May 11, 2018 Show with William F Hill Jr. on “Experimental Preaching: What it is & Why We Need it”

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Afternoon Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth

who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

This is Chris Arnson, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Friday on this 11th day

of May 2018 and I'm delighted to have as a returning guest my friend

William F Hill Jr., former host of the Confessing Our Hope podcast of Greenville

Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Taylor, South Carolina, and currently the pastor of the Fellowship

Presbyterian Church in Newport, Tennessee, which is a congregation in the Presbyterian Church in

America, also known as the PCA.

Today we are going to be addressing experimental preaching, what it is and why we need it, and

it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to.

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Pastor William F Hill Jr.

Thanks Chris.

Oh that's nice,

all

right.

I'm

not

going to divulge names, but I know that there is a pastor.

Out there who was, is no longer, but was the associate

to another pastor for well over a decade, perhaps even two decades,

and he reached the point where after maybe 15 years he said to the pastor, by the

way can I call you by your first.

Name now rather than pastor, and he said no.

That's right, and

tell our

listeners

about

Fellowship

Presbyterian

Church in

Newport.

Sure.

But

much

more

important

than any of those things,

you're

near your

Dolly world.

Well I

know.

Greenville.

Definitely has a reputation for being one of the few remaining biblically Orthodox

seminaries in the United States, so it's, I don't hear too many complaints, if any

at all, from people who I highly regard in regard

to Greenville, and in fact that you've reminded me now I've got to get Joey.

Piper back on the

program.

Yeah.

Well, he's

got to

be the topic for today because

Greenville

Seminary,

so no

one can say,

in fact I'm

going to

be

on their program on Monday, so I won't have to hear it now.

I mentioned them, I said it,.

Everybody's happy.

Well I also got to get back on the show Ryan McGraw, who's on the faculty there, and I first met

Ryan the night, one of the nights I was at the Banner of Truth conference last year,

and you guys actually helped me find my way back to civilization.

I got lost on the campus of Elizabethtown College in the middle of the night, well it wasn't the middle of the night, it was about nine o 'clock at night, and

it was pitch black, and I found my way back to civilization by following the trail of cigar and pipe smoke,

and I found you and Ryan and about ten other guys hanging out smoking pipes and

cigars, and that's how I finally found my way back to those.

I remember that night.

Yeah, that's, I remember I was passing out flyers for Iron Trip and Siren Radio, and you, also

I hear this.

Voice in the darkness.

Say, why don't you interview

me?

Yeah, well I was just

thinking, you know, small church pastors.

Yeah, a lot of people don't, I don't think a lot of.

People realize that some of the most brilliant and gifted

authors and communicators and thinkers in modern -day Christendom, in the Reformed

faith especially, are very often pastors of very small churches or

members of very small churches.

You would, people will have the wrong connection that if somebody is

really worth hearing or reading or whatever, they must be a pastor of some huge enormous church.

That doesn't go hand -in -hand.

In fact, even R .C. Sproul, the late R .C. Sproul, his church that where he pastored,

which still is there, St. Andrew's Chapel, I mean it's larger, a lot larger than the congregation where I am, but it's,

it's no mega church.

You know, it's, it's just a.

Fairly large

church.

By the

way,

also I

was

just wondering,

I'm going to

be.

Promoting this later, but are you intending to attend the 2018 ministers

conference that the Banner of Truth is having in Elizabethtown?

I am planning to.

Be there myself, just was wondering.

Absolutely, I tried to never miss,.

Absolutely, I'll be there.

For those of you listening who would like to join Pastor Hill and myself at the 2018

ministers conference that the Banner of Truth is having at Elizabethtown College in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania,

you can go to banneroftruth .org, banneroftruth .org, click events, then click on US ministers

conference, make sure you click US and not UK because they've already had a number of UK conferences, so

make sure it's US.

And it's on the theme Ministers of Christ and Alistair Begg, Johnny Gibson, Mark Johnston, Al Mohler, David

Strain, and Craig Troxell are the speakers.

That's one of the reasons why.

I'm looking forward to this year's actually.

Everybody has their

faults.

