Wale: Preaching is the proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ through the God-gifted personality of the preacher. If you take the personality of the preacher away from the proclamation of God’s Word, then you will have a robotic preacher in the pulpit! For this reason, I usually tell fellow professing Christians and those that I help, who aspire to be better preachers and pastors, that the ability to preach is a gift and cannot be taught in a seminary or Bible College (you may disagree with me, that’s okay!). The Lord in His sovereign will and grace gives the gift of preaching. The Apostles Peter and Paul and Deacons Stephen and Philip were particularly gifted preachers in the New Testament Church. When this gift has been identified first by the person and then validated by the local church, he may then be helped in-house within the local church or sent to a training school to help ‘hone and oil’ the gift. I repeat again that preaching is a gift and if you are not gifted, you do not have any business near the pulpit.
Pastor Thabiti Anyabwile in his book, Finding Faithful Elders and Deacons writes of Paul’s criterion “able to teach” in 1 Tim 3:2: “this ability is not limited to public speaking from the pulpit. Some men are not exceptional public speakers but they are teaching and counselling the people around them from the Scriptures all the time. Such men should not be disqualified from the office of elder”.
I agree wholeheartedly with our dear brother Thabiti that some of us are not exceptional public speakers like I have posited above and if this sounds harsh, please forgive me, but we have too many men in the pulpit today who shouldn’t be preaching but have been pushed either by their local church or their own greediness.
The gift of personality is necessary for better and clearer communication, and while accurate exegesis of Biblical texts must be the same, the illustrations, amplifications, and applications of the same exegesis will be different because of the personality and cultural experiences of the preacher. A biblically sound preacher does not remove Jesus Christ from his sermon but preaches Christ crucified and resurrected from the text and theologically dances through his personality and culture to endear listeners to the Lord and tear down strongholds of gospel rejection.
When the Capuchin monks from Portugal sailed into the coastal town of Badagry near Lagos in the 15th Century and began to snatch black people away into slavery under very dehumanising conditions, the major bait thrown at these people was the Bible. The monks baited the locals with the gospel, threw them on board their vessels, and sailed across the Atlantic Ocean. These people, under extremely difficult conditions, began to gather together each evening after back-breaking hard work on the plantations to worship the same God and study the same Bible used as bait on them years back. Obviously, the manner of approach to the same God who has created both skin colours will be different. We must never mince our words over this. It is the blatant truth. These people saw and served the Lord Almighty through the prism of life’s hard knocks. They memorised the Bible and wrote their notes through calloused palms and fingers, having learned literacy from their White slave masters. History is awash with heart-warming narratives of Black preachers during the Slavery Era who used their God-gifted sharp memories, imageries they had seen during the day working in the fields and day-to-day social-economic drama. to aid their proclamation of the gospel to their own people. They prayed together sitting atop sugar canes, yet their lives weren’t sweet. Sorrow enveloped them. Their bodies were scarred, and manacled. But they kept worshipping the Lord. From amongst them, the Lord birthed black preachers who preached the glorious and wondrous narratives of the redemptive history of God.
Ryan: And birthed a unique preaching tradition with distinctive biblical emphases and unique personality styles that passionately convey the message!
Wale: To then say that there is no such thing as “Black preaching” is an attempt to delete history. These people, upon their freedom, formed their own churches and began to worship God and fellowship together and just like the church in Acts 2:42, “And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” One such gathering was the First African Church planted by a former slave, Peter Durrett, and his wife in 1790 and now known as First African Baptist Church in Lexington, Kentucky. The Lord in His benevolence gave gifts to these people to help tell the gospel narrative through their own experiences and that is Black preaching. They told their stories from an African perspective, removed from their continent of birth. They marinated their sadness in old choruses like “He’s got the whole world in His hands” and “There is a balm in Gilead”. Singing during Black preaching is a form of communication which is rooted in African culture but not only associated with preaching, so when an average Black man or woman receives salvation of eternal life in Jesus Christ, they usually tell their testimony of Jesus Christ by singing. I personally love this particular chorus “Thank you for saving me, thank you my Lord”.
Black preaching is different from White preaching because the former is preached uniquely through the lens of centuries of documented historical social and collective suffering that bear a resemblance to Israel’s sojourn in Egypt. Hence why there is profound joy and happiness from the pulpit of a Black preacher singing, “I will sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea.” I enjoy listening to a lot of White preachers and thank the Lord for their gift of preaching and ministry of the Word but there’s something endearing about Black preaching which captivates your attention from start to the finish of the sermon. I must emphasise that I see no competition between Black or White preaching, but the sovereign prerogative of the Lord to uniquely equip and enrich his people to better proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ from different angles, yet with the same expected end: the honour and adoration of the Lord. Let somebody shout, “Hallelujah!”
The next article in the series features a question regarding those, including black people, who say things like "I don't listen to black preachers, because they aren't 'sound'". Come back for part four - "In Defence of Black Preachers".
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