I am a fan of T. David Gordon. He writes well. He speaks plainly. He does not mince words. With some writers, it is quite possible for five people to read them and come away with five different conclusions about what the writer is saying. This is not so with Gordon. In his book, Why Johnny Can’t Preach, he is deeply concerned about the state of preaching in conservative evangelical and conservative Reformed circles.1
As he explains in the preface, this concern has been developing for thirty years. He hesitated to write the book because he feared that by indicting preaching, his pastors might think he was indicting them. When he was diagnosed with stage-3 cancer, however, he decided that he had to write the book. Mercifully, his cancer is in remission, but the state of preaching is, we must say, still quite unhealthy.
Gordon has every right to be concerned. My experience is that preaching in evangelical and Reformed circles is too often not very good. As Gordon notes in a footnote (12–13 n. 1) in the introduction, sermons in the mainline tend to be better crafted but less filling, while sermons in more conservative pulpits tend to be more filling but poorly constructed. There is a reason for that. Anecdotal evidence suggests that mainline preachers tend to be better educated but believe less and that “sideline” preachers tend to believe more but tend to be less able to express themselves. The ideal is to marry orthodox content with suitable rhetoric. As Machen used to say: suaviter in modo, fortiter in re (winsomely in manner, strongly in substance).
Gordon is not pursuing an idiosyncratic agenda. His concerns are not with whether people agree with him on questions such as “how to preach Christ from the Old Testament.” Rather, he argues that “few sermons have unity; and the lack of unity is a serious, if not fatal defect in a sermon” (13–14). The concern is not, as some might assume, that “ours is not a day of great preaching” (14). Rather, the concern is for the “average Christian family in the average pew in the average church on the average Sunday” (14). The problem is not a lack of gourmet meals; it is the lack of basic nourishment.
The point is not even to hammer (already defensive) pastors. The point is to note the connection between changes in the media and culture and how those changes have affected the ability of preachers to do the things necessary to preach well. He is asking, “How has the movement from language-based media to image-based and electronic media altered our sensibilities and how, in turn, has this change in sensibility shaped today’s preachers?” (16).
Reformed folk should take a special interest in this book. We confess that it is by the “due use” of this particular “ordinary means” to which God the Spirit has attached promises (Rom 10) and through which he ordinarily works to bring the spiritually dead to life and to build up believers (Heidelberg Catechism, 65; Westminster Shorter Catechism 88). The Reformed liturgy is structured in a dialogic pattern: God speaks, and the people respond with his Word. Thus, the sermon (literally, “the word”) is at the center of our liturgy since it is there where God speaks to us most extensively. The Second Helvetic Confession famously notes that the preaching of the Word is the Word (if the heading is correct). Obviously, the sermon must be faithful to the text of Scripture to be “the Word.” Not everything that proceeds from every preacher’s mouth is “the Word.” That is the problem. We are not talking about an occasional failure to communicate. We are talking about, as the tech guys say, “a system’s” failure here.
In the first chapter, Gordon lays out his case that “Johnny Can’t Preach.” The first line of evidence is anecdotal. His experience (and that of many others) is that too many preachers are unable to perform the most basic of ministerial tasks: to explain what a passage of God’s Word says, of “demonstrating that what he is saying is God’s will” (18).
Gordon is not applying some esoteric test here. One of the basic tests of preaching is whether reasonably intelligent people can listen to a sermon and repeat the main points. Another test is to ask whether the sermon came from and was governed by the text. Gordon observes that this does not happen nearly as often as it should.
He also surveys Robert Louis Dabney’s “cardinal requisites” for preaching (23–28). These, he says, “are honored almost exclusively in their breach” (28). Then there is the “watch” test. When one is listening to a great symphony or gripping medical advice, time seems to pass quickly. It may not be an entirely fair test, but it is an interesting question: How often does one check one’s watch during the sermon? Why? How often have you left a sermon wishing that it had not ended so soon?
To be sure, the sermon, if faithful to the text, is the Word of God even if it is not gripping. It is not the aesthetic quality of the sermon that makes it God’s Word. That truth, however, is no excuse for bad preaching.
According to Gordon, those committed to contemporary worship and the emergent movement both seem convinced that traditional churches are “moribund” (31–32). Is that so, or is it that traditional churches are simply doing things incompetently? Gordon argues that “the preaching in many churches is so poorly done that it is not [as defined by WSC 89], effectively preaching” (32). It is not that the church is using the wrong means but that it is using the right means wrongly.