He's on my team, he's a reformer.

He is, but

I've been

listening to

his sermons.

And I'm sure that Pat Daly, who.

Is the director, I believe, or executive director of the US headquarters

of Banner of Truth, I'm sure he's going to be thrilled to hear your plug for the conference.

And also the folks over there in the UK, I'm sure that

they are going to be delighted to hear that as well.

And that's banneroftruth .org, banneroftruth .org, click on events,

and then you will click on US ministers conference.

Well, we are talking about an interesting subject today that a lot of people, especially if

they're not preachers themselves, and especially even more so if they're not reformed, are not going to know what you're talking about when you

say the term experimental preaching.

Some people might say, yeah, my pastor experiments every Sunday.

It seems like he doesn't do any study beforehand and he's just experimenting up there.

And of course, I'm not talking at all about the church where I'm a member, but John Miller is quite an

excellent preacher, as is everyone who ascends into the pulpit at Grace Baptist Church of Carlisle.

But if.

You

could

define

experimental

preaching.

Yeah,

sure.

Now,

many

of

our

listeners

may.

Have heard the term experimental or experiential Calvinism.

That is something that I know that the there was a hallmark of Puritanism and also even

modern -day well -known reformed thinkers and writers and preachers like Dr. Joel

Beeke and so on.

I'm assuming this is also a Calvinism which is not to be viewed

as some ethereal academic kind of thing on alone

that is just, you know, relegated to the

ivory halls of academia where men sit around and drinking snifters of

brandy and smoking cigars and behind closed doors and talking about theology.

We need to apply the doctrines of sovereign grace and the doctrines, of course, that we would

also believe are biblical.

We believe those things are synonymous.

We need to apply these.

To

our

lives.

Yeah, yeah,

absolutely.

Theology

is

great.

Now,

do

you

think

because

of

what

you.

Just said that although hermeneutics might be a most

important aspect of biblically sound preaching that homiletics is also important especially

because of the reasons that you just listed in what a preacher is supposed to.

Be

doing?

Oh

yeah,

absolutely.

What

are

you

trying

to

accomplish?

Now

you

said

something.

Interesting.

You mentioned in connection with Robert Murray McShane brevity in preaching.

That is not something that is synonymous typically with reformed preachers and I know that

the former pastor of Grace Baptist Church where I am a member.

I believe he was the second pastor to to have

the oversight of that congregation if not the second the third but he was there the longest period of

time.

He was there for 40 years.

Walt Chantry.

He was known as a Reformed Baptist preacher and still is because he still does itinerant preaching

and conference preaching but he is known for being a man who

believes in the brevity of preaching and that that is not very common amongst Reformed Baptist.

Nor

Reformed

pastors

in

general.

No,

and

it's

hard

to

define.

Yeah,

we

have

to

go.

To our first break right now and by the way I have been corrected.

Pat Daly is the manager.

He's the general manager.

Well, I believe John Rawlinson is the general manager in the UK but of the Banner of Truth we're speaking

about and by the way John Rawlinson I still want to interview you

on the book I Shall Not Die But Live Facing Death with Gospel Hope by Douglas Taylor.

John preached a sermon at Grace Baptist Church in Carlisle Pennsylvania when he

was visiting there and he was drawing from the story in that book that

involved a colleague of Banner of Truth or a colleague of his at Banner of Truth facing death

and I believe is with the Lord in eternity now but I would love to get you on John Rawlinson so

please get in touch with me as soon as you can so we could discuss I Shall Not Die But Live.

It was a really powerful message and equally valuable book.

When you're at Banner, you can corner him.

That's right, but he's usually too busy to talk to.

Nah, he's never too busy.

And if anybody would like to join us on the air right now with a question for our guest William F Hill on

experimental preaching, our email address is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.

ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the USA.

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We are back now with our discussion on experimental preaching.

Our guest today, if you just tuned in, is Pastor William F. Hill Jr. of Fellowship Presbyterian Church

in Newport, Tennessee.

And our email address is chrisarnz at gmail .com.

If you have a question, c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com.

Let's see, we have RJ in White Plains, New York, who said, You mentioned that experimental

preaching is applying the texts of Scripture to our everyday lives.

