Why The Sermon?

By Richard Bewes of London, England

Over 100 years ago DL Moody of Chicago said, “If you have got a sermon that is good for anything at all, pass it around!”

Yes, we preachers desire to ‘preach Christ Jesus as Lord’ to viewers worldwide - in about 12 minutes or so! We do not class ourselves along with John Bunyan of the seventeenth century - whose bold open-air preaching put him in an English prison for twelve years; nor with George Whitefield, whose biblical oratory spanned both sides of the Atlantic, nor with the late Bishop Festo Kivengere of Uganda.

But we are firm in our belief that preaching will never die. Naturally it cannot be our own thoughts that will change a single life for the better. It is the God-inspired Scriptures that must set the agenda – and so transform preacher and listener alike. William Magee of Dublin once said that there are three kinds of preachers; the one to whom you cannot listen, the one to whom you can listen and the one to whom you MUST listen!

True, we preachers here (and we are drawn from all five continents) have differing styles of presentation, but our great desire is indeed to be faithful to Scripture in fulfilling the purpose that you will see placarded behind each of our sermons - set in the original Greek of 2 Corinthians 4:5: “WE PREACH CHRIST JESUS AS LORD.”

Welcome, then, to The Sermon!