Summer 2009 | Volume 67, No. 4

President's Classroom: Modeling Preaching Through Chapel

by Benjamin Hawkins

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In a spring 2006 chapel service, President Paige Patterson presented the “perfect expository sermon.” It was just one example of Patterson’s attempts to teach a new generation of preachers how the Word of God should be proclaimed.

The perfect sermon, Patterson said, is a dry sponge.

Lifting a large, dry sponge before his audience, Patterson said that, just as this sponge was hard at its core and soft on the surface, even so a perfect sermon is organized and built around firm truths. At the same time, it is tender toward its audience.

Patterson continued his illustration by scribbling on a blank writing tablet with a black marker. The tablet, he explained, is the typical church crowd, and the markings are the hurts, fears, and concerns that listeners harbor in their hearts. He tried to clean the board with his dry sponge—“the perfect expository sermon”—but without success.

Patterson’s audience then watched him as he walked across the stage and as he dipped the dry sponge in a bucket of water. Lifting the sponge out of the bucket, he said, “When your sermon literally is full of the Spirit of the living God, like that sponge is full of the liquid in the bucket, then and only then are you ready to walk into the pulpit.” Walking back to the tablet, he wiped it with the wet sponge, and the marks disappeared: “Look what happens when the Spirit of the living God is present.”

Patterson presented this illustration during the first of a sermon series on the Holy Spirit. Each spring, he develops a series of messages intended not only to address issues important to church life but also to instruct students in the preaching of Scripture. Last October, Southwestern Seminary’s board of trustees recognized this when they honored Patterson with a resolution of appreciation. They noted, among other things, that he “has revived the chapel hour as the central heartbeat and meeting time for the seminary family as the ‘President’s Classroom,’ where he has led in modeling the components of the local church worship service chiefly through the regular exposition of the Word of God.”

“A seminary that finds it sole purpose in the academic world has, in my estimation, failed to catch the broader vision,” Patterson says. “The vision of a theological seminary ought to be a community of men and women deeply committed to study but then coming together on a regular basis to exalt the Lord Jesus Christ and to worship our God. Not only does the experience of worshipping together put the emphasis of the seminary where it ought to be, namely, on the Triune God, but also as such builds the esprit de corps of the institution and establishes a particular attitude on campus that can only generate spiritual growth.”

Patterson also hopes chapel services will teach students “how to lead an effective moment of worship, which emphasizes both evangelism and the clear explanation of the Bible, mixed with congregational prayer and worship in song.”
In his “classroom,” Patterson has preached expositional sermons based on numerous biblical passages, including passages from Matthew, 1 Peter, and Revelation, as well as Leviticus, Daniel, and the Song of Solomon. The themes covered in each sermon have been equally numerous: the priesthood of believers, the Holy Spirit, and the last days. During his most recent sermon series, Patterson addressed issues that Christians, and especially preachers, cannot avoid. “You will have to respond to these in your ministry,” he insisted. In this 12-part series, he presented expositional sermons on truth, culture, gender, marriage, sex, the church, preaching, denominations, altar calls, Scripture, worship, and sacrifice.

Through the seminary’s chapel services, Patterson also offers advice about other aspects of worship in the local church: For example, the preacher should come to the pulpit without notes and with only the Bible in hand. Also, the reading of Scripture should play a fundamental part in the worship service, which is one reason why Patterson endorses public Bible reading in the seminary’s chapel services.

Patterson also demonstrates the importance of sacrificial giving and corporate prayer during chapel. In 2003, he took the first of many boot offerings at Southwestern in order to help a sick child and his family: Students and faculty wearing cowboy boots took them off, using them as offering plates. As the spring 2009 semester came to an end, Patterson called outgoing missionaries to gather around the platform in Truett auditorium. He pled for them in prayer, recognizing the sacrifices that God might call them to make as they proclaim His Word across the world.

As seminary trustees recognized, Patterson especially encourages students to be pastor-scholars who preach the Word faithfully. During one message from his spring 2009 sermon series, he said, “I have a confession to make to you this morning, although it will not come as a surprise to most of you who know me: I am an adrenaline junkie.” Since his youth, Patterson has experienced the adrenaline rush of bull riding, scuba diving among great white sharks and barracuda, and trekking through head-high grass on African safaris.

“Can I tell you the honest truth of the matter: There is no adrenaline rush in this world like proclaiming the unsearchable riches of Christ Jesus and pleading with men to come to God,” he said. “When I stand right here to preach in the seminary today, there are many of you who are hurting and sorrowing and wondering what is going to happen next, and some of you are lost and outside of Christ. And I carry the responsibility this morning. …

“It is a heavy responsibility. It is an adventure. There is nothing in the world like preaching the unsearchable riches of Christ Jesus.”

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