Do we not have to be extremely careful with that kind of methodology when some preachers are

pulling the headlines out of newspapers and magazines, thinking that we are actually the fulfillment of

prophecy for some reason or another, depending upon what happens to be happening in the news?

Yeah, that's a great question.

To be rightly accused,

it's very

important.

You

know,

it's

quite

interesting.

A lot of people in our audience might find this fascinating.

But although our guest today, Pastor Bill Hill, is not a fan of dragging holidays into

the confines of the church worship setting, they do celebrate Mardi Gras for some reason.

I'm just kidding, just kidding.

Who celebrates Mardi Gras?

What's that?

Is that that New Orleans thing?

Yes, that is.

That's what it is.

Let's see, we have Susan Margaret in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, who asked

the question, Why is it that I have heard some Reformed pastors say

that they are in opposition or in disagreement with experiential or

experimental preaching?

It seems to me like it would go hand -in -hand historically with Calvinism.

Yeah, you know, I've heard this argument before.

Well, I'm actually baffled that any Reformed pastor worth his

salt would be opposed to experimental or experiential preaching.

It doesn't seem to make any sense because he should know that as an under -shepherd of a

flock of Christ, he is not just there to provide

academic information.

I mean, I don't even understand.

What would be an excuse of someone who said, Oh, I'm very leery about this experiential preaching?

What would be the excuse of a Reformed man saying that?

I don't even get it.

Well,

I

think

I've

heard when

I

read

Paul.

We have to go to our midway break right now.

It's a longer than normal break because Grace Life Radio 90 .1 FM in Lake City, Florida, requires of us a 12

-minute break between our two major segments.

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And we are going to be returning to our program, or should I say our discussion, with Pastor

William F. Hill, Jr., of Fellowship Presbyterian Church in Newport, Tennessee, on experimental preaching,

what it is and why we need it, right after a couple more announcements.

The Banner of Truth Conference that we mentioned earlier is right around the corner.

It's May 29th through the 31st.

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That is also the email address to send in a question for our guest today, Pastor Bill Hill, chrisarnsen at gmail

.com, and we are discussing experimental preaching, what it is and why we need it.

Please give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence if you live outside the USA.

Only remain anonymous if you're asking about a personal and private matter.

In fact, we do have an anonymous listener who has a personal and private matter.

He is asking, My pastor preaches way too long, and even though the

content is excellent from beginning to end, our minds typically begin to fade out.

I have discussed this with other brothers and sisters in Christ.

We never try to be cruel or mock him, but it seems that it is counterproductive

because the message is, although excellent in content, as I already said, and would be excellent

for inclusion in a book, a sermon is not the appropriate place for these lengthy

sermons, which sometimes are over an hour, and the human mind, I do not believe, is designed to

absorb that information.

How would I obey the scriptures in the manner with which I bring this to his attention?

Well, I

don't preach over an hour, so that made me feel better when I heard that, but

that is a

very

difficult thing.

Really?

Why?

They call me

past

where you

think,

Dr. Beeke, he doesn't preach short sermons.

That's right.

And his 55 -minute prayers.

And I love them.

I love them.

They are sermons in and of themselves.

They are, and it's just a context in which

I

hope

that

they'll

always

be

mindful

of

the

reality.

Yeah, and also, those two things are apples and oranges.

When you're entertained by a movie, you're not going to be concerned

necessarily, or at least overly concerned, about forgetting certain lines or whatever,

whereas in a sermon, if you really care about the Word of God, you're going to want to retain that

information.

Yeah, you're right.

I mean, there is a sense in which it's apples and oranges.

You know, it's interesting, it's fascinating that if you've ever heard Joel

speak from his own pulpit as opposed to his being a...

It's shorter.

Well, actually, it's not shorter, it's broken up into two segments.

They have a hymn in the middle of the sermon.

Yeah, they sing it on...

Now, I don't

know if

they do it

every Sunday,.

But when I...

Every Sunday.

No, I was going to mention another church.

I don't know if this other church does it every Sunday, but there's an OPC church in Matthews,

North Carolina.

