Tim Keller in his primer on preaching (simply called Preaching) says that the difference between a poor sermon and a good sermon is on us. All poor sermons are the preacher’s fault. But, he says, the difference between a good sermon and a great sermon is on the Holy Spirit. Only the Spirit can take our careful exegesis, skillful apologetic, poetic turns, heartfelt pleas, gentle humor, and make Christ real to the hearts and minds of our listeners.

But is there anything we can do about this, any way we can open our preaching wider to this alchemy of the Spirit?

Beyond Rhetoric: What Preaching Needs

I made an aside in an article I published for Preaching Today in September 2024. The article, called “Good Talking,” was about rhetoric and preaching. In it, I made the claim that the three main elements of classic rhetoric – ethos, pathos, logos – still hold for the work of preaching: that despite the negative connotations we currently have with the word rhetoric, the basic stuff of rhetoric still and always matters.

I mentioned in that article that Apollos was the one person in Scripture who was, almost certainly, trained in classic rhetoric. Luke in Acts admires his oratorical skill, to the point of almost bragging on him. And yet, despite Apollo’s dazzling speechcraft and utter convincingness, he lacked something. Two laypeople, Priscilla and Aquilla, saw that lack, pulled him aside, and explained to him “the way of God more adequately.” Something was amiss in either Apollo’s content or his character (see Acts 18:24-28).

A Fourth Element of Rhetoric: Spirit-Filled Preaching

The next chapter in Acts suggests what’s missing: some knowing of—knowing either personally or theologically, or maybe both—the Holy Spirit. Apollos, perhaps, had never been instructed in the ways of the Spirit, or perhaps had never been filled with the Spirit. Or both.

Thus my aside:

Perhaps for Christian speakers the scriptures add a distinctly fourth element to classic rhetoric: be filled and in step with the Holy Spirit, and learn to lead others likewise. But this would take another article to explore.

This is that other article.

Experiencing the Holy Spirit’s Alchemy

All preachers have had the experience Keller describes: a good sermon that never rose to greatness, maybe soon followed by a good sermon that caught the world (or at least the congregation) on fire. (Most of us, I suspect, have also had a poor sermon that God used anyway, but I’m trying here to stick with Keller’s neat little aphorism).

Some of my “best” sermons never, to my knowledge, ignited a single heart. I remember one on the Christ hymn in Philippians 2. I put the work in, hours of it. I field-tested the sermon with some people I trusted, who told me it was among my best. I got the sermon in my gut, and preached it with conviction.

Afterward, I walked out into the church foyer. I expected a flood of repentant gratitude from congregants. I expected their astonishment and fresh resolve. Several minutes passed. No one said anything. At last, I prompted a response. “As I said in my sermon this morning, our own pride both damps our experience of Christ and muffles our witness for him.”

“Huh?” the person said. “I don’t remember you saying that.”

But another time, at a large conference, I preached a good-enough sermon on John 16, a notoriously difficult text. I made an aside about the older brother in the Prodigal Son story. I said there’s a simple test for knowing whether you’re the Older Brother: you’re angry, so very very angry. And you think your anger is doing God a favor. It was that quick. It wasn’t even in my notes.

The Spirit fell. First one, and then three, and then dozens, and then hundreds, and then thousands poured down, uninvited by me, to the front of the church and spontaneously repented, with groans and tears and loud cries. I stood there stunned, and then walked off the platform, my sermon “unfinished.”

The difference between those two sermons was clearly the Holy Spirit. But was there anything I might have done in the first one—or, more to the point, might do in the future—to preach more of the second kind of sermon? To create a kind of backdraft into which the Spirit might rush?

There’s no hurrying or forcing or guaranteeing the move of the Spirit. It never works that way. The Spirit, like the wind, moves where he will. But are there ways we might heighten or deepen the possibility of such a move—doors and windows we can open, holes in the roof we can make, that invite the ruach to enter?

Creating Space for the Spirit

A good place to get at this question is the story in Acts 8 where Philip, a layman like Priscilla and Aquila, travels to Samaria and preaches the gospel. Luke doesn’t record a single word he said. Some scholars think the good doctor found Philip’s homiletic flat and dull, maybe lacking the elements of classic rhetoric, and didn’t bother capturing any of it. But Luke does record the result.

When the crowds heard Philip and saw the signs he performed, they all paid close attention to what he said. For with shrieks, impure spirits came out of many, and many who were paralyzed, or lame were healed. So there was great joy in that city. (Acts 8:5-8)

This is tent-revival stuff. Clearly, it seems, the Holy Spirit is at work. So much so that Luke’s next story is about a locally famous sorcerer and thorough-going pagan named Simon who, so taken by Philip’s message and wonder-working powers, professes belief in Jesus and is baptized (Acts 8:9-13; later, things go awry with Simon). If that’s not the Spirit’s doing, what is?

