by David Bercot

Most professing Christians today have the mistaken notion that a man needs to go to seminary in order to be an effective preacher. However, the New Testament Christians had no seminaries. Yet, they raised up effective preachers and teachers all the same. As David Bercot argues in his most recent book, Plain Speaking, the Holy Spirit can use ordinary Christian men today to preach and teach—just as He did back in the first century.

Bercot attends a church that has no seminary-trained ministers, just as do many of our readers. Yet Bercot believes that the quality of preaching in churches like ours should not be one bit inferior to that of conventional churches with professionally trained ministers. If anything, it should be better.

However, if we are honest, I think we would all have to admit that too often this isn’t the case. We’ve all heard many excellent sermons and devotionals in our churches. But, we have also heard many rambling messages with no clear theme or goal, delivered in unenthusiastic, monotone voices.