After reading James A. Forbes, Jr.'s explanation of what anointing is and isn't, I am convinced that across cultural and denominational lines, pastor-preachers should not enter the pulpit without an anointing of the Holy Spirit. I also confess that this could well have sounded like so much gibberish to me before I read the published form of his 1986 lectures. "Anointed by the Holy Spirit," has carried for me the connotation of emotionalism or a lack of solid biblical-theological preparation.

Television has not lessened my prejudice. No matter how much we decry the communications wasteland of TV, the Babylonian captivity of certain Christian television networks, we cannot resist the temptation to tune into a charismatic spellbinder after an especially mind numbing deacons meeting at Old First Church. Fess up. So there you are, late at night with the shades drawn, listening to a well oiled, well healed Tele-Evangelist-Entrepreneur repeating his favorite mantra, "You have gotta have the anointing." It is enough to excise the word anointing from your personal lexicon, especially as it is used often by some TV preachers to promise the viewer the kind of material and spiritual success the preacher has obviously experienced. Such "anointed preachers" have not decreased on the American scene or screen since Forbes' 1986 lecture. Harry Baker Adams in his 1995 Beecher lectures, refereed to the same phenomenon without using the word "anointing":

"One TV preacher touted the advantages of being a Christian by pointing to all the blessings God had given to him, specifically the big cars he drove and the big home he lived in. Parenthetically, one can wonder about the wisdom of using such a personal example, since such luxuries were provided by the money of the people to whom he was speaking. It just might possibly have occurred to them that they were being exploited by the preacher. But from the enthusiastic response of the studio audience, apparently that thought had not bothered them."3

Not only aren't studio audience members bothered by such a material understanding of anointing, they seem attracted to it. For this very reason, when people talk about someone's anointed ministry or say to me, "You certainly are under the anointing this morning pastor." I am less than attracted. Then I began to doubt my doubts. Am I allowing my negative associations with a word keep me from fully entering in to an aspect of preaching and ministry that is not optional, but crucial?

James Forbes makes a convincing case that I have done just that. More importantly and positively, what he says about the Holy Spirit and preaching is a gift to the whole church. His is an emphasis whose time has come. We live in an age when technique and technology rule almost every human endeavor, including preaching. That, it seems to me is just the problem, preaching has become a human endeavor.

It is easy to become a practitioner instead of a prophet. I have read scores of books on the techniques that have made the great preachers great. Now I don't even have to read the books, I'm on-line. I have their facility at my finger tips. Even if I do it the old fashioned way, spending a life time honing my craft, there is something missing. Can the problem be a preaching ministry that is thoroughly prepared and proficient but without spiritual power? James Forbes, the pastor of Riverside Church in New York, believed that this is exactly the dilemma for too many of us: