What's Missing

When we look back at the Scriptural account of Pentecost in the second chapter of Acts, we see an interesting thing about the preacher and preaching.  When Simon Peter walked out of that room filled to the overflowing with wind and fire, he found himself becoming a street preacher.  By today's standards for preaching, his sermon had nothing going for it.  Any good preacher would have had a good church start-up sermon to draw the crowds.  Peter just preached about Jesus.  And when he finished he led those who heard to a moment of response.    

Sometimes it seems that preaching about Jesus has gone out of style.  Too many of today's pulpit offerings are geared more to supporting the life of the institutional church than something as radical as personal surrender to the authority of Jesus.    And, a surprising thing witnessed in the span of years I stood in the pulpit was the decline and loss of the invitational ending to a sermon.  Somewhere along the way, preachers lost the notion that sermons are to be persuasive and invitational.    

We can only wonder what would happen in our day if Jesus was unashamedly and unreservedly preached.  When Simon Peter did it, the Word says that three thousand became disciples of Jesus.  Of course, when Peter preached, the power and the presence of the Holy Spirit was fresh upon him and, perhaps, that one thing speaks more than anything else about what might be missing in contemporary preaching.