151: The Church Born in Preaching

To the Ruled Church Podcast.

Christ the King and the Church Born in Preaching

This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased. He is honored, and I get the glory. And by the way, it's even better, because you see that building in Perryville, Arkansas? You see that one in Pechote, Mexico?

Do you see that one in Tuxla, Guterres, down there in Chiapas? That building has my son's name on it.

The church is not a democracy, it's a monarchy. Christ is king.

You can't be Christian without a local church.

You can't do anything better than to bend your knee and bow your heart, turn from your sin and repentance, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and join up with a good Bible-believing church, and spend your life serving Jesus in a local, visible congregation.

Welcome to the Ruled Church Podcast. I am your host, the very poor turkey hunter, I might mention as. Do you do any turkey hunting, Nick? You ever turkey hunted?

Never.

Yeah, well, don't. Because, have you ever golfed?

Yeah, I have.

Okay, you know that feeling when you hit like a really beautiful shot and golf, you're like, wow, that was great.

Yeah.

And then you try to, you know, reduplicate that, the next shot, and it like shanks or something, goes a little harder. That's, that feeling, the secondary feeling, not the first, the secondary feeling, that's pretty much turkey hunting.

Oh, okay.

Great advertisement.

Right.

Yeah, that's, no, there's guys a lot better than me. In fact, my 18-year-old son, I've been hunting with him. And he is, he's a far superior turkey hunter than I am. So, anyway, where was I? Yeah, I'm Allen Nelson.

I'm one of the pastors at Providence Baptist Church in Perryville, Arkansas. And with us again, I can't remember when this was, probably last year sometime, is Nick White. Nick is the pastor at First Baptist Church of Hamburg, New York.

Yes.

Right?

Yes.

Because there's a Hamburg, Arkansas, but you're a long way from

Yeah.

Hamburg, Arkansas.

Yeah, it's quite a ways. It's so good to be here, brother. Thanks for having me on.

Tell us a little bit about any updates with your church, your family, how's things going?

Yeah.

Yeah, our church is doing well. We are presenting a man this coming Sunday as a potential elder, a pastor. And he'll be basically candidating for a total of six months. And then the church will take a vote on him.

And so that's exciting. And yeah, God is blessing his word and we're very thankful.

Amen.

That's good, brother. Well, people can listen on past episodes to learn more about your ministry there in New York and how things are going. But the reason I asked you on today is because of your new book, The Church Born in Preaching, how God commenced and advances Christ's church through the primary means of grace, which I love everything about that title.

I love the title. I love the Puritan-esque subtitle there that goes on and on and on. And I love everything that it communicates. And when did this book officially release? Was it April or was it March?

Late March, like the last week of March, I think March 25th.

So I don't know if you know this about me or not, but we're preaching, we're going through Acts right now.

Yeah.

And so I spent several messages on, in Acts two, obviously. And when I saw that this was coming out, I was like, and then the cover, by the way, who did the cover?

So we have some people that do some stuff here. So working with them and just getting their help, putting it together, and I think they really helped me make it good. I definitely had a lot of input into how that thing came out, but with the help of others, it just, they did a great job, so.

Why I Wrote The Church Born in Preaching

Yeah, looks great. So immediately when I first got it, or when I first saw it, that you're coming out, first of all, I was excited because I know you, faithful brother, we need more men writing. I know that's like, there's a never end to books, I get it, but each generation, I think needs to contribute.

And I think that you've done that. And I, so when I got the book, I was kind of, since I knew you, and the way the title is, I kind of knew or thought I knew the direction that you're gonna go and reading the book only affirmed it.

You say at the beginning, I already told you, I don't have the book here with me. That's a different story. But anyway, at the beginning of the book, you said when God, help me out here, when God wants to move in the world, something like that, he raises up preachers.

I'm not quoting well.

Yeah, I have the book right here, just because I knew. It says when God sets out to do a mighty work in the world, he sends the world preachers.

And that is true from the days of Noah, even before that we can imagine there were preachers. And then it's true into the days of the apostles. And I'm going through, I actually quoted, I use that quote Sunday, because I'm going through Stephen, which I'm arguing it's a sermon, but we can have disagreement on that.

If someone says, well, it's just a speech, but it's the longest in the book of Acts, Stephen. And so just the point of God raising up preachers, not only in the Old Testament, not only with Jesus and the apostles, but here we have even the carrying on of this in one of the apostles' disciples was Stephen, and then all the way down to today.

And we can talk about the great preachers of the past, the great awakening, Charles Spurgeon, and then all the way down to Nick White, right?

I don't know. I think the path veers a little bit away from me, but.

No, you're a fine preacher, brother, and a fine expositor. And I've been blessed to hear your sermons. So what I wanted to start out with actually though, is I hit on this a little bit, but why don't you talk just a little bit about like, okay, why are you writing?

