Keller | Lloyd-Jones on the Efficacy of Preaching Today

Tim Keller has a new blog post on Lloyd-Jones on the Efficacy of Preaching. A blurb...

...if you make preaching central to your ministry, you are indeed expecting that the public ministry of the Word will be attractive and draw people in. At this point the Doctor takes the main objection—"they won't come"—head on. He says bluntly, "The answer is that they will come, and that they do come…" Now the Doctor was speaking of his own ministry at Westminster Chapel in central London after World War II. Church attendance throughout Europe plunged after the war, for a mixture of reasons. In that situation, he began preaching his long, theological, expositional sermons, and slowly the huge auditorium filled. His evening services were twice the size of the morning services, since people from all over London came to bring their non-Christian friends. I dare say that something similar happened to us in New York City over the past two decades, and in an analogous context. (emphasis mine)

Read the whole post: Lloyd-Jones on the Efficacy of Preaching

Keller | Lloyd-Jones on the Primacy of Preaching

Here's a snippit from Tim Keller's blog post today: Lloyd-Jones on the Primacy of Preaching...

Dr. Lloyd-Jones effectively dismantles the idea that watching a video or listening to an audio of a sermon is as good as coming physically into an assembly and listening to a sermon with a body of people. It is obviously a good thing if a person who never hears or reads the Bible listens to the recording of a good gospel message and is helped by it. But the Doctor argues that people experience the sermon in a radically different way if they hear it together with a body of listeners and if they see the preacher. Watching on a screen or listening as you walk detaches you and the sermon becomes mere information, not a whole experience. There is a power and impact that the media cannot convey.

Read Dr. Keller's entire post.

Open-Air Preaching is Optional?

Most of the pastors and preachers I know believe that open-air preaching is optional at best, and some go so far to say it's unhelpful and passé. 

What if it's NOT optional? What if it's expected? What if it should be normal and natural for preachers? 

How would you respond if I said God expects every man called to fill a pulpit is also to fill the open-air, the marketplace, the fields, the empty lots, etc, with the preaching of the Gospel of Jesus Christ? (And I don't just mean through personal evangelism, but through public proclamation.) If you think it is optional, can you provide any Scriptural argument for that? I honestly want to know if you disagree and what you base your position on.