I’m always on the lookout for preaching role models. For a long time, I mainly looked to “star preachers” from the US.

  • How do they preach?
  • How do they connect Scripture with the world people live in today?
  • How do they win people’s attention?

I often asked myself these and other questions so I could draw inspiration from them.

Over time, though, a thought occurred to me: If I want to follow Jesus in every area of life, why not in preaching too? Why don’t I look first and foremost at the way Jesus spoke?

Of course, we live in a very different time today. Jesus didn’t speak in classrooms. He didn’t develop a curriculum or give grades. Nor did he use digital technology like iPads to help him speak.

So we can’t transfer everything one-to-one from Jesus to us today. But what can we learn from him?

In my research, I came across the three-part blog series “How to Preach Like Jesus” by the well-known pastor Rick Warren. He lays out what he sees as the three most important aspects of Jesus’ preaching.¹

First, he stresses that a sermon has to start with the world people live in today. Jesus spoke about people’s needs, hurts and interests. He responded to questions or pressing problems from the crowd.

Second, he points out that Jesus was very practical. In the well-known Sermon on the Mount, Jesus talks about worry, broken relationships, controlling anger, divorce and adultery. But he also talks about other topics, like how to pray and how to deal with enemies.

Third, Warren argues for keeping the content of sermons interesting and simple. Jesus used stories as a powerful tool. He was a storyteller, and that way he appealed to people’s emotions and memory. At the same time, Jesus used simple language. He preferred clarity over complexity.

When I read Warren’s thoughts, I was thrilled at first. Wow! How practical Jesus was. He captivated both individuals and the crowds. But after I had thought about his points for a while, I started to have questions as well.

Isn’t Warren drawing a picture of Jesus’ preaching that looks more like the way most “star preachers” speak today than like the way Jesus spoke?

Can we only learn from Jesus as a preacher on this pragmatic level?

Don’t these three points distort the way Jesus proclaimed his message?

After all, he stood in a Jewish prophetic tradition and questioned the state of society in his day, didn’t he?

Then I read some thoughts by the Franciscan Richard Rohr on Jesus’ preaching. He deliberately emphasized a very different side of Jesus:

“In general, we can see that Jesus’ style is almost exactly the opposite of modern televangelism or even the mainline church approach of […] inspiring advice and workable solutions for daily living. Jesus is too much the Jewish prophet to merely stabilize the status quo with platitudes. Rather, he destabilizes the false assumptions on which the whole question or one’s own worldview is built.”²

The more I thought about it, the more I noticed a tension opening up inside me. So was Jesus a storyteller who took people’s needs seriously and gave them practical advice? Or didn’t he rather stand in the Jewish prophetic tradition, challenging society’s ideas and making things quite uncomfortable for people who were mostly privileged?

My answer was this: Jesus spoke in both ways. Sermons may be personal, true to life and simple. But we also need the prophetic dimension in our sermons!

  • We need sermons that question the structures of society.
  • We need sermons that stand up more for social justice.
  • We need sermons that take their place in Jesus’ prophetic tradition.

I hope my plea is clear: Let’s understand preaching as part of following Christ!

How do you resolve this tension? What experiences have you had in your church work? Feel free to share them in the comments!

Simon Wiebe, trained in Protestant religious education and history, is an author and works in public relations at the Museum of Russian-German Cultural History (Museum für russlanddeutsche Kulturgeschichte) in Detmold, Germany. His book Preach. Dein Workbook fürs Predigen (in German) is written for volunteers in the church.

¹ See Rick Warren: How to Preach Like Jesus, Part 1: Start with People, https://www.pastors.com/free-resources/preach-like-jesus-1, Part 2: Get Practical, https://www.pastors.com/free-resources/preach-like-jesus-2, Part 3: Keep It Interesting and Simple, https://www.pastors.com/free-resources/preach-like-jesus-3, last accessed January 18, 2024.

² Richard Rohr: Foreword, in: John Dear: The Questions of Jesus. Challenging Ourselves to Discover Life’s Great Answers, New York 2004, xxii-xxiii. The last sentence of the quote is translated from the German original of this article because Rohr’s exact wording could not be found; it is paraphrased, not verbatim.