The final line of evidence is that few churches conduct an annual review of the pastoral staff. One reason this does not happen is that it is an awkward conversation. Ministers do not want to be evaluated, and the congregations do not want to discuss the preaching (34).
The problem is not the seminaries (34–35) but rather the state of the student when he arrives at seminary. The culture in which our students are raised is not only an increasingly illiterate culture but also an aliterate one (37). Americans are reading less. The visual is replacing the textual. His account of “the airport game” is fascinating and echoes my experience. Media are not neutral. The media (whether print or visual, or aural) that dominate the lives of our pre-seminary students shape the way they think and communicate.
The next section of the book is an analysis of one aspect of the problem: Johnny does not read well. This problem has been diagnosed for many years. I see it frequently. The rise of electronic texts, which is valuable in many ways, actually works against close reading and high levels of comprehension. Thus, as I have mentioned before, I have begun to encourage students to print out assigned electronic readings. I encourage them, with limited success, to take notes by hand.2
Gordon distinguishes between reading for information (as one might read a technical manual) and “reading texts.” Scanning for information ignores how a text gets to the information and simply looks for the bottom line (43). Reading texts, however, is as interested in how a writer got to his conclusion as in the conclusion itself.
To illustrate the difference, Gordon appeals to the nature of Shakespeare’s sonnets or the poetry of Robert Frost. The art of the achievement is as important as the message. Americans tend to read for content. He contrasts the workmanlike history of Stephen Ambrose with the more carefully crafted prose of David McCullough (44–45), Perry Ellis, and George Marsden (among others). We read the latter for style (and content) but the former mainly for content. Ministers, says Gordon, tend to read for information or amusement but not for art (46).
This approach to reading texts has influenced the way preachers read the Bible. They scan it. They speed-read it looking for data. They tend not to ask questions about the structure of the passage. Under this approach to reading Scripture, a sermon on God’s love from John 3:16 does not sound materially different from a sermon from Romans 5:8. The particular—that is, this text—gets swallowed up by the broader theme.
The cost of this sort of “reading” is superficiality. He points to W. Philip Keller’s A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23. Psalm 23 is not an agricultural psalm. It is a royal psalm. It takes a certain degree of literary sensibility to read the shepherd metaphor in Psalm 23 properly. In other words, the artless, boneheaded reading of texts leads to poor exegesis, and that leads to superficial sermons built on a wrong premise (48).3
Such superficiality leads us away from reading texts properly, reading them in order “to enter the world of the author and perceive reality through his vantage point” (49). The artless reader “uses” rather than receives texts (50).4
Ironically, the more modern one is, the more rushed he is and the harder it is for him to read poetry. And yet, quoting Sven Birkerts, “The more you need to be rescued from the twentieth century; the more you need poetry.”
Poetry is significant to Gordon for the same reasons it was significant to the classical tradition: it was the key to rhetoric. Learning was said to come in stages: grammar, logic, and rhetoric, or, as Dorothy Sayers put it, “parrot, pert, and poet.” We learn the stuff, how the stuff works, and how to speak about the stuff. It is this last stage of learning where Gordon finds us failing.
Poetry and serious reading of texts require time and patience. The dominant medium of our age (television) works against those virtues. Television is about motion (53–55). The “hegemonic discourse” (David Denby) of our age is not that of “the greats” but of David Letterman et al (55–57).
We are swamped by the inconsequential, which is producing in us an ever-shortening attention span. This media culture will not produce thoughtful, careful, attentive readers of texts.
The great seriousness of the reality of being human, the dreadful seriousness of the coming judgment of God, the sheer insignificance of the present in light of eternity—realities that were once the subtext of virtually every sermon—have now disappeared and have been replaced by one triviality after another (59).
Another reason Johnny cannot preach is that Johnny cannot write. To make this point, Gordon begins with an important survey of the way technological changes have affected communication. We take printed texts for granted. We blithely tell people to “read your Bible” with the assumption that it has always been possible. In fact, it has not. As Gordon notes, printed texts are a relatively recent development. Electronic communication has also changed the way we communicate.
