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John Willis Sr. came to me when he needed money, needed another drink, or when he was looking for his wife at church. I prayed with him, helped him, and preached to him. But after ten years of listening to my preaching, he was still the most notorious, unsaved alcoholic in our Cincinnati suburb.

Preaching does not always produce immediate, visible results. Yet I preach from the belief that God is faithful.

"My Word does not return void," God says, and Scripture often acts as a time-release capsule, effecting eventual transformation.

Like Jesus on the road to Emmaus, preachers walk alongside their listeners, opening the Scriptures. Preachers are "exegetical escorts" who usher people into the presence of God. It's not the preaching itself, but being in the presence of God that changes lives.

Our job is to take them there. For as Jesus said in Luke 10:16, "When they listen to you, they listen to me."

On December 31, at a New Year's Eve service, John Willis Sr. was saved. No one, not even his wife, could believe how radically his life had changed. And why, after ten years, did he suddenly hear the message now?

The next summer John told me he was called to preach. That July he began preaching with power a message he still preaches today, 20 years later—how God saves from the uttermost to the guttermost.

For John Willis Sr. and for millions of others each Sunday, preaching funnels all Christian disciplines into what P.T. Forsythe calls, "A Hallelujah Chorus of ordered community."

Preaching not only initiates faith, like it did with John, but it also disciples believers toward maturity and inspires people by rehearsing the promises of God. I don't know any other Christian practice that does all three.

Our other practices may assist, but they will never replace preaching, for, "How shall they hear without a preacher?" (Rom. 10:14).

Robert Smith Jr. is professor of Christian preaching at Beeson Divinity School, Birmingham, Alabama.

Though I was raised in the church, God was only one spoke on the wheel of my life. Then I went to camp at age 17, and I heard an old man give a message, telling a series of stories about God's love. I was challenged to make my life the next story in the chain.

People can read and study God's Word, but when someone stands up and declares how God has changed him or her, people are opened to change in their own lives.

Here's an example: Early in my marriage, while traveling to speak, I remember sitting in the St. Louis airport writing notes for a sermon about quality family time. But I sensed God saying to this busy traveler, "Look at you. What are you going to say about making family time a priority?" It was a pivotal moment in my life.

I sometimes use that story in preaching: "Some of you feel like you're in that St. Louis airport. You know what I mean when I say, 'Failure is succeeding at something that doesn't matter.' You wonder how to make family the priority it needs to be." Then I read from Deuteronomy 6—"Teach these things to your children, when you sit, when you walk, when you lie down"—and I sum it up, "Quality time happens only in the midst of quantity time."

From the 15 year olds who are listening, to the 80 year olds, the one thing that cuts across the divide is this: "I'm just a guy like you, and this is how God's Word has changed me." It doesn't have to be eloquent. It just has to be true.

Mike Breaux is a teaching pastor at Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Illinois.

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