Yep, yep.

They do the same thing.

They fell in love with, or at least the leaders, with that methodology or

style of breaking up the sermon with at least one hymn in the middle and then concluding

the message at the end.

Yeah, yeah.

But we...

Again, I just think...

We have a listener with a question that I'm going to ask you before our final

break, so this way, during the break, you can have time to think about your answer.

We have John in Bangor, Maine, who says, Could you list between three and five of your

favorite preachers that are living that exemplify what you would call

experimental or experiential preaching?

And we'll have you answer that after we return from our final break.

If anybody else wants to join us on the air with a question, do so now or forever hold your peace because we're rapidly running out of time.

The email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the USA, and please only remain anonymous

if it is a personal and private question or a personal and private matter that you're asking about.

That's chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Don't go away.

We'll be right back after these messages from our sponsors with more of Bill Hill and experimental

preaching.

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Hi, I'm Pastor Bill Shishko inviting you to tune in to A Visit to the Pastors Study every Saturday

from 12 noon to 1 pm Eastern Time on WLIE Radio.

Www .wlie540am .com.

We bring biblically faithful pastoral ministry to you and we invite you to visit the Pastors Study by calling in

with your questions.

Our time will be lively, useful, and I assure you, never dull.

Join us this Saturday at 12 noon Eastern Time for a visit to the Pastors Study because everyone needs

a pastor.

And Pastor Bill Shishko, who is the host of A Visit to the...

I got tongue -tied there.

A Visit to the Pastors Study is a mutual friend of not only myself but also our guest today,

William F. Hill Jr.

And I know that you admire him just as much as I do and could highly recommend him to our listeners.

Absolutely.

Yes, he's retired from the pastorate, but he is now involved in Reformation Metro New York, a

parachurch organization under the oversight of the Orthodox Presbyterian denomination.

And he is a phenomenal brother in Christ who I believe fits the bill of what we

are talking about perfectly, experimental preaching, experiential preaching.

And if you call in tomorrow between 12 noon and 1 pm Eastern

Time on A Visit to the Pastors Study, please tell him, Pastor Bill Shishko, that is,

that you heard about the program from Chris Arnzen on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

And that's WLIE540AM .com where you can hear the program live -streamed everywhere in the world.

But if you live in the New York Tri -State area and even parts of Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island, you can hear

it on 540 on the AM dial every Saturday, 12 noon to 1 pm Eastern Time.

Well, now we are back to our discussion with Pastor Bill Hill on experimental preaching

and the listener in Bangor, Maine, before the break, wanted you to list

between three and five of your favorite living preachers that you believe exemplify experimental preaching.

Yeah.

I personally love, as I've said in this program many times, I believe one of my favorite

preachers alive, I believe one of the most powerful preachers alive today is Dr. Conrad M. Beyway,

who is the pastor of Kabwata Baptist Church in Lusaka, Zambia, Africa.

Yep.

Amen.

I've heard him preach, and he is indeed a gifted brother in Christ, that's for sure.

He is experimentally...

Right here locally, he is the associate pastor to Pastor Matt Purdy.

Yeah, associate now, finally.

And yes, I know that Carl Truman has spoken against the dangers of

celebrityism, and we have to be very careful not to make idols out of the people

that we are blessed by, and not to always compare our own

pastors to these men, because the men that God has ordained over us are

exactly the ones that you just mentioned, the ones that are going to be involved in our personal lives,

and shepherd us, and visit us when we are in the worst of circumstances, and so on.

Yeah, I mean, Hebrews 13, right?

Well, obviously you didn't mention him by name.

No.

Well, those were obviously enemies of the gospel.

Well, yeah, not necessarily.

You've got Philippians 4, where he mentions two women in the church that are causing kind of an uproar.

...sermon, I thought of his family.

Absolutely, of course I did.

I mean, who am I speaking to on Sunday?

If he's doing his job, when he works on his sermon, he's thinking about your soul, he's thinking about where you

are.

He's trying to ascertain spiritually, you know, how you're walking,

depressed,

hard at your job

as he preaches.

