This is a follow up to my post and podcast about the high-profile defections of Christian leaders. This content is the opening chapter of a proposed book called Stunted. I've been around long enough to be considered a veteran pastor, and in this book, I'm dissecting 11 trends I see in the church that are keeping the church stuck in immaturity and vulnerability. Here is the first chapter of Stunted.

Trend 1: The Death of Expository Preaching
There were giants in the land. Crowds gathered. Hearts opened. The greatest message ever conceived among humankind pushed back the darkness and fueled generations of heaven’s ambassadors. Henrietta Mears, Ruben Archer Torrey, William R. Newell, Donald Grey Barnhouse, Harry Ironside, Ray Stedman, D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, A.W. Tozer, Francis Schaeffer, Carl F.H. Henry. A legion more. Forgotten giants. They were nineteenth- and twentieth-century evangelical preachers and teachers of God’s invincible Word. They opened the Scriptures and invited audiences to open their Bibles with them. They brought forth treasures. Their listeners’ hearts burned within. 

They were not known for charisma, humor, or eloquence. They did not promote themselves. They had no social media platforms. No gimmicks in their arsenal. Their clothing and style were conventional to a fault. Nothing hip. Nothing cool. They would describe themselves not as “visionary leaders,” but as expositors of the sacred Scriptures. 

What each one had was a deep reservoir of theology coupled with a surgical ability to cut through a messy web of demonic lies, that they might stitch Scripture’s truth to the deepest part of their listeners’ souls.

Crowds did not follow them because they were glib story-tellers. Crowds followed them because they were fire hoses of doctrine, and the people were parched deserts, eager to be saturated with the living water of God. 

They were Bible expositors first and foremost. They taught verse-by-verse, and sometimes word-by-word. They did not rush. They did not preach three messages in a row and call it “a series.” They lingered over great texts. D. Martin Lloyd-Jones preached 366 sermons on the book of Romans and 255 on the Gospel of John. His sanctuaries were as packed as his sermons. 

They weren’t after a practical application that would last a few days and fizzle by Wednesday. They were simple without being simplistic. Nor did they manipulate emotion. They were after a slow, methodical transformation that would last a lifetime. They threw the Bible Bus into low gear, and churned up every inch of biblical pavement, slowly and methodically. Not hype. Not a pep rally. But the patient construction of a theological edifice in the soul that could withstand the storms of life, and uphold a beacon of the gospel in this tempestuous world. 

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