Who Gets To Preach?

Just doing a little Bible study this morning.  The following are some thoughts from the commentary that I have been writing in order to process my thoughts on the book of Romans.  If you're interested in where this is coming from, read Romans 10:13-15 and then read the following.  

At it’s most basic form, preaching is merely a public proclamation of something.  If I am preaching, I am publicly announcing information about a specific topic.  Preaching isn’t something that’s necessarily done in the private of your own home, unless it is to a group of people.  You can’t preach to yourself, in other words!  Of course, there are those who get up in public and spout complete nonsense and sound like they are making things up, so I suppose this is where a little credibility would be good (coming from education and ordination), but there are PLENTY of people who are “educated” and “ordained” who have seem to have NO idea what the Bible says.  So how does the average teenager “preach”?  Is education important or not? 

            What if a person merely preaches what he or she knows?  I am a BIG fan of saying “I don’t know” whenever a person asks a question that I cannot answer.  In my short ministry career, I have made a great deal of use out of, “Let me get back to you on that?”  The bottom line is that you don’t have to be a Bible scholar in order to give some very basic good news, and THAT’S really good news!  John 9 contains a story about a guy who was healed of blindness by Jesus.  He was brought in and questioned by the Jewish religious authorities as to who healed him and what exactly happened.  This guy honestly didn’t know ANYTHING about Jesus.  The Jewish teachers told the guy that Jesus was a sinner.  The guy basically said, “I don’t know anything about that.  What I do know is that I was blind and now I see.”  He had already described the miracle of Jesus putting clay on his eyes in his first interview with the Pharisees. 

            The question that we have to ask ourselves is this: What do I KNOW about Jesus?  Here’s the answer to that question.  You and I know our own testimony.  I know my story of how I came to faith.  I have stories of what has appeared to me to be supernatural intercession in my life.  There has been provision that I just can’t account for with mere timing.  There are too many times when “enough” fell out of literally nowhere.  I know WHO Jesus is.  I know WHAT Jesus did.  I know WHY Jesus did it.  I know the RESULT of my decision.  I know the AFFECT of faith in my life.  I know the CHANGE that has resulted in my life as a result of my decision to follow Christ.  ANYONE can do that!  Lots of “preachers” do a really bad job of it!  I have heard teenagers do a better job of presenting the Gospel to their peers than I ever could and I LOVE to see it happen (of course I taught them everything they know…hehe…just kidding).  Preaching is mostly telling.  Yes, the preacher on Sunday morning is probably going to be just a little more studied and will have researched the “nerdy” aspects of the Bible prior to preaching, but he’s teaching doctrine and theology.  That type of preaching is totally necessary for building people up on knowledge, BUT teaching theology and doctrine does not SAVE people.  When people hear and respond in a personal way to a personal message of salvation, they find their eternities are turned upside down!  Again, ANYONE can deliver such a message.