Why Christ-Centered Preaching Failed
I remember, in my early years at seminary, there was a set of lectures on preaching by Tim Keller and Ed Clowney that were being passed around the student body. We would listen to them riding between classes and sitting around in the evenings, and they were red meat to a bunch of young, aspiring preachers. This new paradigm got away from all that boring, oppressive, moralistic preaching that we thought was beneath us and offered rich connections to the gospel. What wasn’t to love?
You can find those lectures here. They hit me very differently today.
Not only were we absorbing this material on our own, but Bryan Chapell’s Christ-Centered Preaching and Tim Keller’s Preaching were the primary textbooks for our preaching classes. These books reinforced those lectures and gave the philosophy a more practical, definite form.
I realized quickly that most of the students in my preaching classes were trying to sound like Tim Keller, even when it came to their tone of voice and delivery.
Even after my graduation, as I was pastoring, I attended several Simeon Trust workshops, which are meant to help pastors strengthen their preaching skills. While I did gain some useful insights from them, the same Christ-centered method was being pushed to the fore again.
Christ-centered preaching has dominated my academic and pastoral career. It is the method of choice among conservative evangelicals everywhere. If you pick up any book on preaching written recently from our crowd, you will find at least a couple chapters on “Christ-centered” or “gospel-centered” methods (which are the same thing). It is the air we breathe. How could anyone disagree with putting Christ at the center of preaching?
I’ve come to realize that “Christ-centered” preaching is just as effective a rhetorical dodge as “pro-choice,” or “homophobic,” or “black lives matter.” Obviously, choice is good; obviously, we shouldn’t fear homosexuals; obviously, the lives of black people matter; obviously, Christ should be the center of preaching. However, the brand in all these examples distorts the point.
If you want to know what the point of Christ-centered preaching is, you should listen to what the proponents of the perspective say:
Ultimately, a sermon is about how a text says we are to respond biblically to the FCF (Fallen Condition Focus) as it is experienced in our lives - identifying the gracious means that God provides for us to deal with the human brokenness that deprives us of the full experience and expression of his glory.1
Every time you expound a Bible text, you are not finished unless you demonstrate how it shows us that we cannot save ourselves and that only Jesus can. That means we must preach Christ from every text, which is the same as saying we must preach the gospel every time and not just settle for general inspiration or moralizing.2
Both of these descriptions focus on one point - the doctrine that salvation is by faith and not works. It’s a true and even pivotal point, but these authors go further. They argue that it is the governing point of all preaching, which is not a point with which even the Reformers would agree.
The pain of this discussion is that belief-centered preaching takes one argument (which is a true and powerful argument) and militates it against all others. Sure, you can talk about morality, obedience, condemnation, etc…, but the center point for every sermon must come back to this message about faith and works. Intentional or not, this has crowded out any robust preaching about morality.
The argument is quite clear as well - a failure to apprehend the grace of God is the root of our anxiety, stress, and brokenness. The great enemies to be slain are legalism and moralism, which need to be relinquished so that the Christian can fully rest in the forgiveness of Christ.
Rather than calling the approach “Christ-centered preaching” it would be more accurate to call it “belief-centered preaching,” or even “rest-centered preaching.” By correcting the way we believe in Christ, Christ-centered preaching holds that the difficulties of the Christian will be resolved. Yes, these sermons will often speak about the moral commands of Christ, but the only acceptable way of doing this is to follow the formula Keller suggests above: the law condemns you as a sinner, so you need to recognize that you cannot save yourself and trust Christ instead. Virtually no weight is ever given to the law as a guide into righteousness or restraint on evil. Not only is it avoided; it is suspect as a form of covert legalism.
In defining legalism, Keller writes:
Legalism is far more than the conscious belief that “I can be saved by my good works.” It is a web of attitudes of heart and character. It is the thought that God’s love for us is conditioned on something we can be or do. It is the attitude that I offer certain things - my ethical goodness, my relative avoidance of deliberate sin, my faithfulness to the Bible and the church - that support Christ’s work and contribute to God’s goodwill toward me.3
If this is the great evil, I shudder to think of how the following scriptures must be dissolved to make way for the corrective.
"If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love." (John 15:10)
"Know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations." (Deuteronomy 7:9)
"Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven." (Matthew 7:21)
"I love those who love me, and those who seek me diligently find me." (Proverbs 8:17)
Remember for my good, O my God, all that I have done for this people. (Nehemiah 5:19)
“Each one's work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward." (1 Corinthians 3:13-14)
"For God is not unjust so as to overlook your work and the love that you have shown for his name in serving the saints, as you still do." (Hebrews 6:10)
You will not hear these scriptures quoted without heavy qualification in evangelical churches.
These scriptures clearly say that you offer obedience to the Lord to please him (contribute to his goodwill) and obtain a reward. We can spend all day running theological circles around these statements to make them something other than their plain meaning, but this only proves we think ourselves more clever than God himself. The scriptures use statements like these (and thousands more) to motivate us in our diligent service to God. Even though God saves us entirely because of his grace and not our works, we deprive ourselves of the goodwill and blessing of God if we walk in opposition to the Spirit. In the end, our disobedience may be evidence of an unregenerate heart. Keller is treating the biblical perspective as a problem that causes anxiety and unhappiness rather than truth to be preached.