That can take time, and it's hard to do, but you're thinking about those people.

I read Greek, I read Hebrew, I can figure it takes

time sometimes, but it's much harder to craft it

after week after week.

By the way, could you spell the name of that author that you just mentioned?

Sure, C -A -P -I -L -L.

And his first name again?

Murray, M -U -R -R -A -Y.

Great.

Well, I hope that...

I've given this book away, Dr. Piper.

Is he a living...

In your approach.

Is he a living author?

He teaches homiletics.

Oh, wow.

Well, perhaps one day we could get him on the show.

We do have listeners and guests from Australia on Iron Trip and Zion Radio,

so that would be a great idea.

By the way, we have an interesting listener right now has a question.

Joe Schmo from Kokomo has a question.

I'm only kidding.

I was going to say, it's Schmoo.

It is?

It's Schmoo?

How does Schmoo rhyme with Kokomo?

I don't know.

We have Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, who asks a question.

Let's see here.

I have heard two different 180 degree different positions on

the same issue from Reform people on the matter of bringing

personal experience of the pastor into sermons.

I know that some Reform people despise that.

They believe that exegesis of the passage is what we should be doing, not talking about our

personal experiences.

The other would say, of course, we should never dominate a message with personal experience, but if we are to

apply a passage appropriately, there's nothing wrong.

In fact, there is much to be benefited from if a pastor includes some of this personal experience.

What is your guest's opinion on this?

Yeah,

you

never

want

people

to

remember

at the end of the sermon...

Here's an issue that I personally have been in the presence of

brothers who disagree over this area.

There are some brethren who say that a sermon is

intended primarily for not only, of course, first and foremost,

the audience of God in heaven.

That's the first primary consideration.

It's always God first.

But they will say that the discipling of the flock, the discipling of those who

are called out from the world, who are regenerate, is the primary thing, and we

should not have, in a worship service on a regular basis,

the dominance of evangelizing the lost.

There are others who have an opposite view of that, and then there are some who combine

both of those and say, yes, I believe that instruction is the most important thing as far as discipling those

in the flock that the Lord has put under the oversight of that pastor.

But there should never be a sermon without some kind of an evangelism because there may be people

in that congregation, even your own elders, that are actually lost and you just don't know it.

Yeah,

it

doesn't

matter

because all

of

Scripture

and so are not.

Every text

where

they realize

that the

regenerating work

of

the

member

of the church, he's a charter member of the

church, he's been there since the very beginning.

I'm actually surprised that Joel Osteen preaches on steps to holiness.

Is that really something he preaches?

Well, no, I think I made that up.

The point is that his sermons are moralism.

Right.

It's not Christ and Him crucified.

It's about the happiness of the listener above all else.

Right, so I think it's a combination.

Well, it has been a joy having you on the program today, brother, and I want to make sure that our listeners have

all of your information.

I know that the Fellowship Presbyterian Church in Newport, Tennessee, has a website which is fellowship

-pca .org.

Fellowship -pca, standing for Presbyterian Church in America, dot org.

And we might as well plug the Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Taylor,

South Carolina.

That's gpts .edu, GP for Greenville Presbyterian, MTS for Theological

Seminary, dot edu.

The Banner of Truth website for the ministers' conference that both Pastor Hill

and I, God willing, will be attending May 29th through the 31st in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania,

featuring Alistair Begg, Johnny Gibson, Mark Johnston, Al Mohler, David Strain, and Craig Troxell,

on the theme Ministers of Christ.

That website is banneroftruth .org.

Banneroftruth .org.

Click Events, and then click on 2018 U .S. Ministers' Conference.

Not U .K., but U .S. for United States Ministers' Conference.

Do you have any other contact information that you'd care to share?

Great.

I hope that you all tune in.

On Monday, I have a married couple who are co -authors of the book.

T .R .M. Howard, doctor, entrepreneur, civil rights pioneer.

He is a forgotten and relatively unknown civil rights leader in

our day and age who has a much more conservative

and limited government understanding of politics.

I hope that you all have a blessed weekend and a blessed Lord's Day.

I hope you all always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater Savior than you are a sinner.