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The September 17, 2001, issue of Time magazine hit newsstands on Monday, September 10. On the cover was a photo of T. D. Jakes staring regally at the camera, holding an oversized leather-bound Bible in his equally oversized hands. The headline posed the provocative question: IS THIS MAN THE NEXT BILLY GRAHAM? Inside was a gentle profile of the Pentecostal preacher and his rise to prominence. Accompanying that story was a shorter article that explored the state of preaching in America, whose title asked an even more compelling question: HOW MUCH DOES THE PREACHING MATTER?

On September 11, the terrorist attacks and their aftermath provided a quick and dramatic answer, as record numbers of Americans flocked to local churches to weep and pray and listen. They sat attentively in crowded pews, desperate for words of comfort and reassurance. Suddenly, for a spiritually rattled nation, the role of the preacher became just as crucial as that of the firefighter and police officer. How much does the preaching matter? In times of trouble and uncertainty, it matters a whole lot.

September 11, of course, was not the beginning of our culture's hunger for meaningful preaching. Long before that terrible day, it was clear that preaching had to supply more than soaring oratory, syrupy psychobabble, or sterile didacticism to sustain the interest of contemporary audiences.

Lori Carrell, a communications professor at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, studied 581 U.S. congregations to measure how preaching affects its listeners. Her findings are featured in the 2000 book The Great American Sermon Survey. Among other things, Carrell discovered that 65 percent of listeners primarily expect spiritual inspiration and life application from sermons, while 35 percent desire information and insight.

"One of the things that is evident from the studies I've seen is that people really want the preacher to explain the Bible," says Haddon Robinson, professor of preaching at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary near Boston. "They simply want a preacher who can help them understand God's Word."

But isn't that what preachers do anyway? Well, not necessarily. In an age when churches are in a fierce battle for the easily distracted attention span of today's non-Christian and Christian audiences, sometimes preachers do everything but explain the Bible.

The technical term for it is expository preaching. The term has many shades of meaning, but perhaps the simplest one, culled from the long-winded definitions of several different preaching scholars, is this: The systematic explanation of a portion of Scripture that, by the transforming power of the Holy Spirit, can be decisively applied in the lives of the listeners. Expository preaching is what happens after the preacher does the scholarly work of exegesis and the spiritual discipline of prayer.

Robinson has been teaching students about expository preaching for decades. His classic (and recently updated) tome Biblical Preaching, which is used in more than 150 seminaries and Bible colleges, has become the go-to text for aspiring expositors.

"The number of preachers who really begin with the text and let it govern the sermon is relatively small," laments Robinson. "Today, the danger is that some preachers will read the latest psychology book into the text. They're not driven by a great theology but, instead, by the social sciences."

World-shattering events like September 11 only expose the banality of some preaching, Robinson says. On the Sunday after the attacks, for example, he recalls watching a televised service at the home church of one of the victims: "The pastor came out wearing his robe and everything, and his word to that congregation was something like 'Henry died in the crash, but we can keep him alive in our memories.' That was the extent of it." Robinson shakes his head. "I think there are people who went to church the Sunday after 9/11 who got pablum when they were looking for meat."

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April 1 2002, Vol. 46, No. 4