Why Johnny Can't Preach

I just finished reading "Why Johnny Can't Preach" by T. David Gordon. In short, Gordon writes about the current lack of sound preaching and proposes several reasons for this crucial inadequacy. Gordon proposes that the overuse of image based media has caused a sharp decline in the quality of preaching. Furthermore, people have lost the ability to read texts and rhetorically communicate thoughts because of how the media has shaped us. This has inevitably lapsed over into our preaching. Below is a paragraph regarding the content of preaching. I found it to be a good reminder to preach Christ-o-centrically.

"From about twenty-five years of wrestling with the question, I have come to concur with those who believe that the content of Christian preaching should be the person, character and work of Christ. What we declare, with Paul, is not ourselves, but Christ crucified. Our message, like Paul's, is 'the message of the cross'. The substance of our proclamation is the soteric fitness of the person and character of Christ, and the soteric competence of his work. With the old Puritan John Flavel, we wish to open up that 'Fountain of Life' which consists of Christ's person and work. What is offered to the congregation, in rightly ordered Christian worship, is nothing less that Christ himself."