Contemporary homiletical thought manifests little regard for the teaching pulpit. Yet this kind of preaching need not be the proverbial information dump. A realistic, useful and quite biblical teaching-preaching model can be developed, but first one must ask: "What does it mean to teach?" "What is biblical learning?"

All of us who think often and care deeply about preaching have heard it, cringing inside -- the caricature of the "seminary classroom pulpit." It sometimes comes from a bitter churchgoer, a disillusioned ministerial student or a cynical skeptic outside the faith. Decried is the over-attention to detail, the hubris of the ivory tower, and that gravest of all homiletical sins -- a fatal lack of relevance.

Caricatures, to be that, must be grounded in an element of reality. Perhaps there are, somewhere, preachers who subject their dozing congregations to lectures on the validity of identifying some of the Apostle Paul's aorists as ingressive or explications of the names and particular characteristics of all the gates of Jerusalem during Jesus' ministry. However, caricatures are also by definition exaggerated. We surely know of no preacher who sets out to bore his listeners or intentionally strives for minutiae-enhanced irrelevance.

Caricatures aside, there is still a place for the teaching preacher; one who carefully and sequentially communicates God's eternal truth with clarity and relevance. For the purpose of this article several presuppositions are assumed. We acknowledge that:

- preachers are called to "preach the word"

- there are various kinds of preaching, determined by both text and audience

- of these varied kinds of preaching two are most easily identified: 1) proclamation-oriented (or evangelistic) and 2) pastoral (or edification-oriented)

- in many, if not most, evangelical churches the primary pulpit event is still directed toward believers, and therefore the preaching may be identified as pastoral (Clearly, this excludes today's significant number of churches and preachers committed to a seeker-driven philosophy)

- where the preacher is preaching week-in and week-out to believers, his primary scriptural responsibility in preaching the word is to teach God's truth to God's people

- in any local church the teaching tasks are spread over all the various ministries of church life, but the pulpit should be the principal source of the teaching ministry

Quite properly then, the conscientious "pastoral preacher" is unwilling, in spite of caricatures, to forsake this primary task of pastoral preaching -- teaching God's people God's truth.

But this commitment to preaching that teaches presents an imposing question: "What does it mean to teach, and how can we know that, and what evidence is there to investigate whether our people have genuinely learned?" Sid Buzzell, sacrificing etiquette for conciseness, puts it this way, "If they ain't learnin', you ain't teachin'!"

And so, before we consider how one can preach in a manner that teaches, we must examine what it means to learn according to God's Word. We will then consider various concepts of learning levels from the secular realm. We will suggest a structure that delineates levels of learning in a spiritual or biblical sense. Finally, we will present a grid for sermon preparation to enhance preaching that facilitates biblical learning.