He argues that just as we have become less able to read texts, so electronic communication has made us less able to read people. Electronic communication also “robs us of composition skills” (65). In contrast to the demands that personal correspondence once made upon us (67), telephone conversations “rarely have unity, order, or movement.” Good composition must have these qualities. “While ministers make some effort in the pulpit to avoid the worst colloquialisms, and while they have ordinarily learned to slow their rate of speech, in many other respects their sermons reflect the babbling, rambling quality of a typical telephone conversation” (66). This approach to preaching leads to a series of unrelated observations passing itself off as a sermon. Little attempt is made to distinguish the significant from the insignificant.
Gordon observes correctly that (for Westminster Seminary California [WSC] at least) our seminary curriculum looks more like the pre-World War I pattern that assumed the sort of training in the liberal arts that seems rare for undergraduates today (68). At WSC, we have attempted to meet this problem by adding “propaedeutic” (preparatory) courses in writing and public speaking.
My experience as a student and as a teacher confirms Gordon’s judgment. As a boy, I enjoyed reading (when I was able to stop moving), and I wanted to write. By the time I got to public high schoo,l it seemed that none of my teachers were able to teach me how to write well. I remember one teacher yelling at me (literally) about my abuse of commas (she was correct), but she never explained clearly how commas should be used. What instruction in grammar that existed was less useful because we were not taught how the English language works. We were taught rules in abstraction. We were never required to learn another language. To be sure, a good bit of this was my own fault. I vigorously resisted learning grammar, but I did so partly because my teachers did not begin to teach it to me until much too late. If childhood development really occurs in three stages—parrot, pert, and poet—then it is frustrating to children to try to teach parrot stuff to perts (the analytical phase) and poets (the rhetorical phase).5 That is exactly what my public school (and many Christian schools) did and do. As a consequence, I did not really begin to learn how to write until college, and I probably did not make any significant progress until after seminary.
Things seem to have gotten worse since I left school. Too many students arrive on our campus now with the intention of earning an MDiv or MA but without the proper background to do it. They are less prepared than students were when I entered seminary. Thus, we remediate. But can we fix ad hoc what should have been done in grammar school? In my case, what began as a three-page handout at Wheaton College has become a nine-page handout and threatens to become a book someday.6
Gordon is right to think about the effect of the telephone, but judging from what I see, he could have spoken to text messages and tweets as well. Ironically, the text message is a regression to the telegraph; staccato lines bark information. These media only intensify the randomness of communication, which, as Gordon observes, has such an unhappy consequence
Notes
- See also T. David Gordon’s interview on “Why Johnny Can’t Preach,” ReformedForum, March 13, 2009.
- R. Scott Clark, “Computers In The Classroom…Not All They’re Cracked Up To Be?”
- “Boneheaded” is my adjective, not Gordon’s
- Gordon quotes C. S. Lewis.
- See Dorothy Sayers, “The Lost Tools Of Learning,” The Heidelblog.
- R. Scott Clark, “The Writing of Essays,” revised 17 March, 2025, The Heidelblog.
©R. Scott Clark. All Rights Reserved.
Editor’s Note: This review was originally published on the Heidelblog in 2009.
You can find this whole series here.
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R. Scott Clark
R.Scott Clark is the President of the Heidelberg Reformation Association, the author and editor of, and contributor to several books and the author of many articles. He has taught church history and historical theology since 1997 at Westminster Seminary California. He has also taught at Wheaton College, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Concordia University. He has hosted the Heidelblog since 2007.
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I’m a huge fan of TDG.
And I think I need that book as much as anyone. My wife is getting it for me…I hope.
p
The Belgic Confession is clear that true churches engage “in the pure preaching of the gospel.” It seems that the issue is always “what” and not “how.” If the issue becomes “how” then I think it is one of two problems – a congregation with too many itching ears or a “minister” whom the church should have recognized as not being called to preach.
As an aside, I think both of these problems partly stem from the fact that so-called seminaries churn out “pastors” like a factory assembly line. The fact that there are so many men “preaching” badly may be due to the fact that, despite their diplomas, they are *not* preachers.
I agree with what you said, of course.
Maybe I misunderstood, but it seems like C’s comments were basically:
If it is a true church, it is such because the preaching is genuine/biblical. If the preaching is genuine/biblical, there’s no problem.
If the preaching is not genuine/biblical, it’s not a true church but a synagogue of Satan, and therefore the quality of the preaching no longer matters.
It seems like what you’re saying, however, is that preaching can be pure (genuine/biblical) and yet still be bad.
