Last week The Front Porch joined forces with The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and the Kentucky Baptist Convention to host “Tell Your Story: Expositional Preaching in the African-American Context.” The event served as a pre-conference for the Expositor’s Summit, Southern’s annual conference on preaching. We had the honor of inviting Victor Sholar, senior pastor of Main Street Baptist Church in Lexington, KY; H.B. Charles II, senior pastor of Jacksonville, Florida’s Shiloh Metropolitan Baptist Church; and Curtis Woods, Executive Director for Convention Relations and Communications for the Kentucky Baptist Convention. Our brother Kevin Smith, Assistant Professor of Christian Preaching at Southern, did a wonderful job hosting us and spurring us on in discussion.
You can find the audio from the pre-conference at SBTS’ website. Each talk was rich in its own way and each man left a deposit of grace with the attendees. The attendees were attentive, encouraging, thoughtful, and joyful. I hope Southern makes this an annual event because these are the kinds of gatherings at which ministries are strengthened and friendships forged.
During the panel discussion an issue arose that’s had me thinking since that time. Someone asked a question related to the difference between preaching as performance and preaching out of one’s personality. The questioner seemed concerned about how to identify the line that shouldn’t be crossed. After hearing so much about authenticity, about the authority of scripture and the divine scrutiny that attends our preaching, the question was really for us all.
As I think about the question, several passages from the Apostle Paul’s letters come to mind. In these words we find both a prescription for personality and a prohibition against performance. Read more
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