Why are you putting this? I mean, don't you have other things to do? You're pastoring, you're a father. Why are you gonna be an author too? What's your defense of this?

The Church Was Born Through Peter's Sermon at Pentecost

Yeah, well, so this was actually a series of sermons that I preached going through the book of Acts. We're in the book of Acts as well on Sunday nights here. We're in Acts 16 now. And when we went through Acts 2, I mean, we were just going through the text and it started with the church born in power, with the coming of the Holy Spirit.

And then we moved to the church born in preaching. And then we saw the church born in practice, where you see that kind of the life of the church and the vibrancy of the first church. So, I mean, it was just part of the series, but I spent three weeks on the preaching because Peter's sermon on Pentecost was instrumental as the means by which God saved 3000 souls and brought forth the beginning of the work of the New Testament church.

And so I just saw it as a great opportunity to preach on the primacy of preaching. And so I did that and God blessed those sermons and a mutual friend of ours, Brandon Scalf, had asked me to come in and preach at a conference he's got going on in Tulsa this year.

And he gave me an assigned subject for my sermon, but he said, I wish you could somehow give us the church born in preaching as well. And silly me, I mean, I thought, well, I'll just take my notes and put it into a book, like it was gonna be easy, like just copy and paste.

And he's like, oh, that would be great. And so the plan is that they'll be passing it out at this conference. So that's how the whole idea came about. And I just thought, well, I'll just take my manuscripts and just throw them into a book form.

It was a lot more involved than that. And so a lot more editing and a lot more work, but yeah, that's where all that came from. It was just birthed from my preaching ministry and it just led to this little book, so yeah.

Yeah, and it's a short book. This is my, I told you before I was gonna say this, but this is my take on it. I've been in the ministry actually this year, 2026, I've been in the ministry for 20 years and I started preaching.

I asked the pastors 20 years ago, I asked the pastor the summer of 2006 and our church at that time, we were like just kind of typical SBC church and we were gonna do like a youth Sunday thing. And I was filling in because the youth pastor had left.

So I was just filling in with the youth. I was, I had just turned 20. And so I asked the pastor, I was like, hey, tomorrow, you care if I preach, you know? And the crazy guy said, okay, you know? And so that's when I started preaching, 20 years ago this summer.

And so I've learned a lot since then, brother. I hope, hopefully have grown. I've, you know, got my MDiv, sat through the preaching classes, done the preaching in school, read, you know, not every book on preaching, but tons of books on preaching.

So this isn't for me. And so I'm trying to give it a plug for guys, you know, who say, well, I know everything there is to know about preaching, which I don't, but some guys may say that. And they may say, well, why do I need this book?

Well, my encouragement would be like, it's not that I grabbed this book necessarily, it was like, I learned something new per se, but I was so encouraged. Like, I'm like, I'm reading this book at a ball game.

And I'm like, I need to go preach, you know? Like, you know, and excited about my upcoming sermon. That's what it did for me. It really, so first of all, it encouraged me. And we're giving a literated point here.

It excited me. I can't think of another E word. It made me enthusiastic. I don't know. But the point for me is, I think that this is a book that you can give to the most seasoned pastor out there. You know, I'm saying like, if like Tom Askle, or if the late John MacArthur was still alive, like they could get this book and they could still be encouraged and edified by the content.

It's that good. And then you give it to a young guy, you know, somebody who's just started out in the church or maybe feels called to ministry. And I think that, I think they could learn some things as well.

And so I think for both sides and then everyone in between, I feel like this is a book that very beneficial. So I don't know what you think about that or if that was your goal in writing or.

Preaching as the Primary Means of Grace

Yeah, oh, praise God, brother. Yeah, I mean, mission accomplished if it made you excited to preach because this isn't a book on how to preach. I don't think I'm there yet to be able to write books on that.

I think that's probably something for later on in life for a lot of preachers, but it is a book. It's an argument. It's polemic for, it's a polemic for the primacy of preaching it and the central place in the work of the church and just how God has always used the preaching of the word to do his greatest works.

And that it's the primary means of grace. And so it's really just an argument and it uses that sermon from Peter. So it's not even meant to be really an academic book. It's not really gonna teach you a whole lot if you've been in our circle for any amount of time, but if it can just fan the flames that are already there and remind you of why we do what we do and why it's so important to preach the word faithfully and be encouraged that God is at work through that.

I mean, the last chapter of the book, really the conclusion, is how preaching is the means by which Jesus' prayer is answered. And it just goes on through how Jesus' high priestly prayer in a more general sense, he prays for all that the father has given him to see his glory and to be one.

And he prays for everybody, as you know, who would come to believe, all the elect. That's pulled from Acts two, when we see at Pentecost, Peter's preaching in 3 ,000 are saved. He says, you crucified Jesus.

