It was the Spirit who emboldened Jesus to declare the Kingdom to those who knew His humble beginning best. The same Spirit has guided and guarded the scripture which proclaims the Kingdom to all people. Why then do we doubt that the Holy Spirit is necessary to preach with transforming power?

"If we intend to preach the gospel of Jesus the Christ, who calls us to serve the kingdom in our time, we need all the power that is available to us. Given the reality of a culture that has lost contact with the living Spirit of the One who announced to us the vision of the kingdom in the first place, we need preaching that is more than aesthetically delightful. Mere ranting and raving and excitation from some spirited pastor will not suffice. We need some sense of the Spirit accompanied by power sufficient to interrupt a decline in the sense of the reality of God."6

This very note is missing from so much that is being taught and written about preaching. I read Dr. Forbes lectures some ten years after they were delivered, but they struck and strike a responsive cord far beyond the conventional wisdom about sermon making. I read the lectures straight through and kept thinking about the description of preaching as twenty minutes to wake the dead. Forbes takes that definition very seriously; for him it is not some old saying about an apathetic audience. It is an apt description of what God is up to in the world and what God's heralds are called to do by the agency of the Holy Spirit.

Professor Forbes has told his preaching students for years that, "preaching is an event in which the living word of God is proclaimed in the power of the Holy Spirit. It is done by a member or members of the covenant community." This seems like a very good definition of preaching, but becomes even stronger when he adds this amendment for future homiletical classes. "Preaching is bearing witness to the resurrecting power of God, which extends itself into the regions of death, so that new life in Christ breaks forth in all dimensions of the created order."7 Now that makes clearer to me the goal of preaching and the theater of preaching.

The realm we preach in every Sunday includes the walking death of loneliness, grief, infidelity and oppression. Its usually laundered, starched and well-disguised in us and in our people, but it is still death. Once we admit the arena, then we know people saying to us: nice sermon pastor or novel approach is not and cannot be the goal. When we figure out that the goal is Resurrection, then we know it can be brought in me and us only by the Holy Spirit. This means my yielding to the leadership and guidance of the Spirit and my praying for the same yielding to be done by the covenant community. Forbes counsels us not to be surprised by the response of fear:

"...afraid because we are in a culture where spiritual realities are not tangible enough to make sense to talk about; fearful that talking about the Spirit will require some growth in discipline, growth in dedication, growth in yieldedness; afraid that talking about the Spirit will take the organization out of our hands; afraid that the wind of the Spirit will blow in directions we have not considered; afraid to talk; afraid to be open; afraid to preach; afraid to let the Spirit be at the heart of our ministry: then we cannot participate in the ministry of raising the dead, for we are scared of the power by which it shall come. While it is natural at first to experience some degree of fear, we should remind ourselves that love casts out fear."8

That love also breaks down theological and denominational barriers. Forbes, a Pentecostal, stresses that this anointing is not some brand new experience that requires a brand new vocabulary. This is not an alien spirit -- this is the One who has attended our conversion, growth and call to ministry. We are already in the Spirit; we are humbly praying for more of the Spirit in us.

"No, we can't be like the little boy whose mother wanted him to ask for the molasses correctly. He kept saying, 'Mama, I want some 'lasses' and the mother would correct him, saying, 'You mean, molasses." He said, 'Well, I can't ask for molasses if I ain't had no 'lasses."9

Several years ago when I was working on a project dealing with pastoral preaching, I traveled to New York from Nashville to interview Dr. Forbes. He had a reputation for prophetic preaching, and I wanted to know his view on the relationship of the prophetic and the pastoral.

What I remember most was his manner -- gentle, humble, yet confident. He reassured me that both emphases come from the same Spirit. It is not a matter of adding mo to the lasses. The tender care of the people of God and the speaking truth to the powers of the present age are of one proclamation meant to raise the dead and that can only be done by the Holy Spirit.

1Charles E. Jefferson, The Building of the Church, (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1913) page. 250.

2Joseph Sittler, The Ecology of Faith, (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1961), pages 8, 37.

3Harry Baker Adams, Preaching: The Burden and the Joy, (St. Louis: Chalice Press, 1996), page 54.

4James Forbes, The Holy Spirit and Preaching, (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1989), page 25.

5Ibid., page 26

6Ibid., page 25

7Ibid., page 56

8Ibid., page 78, 79

9Ibid.