Alex Montoya is a terrific and engaging speaker, combining wit, humor and serious admonition.

He began by noting that many churches in America are dying. The American church is not in a healthy state. Why is that, and what can we do?

First churches are dying for a lack of preachers. Men who are dedicated to preaching the Word of God. We have too many dabblers in ministry. They’re not committed to the Word, to preaching the Scriptures. They’re mercenaries and professionals, and they end up killing the churches.

Churches are dying for lack of preaching. That’s been the focus of this conference, both in example & exhortation. That’s not done around the land, around the world. Churches have confused what preaching is about. In Acts 6, we see they devote themselves to the Scriptures & prayer. But we fail to see, as in 5:42, they’re daily not ceasing to preach & teach Jesus as the Christ. Somehow we’ve used the “attractive model” for preaching: we see the pulpit as the only means to preach the Word. This is wrong. All the energy we spend is only directed to the pulpit, which is not the only calling we have. We are to preach the Word outside the pulpit as well. We need to be preaching in the apostolic way: in the temple and also house to house. We need to unleash men to preach the Word outside the halls & pulpits. We are not devoting ourselves to preaching the gospel to the lost. Many of us never go soul-winning, never confront sinners. We spend all our time just working on one or two sermons a week. We need to prepare sermons, but apostolic preaching is also to get outside & do evangelism and visitation.

Also, churches are dying for lack of purposeful preaching. We tend to confuse expository preaching as an end. Preaching is not an end, its a means to an end. It is but one of the ministries God has given us for the salvation, sanctification & building up of God’s people. Examples of confused expositors:

1. “Longer sermon”: We think the longer the sermon, the better. You have to be awfully good to preach for over an hour!
2. “Dump truck sermon”: you spend all week on all the exegetical niceties, and pack it up and Sunday morning back it up and dump it on all the people.  “I love filet mignon; I don’t want the whole cow on the table!”
3. “Sausage sermon”: serve it in links & pieces. All you do is explain a verse, then hit the end and say, “let’s continue next week.” A sermon should have its own beginning, climax and finish.
4. “Deep sermon”: you go so deep no one can follow. You have to be understood!
5. “Nowhere sermon”: we get in the text, and go and go, going nowhere! No purpose, no proposition. You have to preach the point of the text with a specific purpose for it!
6. “Boring sermon”: Don’t put people to sleep.

Delivery matters. Put some zeal into your communication. Passion is the life of your sermon; without passion you have a lecture, you have a moral address. People come to be excited about the things of God.  Spurgeon said, “A dull preacher is a contradiction of terms.” There has to be a zeal in you for the Word of God, for the things of God.

How can we be more passionate?

First, we need to preach with spiritual power and purity. Passion originates in the heart of God. “Enthusiastic” = “en theos” = “God in you!” It’s the man who is desperate for God’s help in preaching. “Without you, God, I cannot preach without your power!” The apostles waited in Jerusalem until they were empowered to be his witnesses. We need to preach with clean hands and heart, e.g., “lifting up holy hands without wrath or dissension.” Make sure you’re spending time with God! Be worshipers of God. Baxter says, “Be careful that your graces are kept in vigorous and lively exercise, and that you preach to yourselves the sermons which you study before you preach them to others.” Worship with the saints! Sing, partake, fellowship, don’t just sermonize. M’Cheyne noted, “It is not great talents God blesses so much as great likeness to Jesus. A holy minister is an awful weapon in the hand of God.”

Second, we need to preach with great conviction. That this is the Word of God, and then to preach it! Let the Word come into your life; not just preaching as an exercise. Preach something that keeps you awake on Sat. night! To preach the Word is not to preach every letter; but to study each truth that is there. You preach it to yourself and then take it to the pulpit and then preach it. Do not preach “I think”: who cares what you think? Also, are your people looking at the text, with open Bibles? Don’t just preach because you have to, or because you’re paid to.

Third, we need to preach with compassion. It’s a soul pleading with other souls. It’s the burden for others which creates compassion. Lloyd-Jones said, “To love to preach is one thing. To love those to whom we preach quite another.” If you love your people, as a pastor, you cannot preach a bad sermon! All preaching is to help people. We’re to make God’s people more Christlike (Col. 1:28) by teaching, admonishing, caring, loving. Have a passion for lost people, please.  John MacArthur said, “Have your people in your heart and you will be in theirs.”  How do we gain compassion?  Look at your own heart.  And live among the people.  Spend time with them, weep with them, rejoice with them.

Fourth, we need to preach with authority.  The same was Jesus preached with authority.  Don’t just give suggestions, say, “thus saith the Lord.”  This is why visitation & house-to-house matters.  “If you don’t come to listen to me, I’ll come to your home & preach to you!”  You’re an ambassador for God to your people!

Fifth, we need to preach with urgency.  Preaching is sanctified madness.  These are not simply Bible studies.  A sermon needs to be urgent.  We’re not dialoguing with people, we’re dealing with souls in need of God’s power!  Richard Baxter: “I preach as a dying man to dying men.”  If your folks are sleeping through your sermon, it should bother you!   Lives are at stake.

As Charles Spurgeon wrote:

How shall we describe the doom of an unfaithful minister?  And every unearnest minister is unfaithful.  I would infinitely prefer to be consigned to Tophet as a murderer of men’s bodies than as a destroyer of men’s souls; neither do I know of any condition in which a man can perish so fatally, so infinitely, as in that of the man who preaches a gospel which he does not believe, and assumes the office of pastor over a people whose good he does not intensely desire.  Let us pray to be found faithful always, and ever.  God grant that the Holy Spirit may make and keep us so.