It is my contention that the proponents of Christ-centered preaching have diagnosed the culture exactly backward. Good luck finding even a phantom of legalism anywhere in the evangelical church. We have run away from the law faster than you can imagine, and yet our preaching endlessly pounds on legalism as the great demon.
For some reason “trying harder” has become the great enemy of the Christ-centered camp. We’re supposed to rely on Christ more, not try harder. Friends, you ought to try so hard that you feel you may burst at the seams, as the apostle Paul enjoins us:
"Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus." (Philippians 3:13-14)
Urging Christians to take up a life of passivity instead of effort borders on abuse. Infuse your effort with deep prayer and the strength of Christ, but try as hard as you can as long as the Lord gives you breath. When pastors repeat “rest on Christ” endlessly as a mantra, even though they may not mean to encourage passivity, the result is the same. We spend all day every day explaining away condemnation and guilt but never qualify the dangers of grace or peace.
Let me offer the evaluation of Spurgeon (often held up as a sterling example of Christ-centered preaching) regarding the church in his day:
Ah, sirs! there may have been a time when Christians were too precise, but it has not been in my day. There may have been such a dreadful thing as Puritanic rigidity, but I have never seen it. We are quite free from that evil now, if it ever existed. We have gone from liberty to libertinism. We have passed beyond the dubious into the dangerous, and none can prophesy where we shall stop. Where is the holiness of the church of God to-day? Ah! were she what she professed to be, she would be “fair as the moon, clear as the sun,” and then “terrible as an army with banners”; but now she is dim as smoking flax, and rather the object of ridicule than of reverence.4
If Spurgeon can offer this in 1865, how much further down this path have we gone today? By militating every day against the demons of legalism and moralism, we have actually forgotten law and morality in an age that desperately needs both of them.
Friends, we have given up the field, lowered our weapons, and permitted the enemy to overrun us, all in the name of peace and rest. We are yet the church militant, not the church glorified. There will be plenty of time for rest when we come to his house.
Many of my friends in this camp will protest this article as misunderstanding Christ-centered preaching, but I would ask you to look with honest eyes at the fruit of this ministry in the church as a whole. I believe you when you say that this is not what you were after, but you can tell a tree by its fruit. Like most methodologies, Christ-centered (really belief-centered, or rest-centered) preaching brings some useful correctives to the conversation (legalism really is a danger and we ought to avoid it), but if it is made into the scripturally mandated method, it will lead to the distortions we have seen. The scriptures speak in so many registers it is difficult to even comprehend their variety - James is not John, Paul is not Ezekiel. When we privilege one register over the others, we flirt with the sin of Marcion himself, who loved Paul so much that he discarded the rest of the scriptures.
Chapell, Christ-Centered Preaching, p 50-51.
Keller, Preaching, p 48.
Keller, Preaching, p 50.
Spurgeon, The Church's Present Condition.
I appreciate your efforts here. I am speaking from my own limited perspective.
I was part of a CCP church for almost 10 years, but it was tilted more toward legalism than anything else. The pastor placed a heavy heavy burden on church members to pursue holiness at all costs. This was valuable to me for many years but after leaving the church (hence the anonymous user name) we were shunned in all ways.
At least in my context and in my new church family context, I don't see CCP (even taken to it's furthest conclusion) as a relaxing of the law. I see many people around me who pursue holiness precisely because Jesus gives them rest.
This post (and coincidentally, their book on Rest) were very helpful when I began detangling the web of legalism vs rest in Jesus. https://theocast.org/blogs/theocast/how-pietism-ruins-good-works
I guess I'm saying I don't see the connection. A pastor leading his people to rest in Jesus will naturally teach them to obey all Jesus has commanded.
In fact, I see more of a subtle church movement toward pietism as described by the pastors in the blog post above. That our works don't save us, but by golly, we must self-improve ourselves and obey obey obey lest we lose our footing for Jesus.
Seems like a strawman argument at best and does a great disservice to the movement of CCP in the historical-theological backdrop of the 20th century. For example: you fail to mention that the advent of CCP in the 20th century through preachers like Lloyd-Jones and Boice was taking place during a time and theological landscape that had to answer against competing voices like the modernists, neo-orthodoxy, process theology, Vatican II, growing Pentecostalism, liberal ecumenical movements, and growing trends towards liberation or social-awareness theology. Further, you also fail to mention the evolution of CCP from greater developments in biblical theology that were tied to covenantal theology, especially against the growth of dispensational theology in the 1970s. All that to say, Chapel's book, especially because of its focus on the Fallen Condition Focus, did so well, and would still do well, to change the preaching of many evangelical churches because it placed the focus of preaching back on Christ. Let's be honest: is it better to talk about how Christ emerges from the story of David and Goliath as a conquering hero that saves God's people from an enemy they cannot defeat on their own, or are we going to jettison CCP, because of our obvious dislike of Keller, so that our megachurches can continue to teach how Goliath represents our biggest obstacles to happiness in life? I don't know about you, but as someone who grew up in churches much more like the latter and who is seeing peoples' lives changed through CCP, especially those who have never heard the gospel before, I think I'll stick with it. Should preaching stay there? No. But this article feels like punching at the normal suspects to get clicks. We get it...you don't like Keller.