But Luke’s story then takes a sharp and surprising turn:

When the apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and John to Samaria. When they arrived, they prayed for the new believers there that they might receive the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit had not yet come on any of them; they had simply been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then Peter and John placed their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit. (Acts 8:14-17; my emphasis)

Conversion Beyond Words

Luke makes a crucial distinction here: accepting the Word of God is different from receiving the Holy Spirit. And this—troubling, fascinating: manifestations we often associate with a move of the Spirit (exorcisms, healings, mass conversion)—apparently all happened without the Holy Spirit, at least without the Spirit coming upon any of Philip’s listeners.

It’s likely Philip himself operated in the power of the Spirit. But it took the big guns from Jerusalem to release a kind of second Pentecost there, for the Spirit to come in power upon the Samaritans themselves. What to make of this?

Two things stand out: Our preaching can produce extraordinary results even if the preaching itself is oratorically so-so; and the Holy Spirit can show up in our midst and yet still not be poured out on a single person listening, even as they witness the Spirit’s work.

Or, put more simply: Someone can accept the Word of God and be genuinely converted and yet still not receive the fullness of the Holy Spirit and be genuinely transformed (which, to digress, appears to be the problem with Simon the Sorcerer).

Or, put more alarmingly: If our measure for someone coming to faith is that they “believe the Bible,” and if our measure for the Holy Spirit’s presence is “signs and wonders,” we may get all this and still have a church of Spirit-less people.

Which brings me back to my original question, with a slight but important addition: Is there anything a preacher can do to heighten or deepen a move of the Spirit, not just in our midst, but upon and within those who listen?

My first response is no, there’s nothing we can do, and to hide behind Keller: Simply bring your best, and leave the rest to God.

My second, and nervous, response is yes. There is something we can do.

There’s a hint about that something in the Acts 8 story, when Peter and John come from Jerusalem to Samaria, witness what’s happening there, and pray the Spirit upon the people. These two, along with James the brother of Jesus, are the top leaders in the Jerusalem church, which means they’re the top leaders in the church. They’re both Apostles. Peter, the rock, the “first pope,” is the one to whom Jesus gave the keys to his Kingdom, and upon whom he’s building his church. And John is the one Jesus loves, and maybe his closest friend.

Rumors reach Jerusalem that revival’s broken out in Samaria. Mass conversion, exorcisms, healings. The leaders in Jerusalem need to see it for themselves. They dispatch Peter and John, who see what’s happening, notice what’s still missing, and lay their hands on the Samaritans so that they receive the Holy Spirit.

But who needed a fuller conversion here? Certainly, the Samaritans needed more than just believing the “word of God” and experiencing sign and wonders.

But maybe Peter and John needed a fresh and deeper conversion, too. The last time these two were in Samaria, the people there didn’t welcome them. John and his brother James were angry about this, and asked Jesus, “Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?”

Jesus rebukes them (see Luke 9:51-55).

Now here is John again, and with him Peter, back among the Samaritans. Here they are again, calling down fire from heaven. But this time it’s the Holy Spirit they invite, to fall like tongues of flame.

The Preacher’s Heart: Love and the Spirit

Maybe their enacting a kind of Acts 2—a second Pentecost in Samaria—was necessary for them to believe in their hearts that God fully intended to pour out his Spirit on all people. This was, after all, what God had promised through the Prophet Joel and reaffirmed through Peter at the first Pentecost.

Maybe God needed to do in Peter and John the one thing that opens, widest and deepest, the heart of any preacher to the Wind of the Spirit and his tongues of flame: To cause us to love with God’s own love those we preach and minister to. To desire above all God’s fullness in and for our listeners.

If there is a secret to inviting the Holy Spirit to dwell among us and to dwell within us, it’s what John himself will later write, and in a context all about receiving the Holy Spirit:

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.

And, we might add, everyone who loves makes God known.

When I think back on my over 30 years of preaching, too much of it was driven by a desire for my listeners to love me. Only lately, and still haltingly, is my desire to love them. (This, too, would require another article – to explore the taint dwelling in every preacher’s heart, the mixedness of our motives, where we want people to desire Jesus, but also want them to really like us).

But every time we preachers love, with God’s own love, those we preach to, we stand as a fierce beckoning, almost irresistible: “Come, Holy Spirit.”

Mark Buchanan is an Associate Professor of Pastoral Theology at the Ambrose Seminary in Calgary, Alberta.