For my part, I think a less pure (not false) church such as a “reformed” Baptist church can have decent preaching, while a (true) Presbyterian church can (and frequently does) suffer from awful preaching.
(Though that part about the “reformed” Baptist church having decent preaching is only theoretical; they all tend towards moralism in my reckoning.)
It seems to me that I can hold to these possibilities, at least in theory, because Presbyterians conceive of churches, not just in categories of true and false, but in terms of more pure or less pure. So to me, a “reformed” Baptist church is not a false church, but a less pure church (even though not truly Reformed).
I am squeamish about what I perceive the BC to be saying about the distinction between true and false churches. I am uncomfortable with the fact that a URC won’t let a “reformed” Baptist take communion in their church. It doesn’t seem like by doing so you are excluding them from fellowshipping with you, but with Christ. It seems like that makes the statement that they are not Christians. I am uncomfortable with that.
I appreciate your squeamishness but I think it’s a big assumption that “more or less pure” refers to Baptist Churches. This relates to the post on the WCF 28.4-5. In context, “more or less pure” most probably refers to Anglican Churches. The dominant group in the Assembly was Presbyterian. The arrival of the Scots shifted the balance. The entire assembly was paedobaptist. Why would they have made those (whom they described still as “Anabaptist”) as “less pure”? That may be the modern view, but it’s to read that tolerance back into the 17th century is anachronistic.
Cliffton’s comments seem to me like the logical conclusion of the URC’s position on true/false churches.
I’d love to find out that that’s not the case.
E
I don’t think so. Gordon’s interest isn’t in sorting out true and false churches but whether preaching is done well. Surely true churches have an interest in good preaching as a opposed to bad. The Directory for Public Worship was interested in good, thoughtful, careful preaching. So was Perkins.
I don’t understand the dichotomy between “if true churches then the quality of preaching doesn’t matter.” Non sequitur.
We can do both, distinguish between true and false churches AND insist on good preaching AND diagnose what’s wrong with a lot of preaching.
Mr. Clark writes: “I don’t understand the dichotomy between “if true churches then the quality of preaching doesn’t matter.” Non sequitur”
Cliffton: Who has made this argument? I have not and have already indicated that this conclusion would not follow. And you made the claim that you were not. For if you recall, you previously stated,
“So, it doesn’t matter if Rev. Johnny is illiterate or ill-spoken or incoherent?”
And I then indicated that “Your conclusion does not follow from what I wrote.” To which you responded,
“I’m asking questions. They aren’t conclusions.”
Which one is it?
Echo writes: Cliffton’s comments seem to me like the logical conclusion of the URC’s position on true/false churches.
Cliffton: No, it is the logical conclusion of the Belgic Confession, that is, the Reformed position. And, it is the failure of churches that identify themselves as Reformed to apply this teaching of the BC which is all so evident in there unwillingnes to discipline those who teach false doctrine, thereby manifesting themselves as a false church. The distinction is not between “preaching the gospel” and “preaching the gospel well”, but rather between what is true and what is false, as the BC so “well” points out.
Thanks for your comments on this book. I also listened to the interview at the Reformed Forum. That combination persuaded me to order it!
trackback:
http://urclearning.org/2009/03/05/1-corinthians-117-25-the-foolishness-of-the-cross-vs-the-word-of-wisdom/comment-page-1/#comment-21322
I take Paul’s meaning in 1 Cor. 1 to be that he did not craft the message in order to make it more pallatable to his hearers, not that he didn’t seek to make it intelligible or to communicate it as clearly as he possibly could. The accent there is on the foolishness of the message of the cross, which is utterly contrary to the thinking of Jews and Greeks. What Paul is saying is that he proclaimed that message boldly and with power without altering a single element of it in order to tickle the ears of his hearers. It’s not clear to me that rhetorical style *necessarily* has anything to do with it.
I disagree with Mr. Clark’s contention that we are in fact dealing with “a systems” failure here. Where ever and when ever there is a true Church there is church discipline being exercised, the sacraments are being properly administered, and the pure Word of the Gospel is being preached. The problem is not with the Church but with those institutions which identify themselves as such but are not, and are rather synagogues of Satan. These two are easily discerned.
Clifton,
So, it doesn’t matter if Rev. Johnny is illiterate or ill-spoken or incoherent?
Your conclusion does not follow from what I wrote.
