Book Review: Spirit-Empowered Preaching

In the last year or so, I became aware of the ministry of Art Azurdia, and the treasure of sermons available from his ministry as a pastor for some 20 years. Having heard a number of his sermons, I purchased his book, Spirit Empowered Preaching.

After hearing a broad variety of other preachers and kinds of preaching over the past three Sundays, I picked the book up this morning, and devoured it in two sittings. The reason I picked it up was the reason articulated in the Foreword to the book:

Preaching, in our time, has clearly undergone significant change. Often the preacher, even the evangelical preacher, is not more than a dispenser of new data (biblical or otherwise), or a motivator and spiritual counselor for spiritually starved and confused people. What is most obviously missing is 'the burden'. There is no 'woe' to be felt int he preacher's tone or spirit.

This is the malady addressed by Azurdia's book. It is no "how-to" book of preaching. It is an appeal that "the efficacious empowerment of the Spirit of God is indispensable to the ministry of proclamation." In other words, we don't need preachers with more style or gimicks or tighter outlines or more impassioned pleas or detailed application. We need men more full of the Holy Spirit.

• Men full of the Holy Spirit will accomplish "greater works" than Christ (Jn. 14:12)
• Men will accomplish those greater works by means of the the Spirit of God communicating through the Word of God — "the burden of the preacher is to experience the power of the scriptures in his own life before he stands at the sacred desk. 'The Word must become flesh again; the preacher must become the vehicle of the Holy Spirit, his mind inspired and his heart inflamed by the truth he preaches.'"
• The communication of the Holy Spirit is centered on Jesus Christ — the Spirit is given for the express purpose of revealing and glorifying Christ, which in turn is also the framework for all Spirit-empowered preaching. "…the vitality of the Spirit is His effectual work of glorifying Jesus Christ through fallible men who faithfully proclaim the Christocentric scriptures."
• An apostolic ministry (1 Cor. 2:1-5) is "characterized by a determination to (1) proclaim a foolish message; (2) appropriate a foolish method; and, (3) rest upon a foolish means. That is, the message is the "foolishness" of the cross (the gospel is not for unbelievers only), the method is preaching and proclamation because the method must correspond to the message, and nothing else — not drama, not music, not video — fits the message of the Word like preaching, and the means of accomplishing this evangelical ministry is through dependence on the power of the Holy Spirit of God alone.
• To minister in the Spirit's power, "the preacher must devote himself to a consistent pattern of fervent intercession,…prepare himself by the means of the diligent study of the scriptures,…[and he] must recognize, and even revel in, his own human inabilities.

And Azurdia also notes how important the listener and congregant is int his process:

• "the congregation must consciously refrain from any kind of attitude or activity that might contribute to a withholding of the effects of the Holy Spirit."
• "the congregation must earnestly take up its mandate to make intercession for the effects of the Holy Spirit through the preaching of the word of God."

This book is a petition for holy men to preach a holy Word. Azurdia is thoroughly biblical in his approach and explanation, and penetrating in his challenges. He not only provides a lens through which to view and evaluate preaching, but offers a seldom-spoken model of how to do preaching to the glory of God. It made me yearn to both get back into the pulpit, and to fill my mind and ears with good preaching.