"He Is Not Silent" by R. Albert Mohler, Jr.

There is no shortage of churches in America, of that there is no debate. Anyone growing up in any small town knows that while there may not be a good restaurant for 30 miles and understaffed fire and police departments might have to drive you a half-hour to the nearest hospital, you'll drive past at least 50 churches on your way. Judging purely by numbers, one may think that Americans would be the most Biblically literate people in the world. Southern Baptist Churches alone number more frequent in America than McDonalds, Starbucks, and Subway combined! Yet, would we be willing to put our Biblical knowledge up against our cholesterol or sodium levels? I doubt it.

This is, in brief, the difficulty that Dr. Albert Mohler is attempting to address in his 2008 book, He Is Not Silent. Rather than agreeing with many that the religious problem in America is the oversaturation of with churches, Mohler posits that the problem is rather oversaturation with fruitless preaching in those churches. If the pastors of those churches (all 60,000+ of Southern Baptists alone) actually preached the Word of God as it is meant to be proclaimed, perhaps we would not be engaging the political, social, and economic struggles that we now face.

Any objection to the carryings-on of our present golden calf Christianity is met with the triumphant reply, "But are we winning them!" And winning them to what? To true discipleship? To cross-carrying? To self-denial?... Of course the answer to all these questions is "no."

Mohler begins his book by working to tie the act of preaching together with worship. His argument claims that throughout both the Old and New Testaments, the primary act of worship among God's people was the proclamation of God's word before God's people for their edification. This is a revolutionary thought in 21st Century America, as "worship" in most churches is synonymized with the music ministry. In fact, most "Worship Pastors" will direct the music of the church, have a music degree, and be entirely concerned with only that aspect of the church service that pertains to theatrics or entertainment - perhaps more sympathetically called "enlivenment."

Mohler, however, places the Biblical precedent firmly on the side of the preached Word. As a pastor, I reveled in Mohler's honest diagnosis of the modern church situation, which places such little emphasis on the preached word that, as he says, "May preachers are left with the modest hope of including a brief message of encouragement or exhortation before the conclusion of the service." I felt that quote on a spiritual level. He goes on to quote Michael Green who says that "sermonettes make Christianettes", which reached me again on a deeper level - because as a pastor I have been approached by music leaders orchestrating a service that was to conclude with me "preaching a sermonette." That was actually said to me, word-for-word. So, I can attest to the validity of what Mohler is saying.

The heart and soul of expository preaching - of any true Christian preaching - is reading the Word of God and then explaining it to the people so that they understand it.

Mohler labors to define proper preaching as expository. Some may have never heard of expository preaching, so in brief, it is the method of preaching that takes a text in part or whole, and attempts to go "verse-by-verse" and explain what is going on. This is done through placing the background of the text in mind of the listeners, giving a thorough context of the important factors, knowledge of the characters, and then a well-studied explanation of what is being said, done, or prophesied. Notice that there is little room (if any at all) for creativity.

Even in application (that is, the portion of the sermon where a person is challenged to apply what is in the scripture to themselves), Mohler makes a contribution that is truly groundshaking. Rather than taking a single passage, such as 2 Samuel 19, and trying to find how that passage relates to "my life", Mohler places the emphasis on the Bible and claims that we ought to examine our lives in light of the Bible and try to see how we measure up. This would mean that rather than saying, "how does this passage apply to me?" we would say, "were I in this story, who would I be?" By placing ourselves within the Bible, rather than trying to find a way to squeeze it into our lives and walk away with a trite aphorism to think on, we are more likely to recognize the flaws of our own character and dependence upon God to rectify those flaws.

The most difficult thing about Mohler's writing, for me, is that he weaves politics and culture into his Biblical presentations as though the two cannot be extracted from one another. I would imagine that at reading that statement, he would probably say that it is true. But the full-stop shift from one conversation into another with no obvious transition is a bit offputting. For example, in the testimonials included in the introduction to the book, one is from Allistair Begg who says, "Mohler at his best. Chapter 7 alone is worth the price of the book!" This sparked my enthusiasm and excitement to get to Chapter 7, which indeed was very good as it addressed the topic of the "Pastor as Theologian." Yet, as soon as this chapter ended the next chapter dove headlong into a discussion of Postmodernism and the degradation of traditional ideologies. It is not so clear how that a pastor being formally trained and familiar with historical doctrine is connected to feminism.

With that said, the chapters on Postmodernism are very good - the criticism I have is that they seem to have been written for another book, not a book on expository preaching. I suppose we should be thankful that these chapters were written at all.

In the name of postmodernism, anything can be explained away as a matter of interpretation.

The section that Mohler devotes towards examining postmodern is littered with laughable (or lamentable) reflections that any pastor or minister will know to be accurate. One story notes a young man who claimed to be a Christian and yet believed in reincarnation, and when confronted with the Biblical refutation simply replied, "Well that is your interpretation." How often have we heard those words! Mohler goes on to explain the dangers of postmodern thinking in relation to the Christian worldview, and explains how to engage the former as an advocate for the latter.

The book concludes with a few chapters that truly should have been pointed out as serving as examples of expository preaching. There is no way that it is a coincidence that Mohler finishes his book on expository preaching by breaking down, verse-by-verse, the 17th Chapter of Acts, several passages from Romans, and the 37th Chapter of Ezekiel. These chapters would serve as valuable sermon outlines if nothing else.