Discipleship specialist Rick Howerton asks: “Is great preaching killing disciple-making?” As one who loves to communicate God’s truth through preaching, and who has also become increasingly convinced of the critical importance of disciple-making, I’ve sometimes wondered whether one precludes the other. Does great preaching discourage disciple-making?

Answer: It can, but it doesn’t have to.

Public proclamation of biblical truth can ― and in many cases has ― supplanted the clear biblical mandate given to all believers to make disciples who make disciples. When the Sunday sermon by the all-star preacher becomes the zenith of one’s weekly Christian experience, everything is downhill from there. Many preachers spend the greatest part of each week preparing that 30-minute, five-star spiritual dining experience for their flock. And like eager diners at a buffet, the congregation dutifully lines up to heap their spiritual plates high enough to last a week. Most of us know from experience, however, that neither buffet lunches nor super sermons can do for us what only a daily, healthy intake of nourishment can do.

But great preaching is not the problem. Great preaching is no more the cause of spiritual immaturity than great cooking is the cause of world hunger. My wife, Jerusha, is one of the finest cooks in the lower 48. Would our dinner guests be better served if she dialed down the quality of her meals? Should she swear off of blessing others with her gift simply because she’s so good at it? Should she send guests home with leftovers to recycle for days to come? Of course not! She doesn’t want them to worship at the altar of her dining room table. She inspires them to develop their own cooking skills.

If we would apply this difference to the issues raised by Rick Howerton, we would have our answer. The problem is not great preachers. The problem is the unhealthy dependence on them. Great preachers and great sermons should not kill my appetite for the Word. They should make me hunger for the Word. They should not make me feel like I could never feed myself like my pastor feeds me. They should teach me how to feed myself, reminding me that the greatest Teacher of all lives in me and desires to continually guide me into all truth.

In his book, Spent Matches: Igniting a Signal Fire For the Spiritually Dissatisfied, author and pastor Roy Moran speaks to the problem:

Our heroes of the day are passionate, theologically astute, media savvy, amazing communicators. To be like them is the secret hope of every theologue in training…. But Jesus didn’t call us to be communicators; he called us to be disciple-makers. Oh for the day that our heroes are those who are catalyzing self-replicating generations of disciple-making disciples and not just highly gifted people who can hold our attention for an hour.

The answer is not to demote great preaching. The answer is to exalt the great commission. It is to do what Jesus told all of us, including preachers, to do: make disciple-makers. Great cooks who value polishing their reputation more than producing more great cooks are really not great. They’re self-centered. The same is true of any gift, spiritual or otherwise, that becomes an end in itself.

Dale Losch joined Crossworld as a disciple-maker in France in 1988, and has served as Crossworld’s president since 2009. He loves to motivate people to use their God-given passions to make disciples wherever life happens. Hear more from Dale.