to others with exactly the same struggles, ‘This is the grace I’m discovering, which I long for you to know with me.’ And if the preacher and his preaching are captivated by this grace, then the life of the preacher will be one of humble, praise-filled joy (210-211).

There it is. A glimpse. A flavour. A look inside (the book) as a reminder that the ‘look inside’ (the preacher) is critical. Open up this book and you open up yourself. It is that good, that helpful.

PS: At an early point in the book Lewis Allen identifies his target readership: ‘If you pick up the Bible with the aim of bringing its message to others in some sort of public setting, this book is for you’ (22) – but really only if you are male. It is annoying just how much this book is drenched in exclusive language. Why do authors and publishers do this? There is no theological issue at stake. You can believe that preaching is solely the domain of males and still write in an inclusive manner. Nothing theological is lost. It is a communication issue. I am pretty sure that it was none other than DA Carson himself who taught me this principle a few decades ago. While I plead with them to have the grace (yet again!?) to make an attempt to do so, female preachers are going to struggle to read this book. Goodness me, I struggled enough with it. Such a shame because, as I say, it has the potential to be a little classic.