Stanley and other seeker-friendly “creative” preachers improve upon the Text by incessant story-telling and personal anecdotes. That’s the “engaging” part of his shtick. I’ll remind you, beloved, that Jesus taught in parables not to reveal engaging and compelling truths from Scripture, but to conceal truth from those who didn’t need it at the time (Matthew 13:11-17). I’m convinced the non-exegetical approach of modern-day story tellers and dreamers is for the same, but non-divine, purpose – to conceal truth and not to reveal it. 

Ed Stetzer, whose employer – Lifeway “Christian” Resources – sells more than a few Andy Stanley books, interviewed the Texas pastor on the topic of preaching related to his book, Communicating for a Change. The second of such interviews on this topic, Stetzer posts the Q&A on his blog, hosted by Christianity Today. What follows is nothing short of a shocking (but refreshingly honest and explicit) rejection of expository preaching, and although is not new, is making its way around social media as of late.

The question posed to Stanley was this…

What do you think about preaching verse-by-verse messages through books of the Bible?

Stanley’s answer…

Guys that preach verse-by-verse through books of the Bible– that is just cheating. It’s cheating because that would be easy, first of all. That isn’t how you grow people. No one in the Scripture modeled that. There’s not one example of that.

It’s “cheating.” Do you hear that, you exegetes? You small church pastors, sweating away in your study on Friday and Saturday nights to finish up before Sunday…you expositors checking the Greek and Hebrew and grasping the etymology of key words and phrases, putting it within Scriptural context, cross-referencing all the important verses, studying the commentaries of all the great scholars to unwrap the oracles of God verse by verse at a time. People don’t grow that way.

I think I speak for a lot of people – and I mean a lotta people – who when we think of spiritual growth and discipleship – don’t exactly think North Point Church. I’m not trying to be mean (really, I’m not). I’m just sayin’. I don’t think “discipleship” would be the perceived strong-suit of the congregation. I’m willing to bet the still-married to women but happily gay couple at North Point probably don’t think of discipleship, either. They certainly don’t think about sanctification and holiness, which is, essentially, thesame thing as spiritual growth. This leads me to believe that Stanley must mean…

“That isn’t how you [numerically] grow people.” 

That would make more sense. And, if that’s what Stanley means, he might be right. There is that sweet-spot in the life of the church when it’s years or decades into its existence and the maturity level has risen from internal spiritual growth to an evangelistic zeal that’s as much truth as spirit and the wind of the Holy Spirit is at the church’s back and there are amazing, incredible times of revival and refreshing. We all live for those moments when we see the Third Person of the Trinity reap lost souls and see genuine converts flood the gates (let’s call that “new growth”).

There’s also those times when a church develops a reputation for solid exposition, sincere worship and real discipleship and actual Christians come from miles around to take part in the life of that body – primarily because they are sheep starved for green pastures and are tired of being ripped apart by doctrinal wolves and ridiculed or ignored by hireling shepherds (we’ll call that “old growth”). The former is primarily a move of God and the latter can be savvy communication or advertising to spread the word that this church actually cares about their Scriptural purpose (although God is certainly involved in old growth, too). And sometimes, there’s a healthy combination of both new and old growth.

The two kinds of legitimate numerical growth of actual believers in the church’s assembly are acts of God, facilitated by the Spirit using His inspired Scriptures.

There is, however, a kind of numerical growth that is not a legitimate increase in the Church’s assembly of believers.

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