Clifton,
I’m asking questions. They aren’t conclusions. Can you help me understand your argument?
I stand corrected. I assumed that your question was rhetorical, that you were not being serious, and that you were not concerned with an answer to it.
In view of the seriousness of your question then, my point is that if we identify the Church in the way that the Belgic Confession identifies it, by definition the Gospel is being preached, the sacraments are being administered, and church discipline is being exercised; in short, all things are being managed according to the pure Word of God, all things contrary thereto rejected.
What then, is Mr. Gordon really saying? Is he suggesting that there are things missing in the Church that need to be implemented, things to be managed NOT according to the pure Word of God? We hope not, for then he would be asking us to violate the regulative principle of worship.
Don’t miss my point. I am simply saying that if the institution that is in question is a true Church, then certain things necessarily follow. Again, I do not believe the issue to be the poor education of those who minister in the Church, but rather there are not many true Churches as should be apparent. Apparent that is, if you agree with the BC that these “two churches are easily known and distinguished from each other”.
ps. thank you for letting me participate in your blog!
If the devotion you gave is posted to iTunes, or is elsewhere on audio, I’ll listen to it. Thanks.
I look forward to your further thoughts on Gordon’s book. For now, there seems to me an important difference between such skills as “not mumbling; making your meaning understood to the hearers” and (what might be called) “the aesthetic craft of poetic oration.”
The latter is certainly a product of good education, broad reading, practical training, experience, etc. But I don’t quite see that it is a genuine imperative for gospel ministry.
Don’t get me wrong, I like to know that a preacher is also a scholar, has a mastery of the intellectual currents of both the past and our own day, and is able to wield the English language with art.
But I don’t see how this is a Scriptural requirement of preachers.
Isn’t there something a little odd about Gordon’s thesis?
I haven’t read the book yet, but prima facie when Paul says that his own preaching lacked “wisdom of words” (1 Cor 1:17) … I always took that to mean both in substance (ie, not so-called wisdom apart from Christ) and in form (ie, not polished rhetorical style). Paul seems to indicate that his lack of rhetoric was actually fit for the gospel ministry, as it is marked primarily by the Spirit’s efficacy, and not an effect enhanced by following the natural laws of good public speaking.
I don’t think the import of this would be that Paul is encouraging that preachers cultivate poor public speaking, but rather, to put it briefly, if Johnny can’t preach, then it’s because he’s not genuinely preaching Christ.
In my own experience [and I’ve heard a significant number of preachers in the OPC and PCA, for example], the preaching is so poor because these guys still don’t believe that the Word rightly preached only and ever ultimately proclaims two things [in all its various particular ways]: 1) the person of Christ and His definitive accomplishment of full redemption for His people, and 2) how this applies to His people in union with Him. A good number of NAPARC preachers, seemingly, don’t know how to preach Christ from the New Testament either.
None of this undermines the validity of oratory, rhetoric, and “media ecology” or whathaveyou. It’s just to say that the theological fundamentals still seem to be at stake. And Paul’s testimony seems to be that these fundamentals are both necessary and sufficient for “good preaching,” poor rhetoric not withstanding.
What do you say, Dr. Clark?
Gregory,
Obviously I don’t disagree w/1 Cor 1:18ff. I just gave a devotion on it last week. It’s on the WSC website.
Paul was concerned about the Corinthian quest for power (via rhetoric or via stoicism or via epicureanism or whatever). Paul was quite capable of being eloquent. The power of the gospel is the Spirit working through the announcement of the facts of redemption. I agree that too many ministers don’t trust the story or the Spirit sufficiently. I suppose that’s true of all of us.
Still, ambassadors for Christ ought to train well and diligently to read texts well and to explain them well. They owe that duty to Christ.
This installment only covers the opening chapter.
Scott, thanks for this post. This subject interests me incredibly and has been a concern of mine for some time. I look forward to reading the book, perhaps with our interns this summer or fall.
I heard the interview at the Reformed Forum, and, as a pastor who preaches regularly, I was duly convicted. I majored in English, but realize my communication is poor and I never liked poetry much. I plan to get the book and listen again to the interview. Also, Dr. Clark, a week or so ago, you penned a list of things regarding preaching which sounded eeirily similar to what I heard from my professor at Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary (particularly not using a manuscript). Were you penning an ad hoc list or were those items from another source or something else?
Chris,
Like everything else on the HB, it’s ad hoc.