“Pastor, how do you do it? I would have never been able to understand that psalm without you?”

I put forth my best Eddie Haskell “who me?” face of humility, and said, “Well, the Lord is good, isn’t He?”

Driving home that Sunday I found myself comfortably easing into a sense of deep satisfaction. I had done my job, after all. The preparation, the parsing, the illustrations, the quotes, all came together in a brilliant burst of homiletical splendor, and this particular woman had benefited from it. Or had she? To be honest, my sermon did little more than enslave her to her “faithful pastor.”

If the goal of ministry is to “equip the church for works of service,” then how should we preachers feel about a comment like “I would have never been able to understand that psalm without you?” Sure our egos purr like a kitten with that sweet stroke, but what about the dear saint who has just confessed an inability to discover the riches of Scripture on her own? Shouldn’t our preaching lead our listeners to become better and better interpreters? Won’t good preaching make others less dependent on the preachers?

My goal in this article is to walk the tightrope between sermons that bless and sermons that bully. I have spent too much time on the latter side of that divide, and I want to go public with how I’ve done it. If you find yourself using these techniques, I invite you to come clean with me.

1. Tyrannizing our people with Greek and Hebrew will make them need us more than their Bibles.

If we are not careful, one of the most potentially bullying phrases we utter could start with the following words: “Now in the Greek this term means…” I remember sitting with a good friend who had told me why he did believed that tongues and prophecy were not for today. His pastor had just done a twelve-week series on spiritual gifts and had concluded that the miraculous gifts had ceased. I have no axe to grind in this article concerning one’s theology on that issue, but I am concerned with how my friend arrived at this conclusion, via his pastor’s teaching.

I asked if I could borrow the sermon tapes, something my friend was happy to do, and within fifteen minutes, I could tell why my friend was so convinced. This particular pastor could not speak for two minutes without referencing a Greek term or phrase. Thinking that the countless references to the “original language” probably played heavily in my friend’s thinking, I asked him how his pastor had so effectively persuaded him to this point of view. His response confirmed my suspicion, “Are you kidding? Didn’t you hear all the Greek he quoted?”