Preachers are not puppets on a stage; nor are they blocks of wood. They are men of God who are to zealously preach the word in season and out, fanning into flame the gift of God which is in them, bringing God’s word to bear over the people called by his own name. There’s nothing boring about that!

In his book The Work of the Pastor, the late William Still wrote that one of the devil’s “most cunning tricks [is] to cause the Word of God to be dispensed by lazy, sleepy, moribund creatures, who find preaching to be the most burdensome part of their work and cannot help showing it.” If not for the fact that we have experienced exactly what Mr. Still is talking about, we might have thought he was being harsh. The reality is that we have heard boring and unaffected men preaching the most affecting truth in the world. And that is a big problem.

Shouldn’t the living Word of God be preached with focused energy and heat? Mr. Still was warning pastors that the way they preach is an important factor in communicating what they are preaching. The medium impacts the message.

It must be stated, of course, that no man should preach with a false sense of earnestness, for that would be an acted lie. Nor should the energy of the preacher be like a relentless, raging river in both pitch and tempo. But for the sake of the glorious doctrine being preached, how can it be dull? For the sake of the awesome God we serve, ought the word boring be in the repertoire of adjectives used to describe preaching?

If you are a reformed Christian, you know that God wants his people taught by lively preaching.

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