What Makes Preaching Good?
Preaching remains central to the life of the church. Across cultures, denominations, and centuries, God has chosen the preached word as a primary means by which he gathers, shapes, and sustains his people. Yet in a world where endless stream of podcasts, conferences, and stylistic debates are available at our fingertips, pastors still ask a deceptively simple question: What actually makes preaching good?
From one angle, the answer seems subjective. Having preached in Indonesian and Australian churches, I have found that what might resonate in one church context may fall flat or totally misunderstood in another. Cultural expectations, personality, and delivery styles vary widely. And yet, beneath these differences, I believe there are enduring theological and pastoral commitments that allow preaching to be evaluated—not merely by effectiveness or popularity, but by faithfulness.
It goes without saying that good preaching is not about performance or novelty. Good preaching is about proclaiming God’s word in a way that is faithful, clear, timely, and transformative. In what follows, I suggest that good preaching brings together four inseparable qualities: theological depth, rhetorical clarity, contextual engagement, and practical application.
Theological Depth: Letting Scripture Set the Agenda
At its heart, preaching is an act of submission—to God’s word, not the preacher’s ideas. Scripture is not raw material for religious creativity, to be twisted and turned according to our own fancy; it is God-breathed revelation (2 Tim 3:16–17). Good preaching allows the text to speak on its own terms, setting the agenda for the sermon’s message, tone, and aim.
While the Bible is not a systematic theology textbook, it is theological to the core. It reveals who God is, what he has done in salvation history, and how he relates to his people in covenant. Faithful preaching therefore does more than explain verses or extract moral lessons; it places hearers before the living God who is actively working out his purposes.
Crucially, all Scripture finds its fulfilment in Jesus Christ. Our family just completed reading through Luke this year, and I was impressed once again reading about the risen Christ teaching a couple of deflated disciples on the road to Emmaus, that the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings ultimately testify to him (Lk 24:27). It reminds me of the truth that to preach the Bible without leading people toward Christ is to miss its redemptive purpose. This does not mean every sermon must sound the same or force a simplistic Christ-reference. As Sidney Greidanus helpfully argues, there are multiple legitimate ways to move from text to Christ—through redemptive-historical development, typology, promise-fulfilment, or thematic trajectories. What matters is orientation, not formula.
Theological depth, then, is not merely the product of rigorous exegesis. It is also shaped by the preacher’s own lived communion with Christ and humble immersion in the life of God’s people. Doctrine proclaimed without devotion soon becomes hollow.
Rhetorical Clarity: Loving People Through Communication
If theological depth asks what we say, rhetorical clarity asks how we say it. A sermon may be exegetically precise and doctrinally rich, but if it is unclear, inaccessible, or poorly structured, it fails in its pastoral task. Early in my ministry, I had found that this was one of my greatest weaknesses (among many!).
A mist in the pulpit is a fog in the pew. Clarity is not the enemy of depth; it is its servant. The apostle Paul himself requested prayer “that I may make it clear, which is how I ought to speak” (Col 4:4). Clear preaching honours both the authority of the word and the needs of the hearers.
Good sermons are unified around a central idea derived from the text. They have direction, movement, and purpose. One of my preaching mentors once gave me feedback, “What you’re saying there is not wrong, but what does that have to do with main point of the text?” He was right. I had committed the sin of overloading my congregation with too much information, too little or no connection with the passage.
Good sermons use language that is concrete rather than abstract, illustrations illuminate rather than distract, and theological terms are either explained or replaced with biblical imagery and/or contemporary allusions. Preaching is an oral event—meant to be heard, felt, and remembered—not a lecture to be footnoted.
Clarity is also an act of love. It refuses to hide behind jargon or intellectual display. Instead, it removes unnecessary obstacles so that people can encounter Christ in the word. As John Stott famously argued, the preacher must act as a bridge—standing with one foot in the biblical world and the other in the contemporary one.
Contextual Engagement: Preaching for This People, Now
Faithful preaching is always local and timely. While God’s word is unchanging, our congregations are not abstract audiences. They are real people shaped by a complex and particular set of cultural pressures, social narratives, and spiritual struggles.
Contextual engagement requires the preacher to be a careful reader of both Scripture and society. This means recognising how forces such as secularism, expressive individualism, consumerism, or anxiety shape the hearts of hearers. Without this pastoral awareness, sermons risk becoming generic—true, but untethered from lived experience.
Jesus is model par excellence for this kind of contextual discernment. For example, he speaks differently to Nicodemus than to the Samaritan woman, differently to the Pharisees than to his disciples—not because the gospel changes, but because his audience does. Likewise, Paul becomes “all things to all people” for the sake of the gospel (1 Cor 9:22), adapting his approach without compromising the message.
Contextual engagement is not about chasing relevance; it is about incarnational faithfulness. It reflects the God who speaks into particular times and places, addressing his people here and now.
Practical Application: Inviting Obedience Through Grace
Finally, good preaching presses toward response. Faithful exposition does not end with understanding but is geared towards transformation. It’s the ‘so what?’ question. Every sermon implicitly answers the question, how should we now live before God?
In recent years I’ve been especially trying to grow in my sermon application. I have learned the hard way that application is not an afterthought or a moral checklist. It flows organically from the text, showing how God’s promises ground God’s commands. It is specific enough to be actionable, yet gracious enough to account for the diversity of people in the room.
A gospel-centred application must be redemptive. Without the gospel, application collapses into legalism or despair. As Bryan Chapell rightly insists, obedience must be rooted in grace—what Christ has done for us and what the Spirit continues to do in us. Good application does not merely tell people what to do; it helps them trust Christ more deeply and follow him more faithfully.
Preaching as Faithful Witness
Good preaching is not flashy or formulaic. It is faithful proclamation—rooted in Scripture, centred on Christ, shaped by love for people, and empowered by the Spirit. Theological depth, rhetorical clarity, contextual engagement, and practical application are not competing priorities; they belong together.
Week after week, God uses ordinary preachers and imperfect sermons to accomplish extraordinary purposes. Our task is not to manufacture results, but to steward the word with humility, clarity, and courage—trusting that God will do what only he can do.
