Stephen Olford has had an illustrious career as an evangelist, pastor, preacher, and encourager of preachers. He is noted for his pastorates at Duke Street Baptist Church in Richmond, Surrey, England and Calvary Baptist Church in New York City. Currently he directs the Stephen F. Olford Center for Biblical Preaching in Memphis, Tennessee. Nearing the age of 80, he still maintains a full schedule of preaching and teaching. We sat down with him recently to talk about preaching.

Preaching: You are known for your strong emphasis on expository preaching. How have you come by your strong convictions regarding expository preaching?

Olford: In the first place, my training imparted to me the conviction that my only authority for speaking the Word of God was to speak the Word of God. "When the Bible speaks," said St. Augustine, "God speaks." After the teaching of Dr. Graham Scroggie who was my mentor, it was part of my Christian heritage to be shown the duties, wonders, power, and mostly, the authority of preaching the Word. Of course, I'm convinced that the Holy spirit only answers to the Word. Therefore if I wanted the anointing of the Spirit upon my preaching, it must be the Word. So number one was my training.

Number two was my experience in church work because, like many young preachers when I first started, I tried all the novelties of preaching. Always trying to go ahead of God, found that ultimately it produced no lasting fruit. That only those whose faith was solidly inculcated with the Word of God stood and became true disciples.

The third reason is, that with the passing of years, I've come to the conclusion -- we've got to treat the Bible as God's self-revelation in Christ. God has chosen in His wisdom and sovereignty to take language, time, and space in order to reveal Himself. Therefore, the only way in which my preaching can become the voice of God is to speak as accurately as I possibly can the voice of God in the Word. I have a little definition here that I use at the institute:

Expository preaching is the Spirit-empowered explanation and proclamation of the text of God's word with due regard to the historical, contextual, grammatical and doctrinal significance of the given message or given passage, with the specific object of invoking a Christ-transforming response.

Really it's the outworking of that that we use right here in our institute.

I feel there are three essential questions. First, "What does the Scripture say?" Second, "What does the Scripture mean?" Then, third, "what does the Scripture have to say to my heart and to my people?"

Preaching: You grew up as a missionary kid in Africa, then had a spiritual crisis that drove you from being an engineer into the ministry. You started in evangelism. How has that shaped your practice of expository preaching?

Olford: I believe, in God's sovereign grace and provision, He allowed me to travel that pathway. So far as being an engineer, I think that helped, because when you put bolts and screws together, you want to see something work. That's helped to give me careful precision in something that's workable and practical. Alongside of that, God has given me an evangelistic heart. Even though I enjoy the exposition of God's Word -- and that's the heart of everything -- it's always with an evangelistic heart.