Preaching in Serious Times: Interview with James Emery White

Which brings up something else. When you’re planning your preaching menu, you need to have a combination of what I call “vertical and horizontal series.” A horizontal series is one that’s meeting felt needs—relationships, parenting, that kind of thing. A vertical series might be on the atonement, the identity of Jesus, the character of God. What I have found is that you can hook people with the horizontal series, but they get saved on the vertical. And you’ve got to have a steady diet of both and know when to do them and have that sense of: “OK, we’ve done a couple of horizontal. We really need a vertical.” Or, “We’ve been doing a lot of vertical. We might need to do a horizontal.”

When I’ve talked about that with other pastors at various conferences, I just see light bulbs go off. It makes sense to them, and it helps them look at their menu and plot it accordingly. And I think that what tends to work the best is when you can pull them both off simultaneously. I think that’s when you’re really reading culture—when you are able to bring about the horizontal and the vertical together in a single series and in a single way of exploring a topic. That’s transformational.

Preaching: Obviously yours is what people would call a “contemporary church.”

White: Off the charts and on steroids! (laughter) It’s true.

Preaching: One of the caricatures of contemporary churches is the misconception that such churches aren’t biblical in their preaching.

White: I know. And they don’t do discipleship. If you’re evangelistic you can’t be doing discipleship. Or if you’re contemporary you’re obviously throwing out orthodoxy in order to get warm bodies or you’re not being biblical in your preaching or, you know, you’re not doing exposition. And on and on it goes. I’ve heard it all, and it just ticks me off.

Actually some of the best topical series are indeed biblical exposition. Just because it’s topical doesn’t mean you’re not doing the Bible. You’re just packaging what the Bible has to say on that particular topic. There’s a word for that. It’s called theology. And so if you’re really doing it right, you’re pulling together everything there is on this particular subject and presenting the full counsel of God.

I think you can do verse-by-verse through Romans for 25 weeks and be superficial and not be biblical, either because you didn’t do the exegesis right or you didn’t help people apply it or whatever. It’s a question of: are you indeed helping people understand the Scriptures, understand what God would have to say to them about their lives and in a way that they’re applying it, in a way that they’re becoming more like Jesus? The goal is not head knowledge.