And I believe that in some way, many of the people who are there were those at the scene of the cross and that Jesus prayed, father, forgive them for they know not what they do. And God shows to answer that prayer through the means of preaching.

So that what was true of even Jesus' prayer on the cross is true of Jesus' high priestly prayer in John 17. Every time we preach the word of God faithfully in the power of the spirit, we are, our preaching is undergirded by the intercessory prayer of Jesus Christ to bring his elect home, to build them up, to unite them, to show his glory to them.

So, I mean, I just, if I can encourage people with that, that this is the primary means of grace. This is how God chooses to work this way. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of Christ. And God is answering Jesus' prayer through the preaching of the word.

That to me makes me just wanna go and preach on a corner somewhere.

Amen.

Why the Church Is Not Built by Dramas or Skits

Yeah, so a couple of things I want to do is I want to work through. So there's some things that we both of us have said that are just kind of assumed. And so I wanna work through, I wanna talk about that.

And in the title, we've already mentioned it, which by the way, you can get this, the best place to get this is on Amazon. Is that right?

Yeah.

So Amazon, The Church Born in Preaching, How God Commenced and Advances Christ's Church Through the Primary Means of Grace by Nick White. Okay, first, The Church Born in Preaching. We've already kind of touched on that.

I love the title, but let's just say that there's someone listening, whether they're a pastor or a lay person. What, explain to them who's not getting it, what, why'd you pick that title? And what are you trying to communicate with it?

Yeah, well, I mean, it's the means by which God has always, always done his great works. And when it comes to the New Testament church, the church didn't come about by way of like dramas or skits. There was a demand on the scene.

The sign of the spirit, the spirit comes, and then there's an appearance like fire. There's a loud booming noise. That loud booming noise gathered all the people in Jerusalem who were there for the Feast of Pentecost, for the celebration of Pentecost.

They all come around to see what was going on. What's this commotion? And they see the 120 and they're speaking in tongues and native languages of everyone there. And they're asking, what does this mean?

Like there's a need and there's a demand. What is happening here? What's going on? And I believe that there has always been a demand for preaching and that demand there, that when they're asking, what do these things mean?

Peter steps forward and he doesn't assemble everybody for a drama or for a special choir performance or some kind of show. He says, I'm coming forth to tell you, let it be known, this is the truth. The Jesus whom you crucified, he's risen again.

You killed him, God raised him. And the way by salvation is repenting and believing the gospel. This is a fulfillment of Joel 2 and Christ has been foretold of in the Old Testament and Psalms when David wrote, he wasn't writing of himself.

He was writing of Christ and he preaches the word. And it's through the preaching of the word that these people get their questions answered and that God converts them and saves them. And so the fact that it was preaching that did that, that it was preaching that brought the First Church of Jerusalem together and commence the worldwide mission of the gospel of Jesus Christ, it was through preaching that that was done.

It wasn't through any other means. And so that's really the essence of the title that the church is born in preaching.

Mm-hmm. And I, yeah, amen. And I agree with that exegesis, similarly followed similar path there when we went through Acts 2. You know, there are, and we don't gonna weigh into this too much unless you want to, but there are, there is a movement out there of even more kind of conservative guys, some men I actually know who would say that preaching is what you do outside the church.

And that's evangelism, you know, but inside the church is just teaching. Well, I disagree with that and I'm gonna let you weigh in on anything you wanna say. And one of the reasons I would disagree is I think that a faithful exposition of Acts 2 would show us that the church is born in preaching.

And of course, you could look at other examples. You could look at Paul longing to preach the gospel to you who are in Rome. He's talking to the church. Of course, I know Second Timothy 4, but I don't know if you have any comment on that, but I'm arguing with your thesis there, the church born in preaching and is commenced and advances through preaching.

Right, yeah, it's not only commenced, it's advanced. And so that's the thing, the church is sustained by preaching as well. And I mean, when we talk about the means of grace and the place of preaching in the church, I mean, to assume that it only works in saving people, but it doesn't work in sustaining the church or building up the church.

I mean, you look all throughout the book of Acts and they strengthen the church by preaching the word and strengthening them in the faith. The work of preaching is essential, not just to seeing souls saved.

Yes, that's true, but we need the gospel preached to us. We need Christ exalted before us. And I believe that teaching is just an aspect of preaching. I think preaching goes a step further and drives the truths of doctrine home.

And I mean, teaching lays the logs and preaching sets the logs on fire. And so we all need to be preached at. And I think that the witness of the early church in the book of Acts and then Paul's instruction, even he says in these perilous times, what are you to do, Timothy?

He says, preach the word. And yes, that includes teaching, but the thrust of the charge is in these terrible times, in these difficult times, you have to preach the word that comes right after him saying the word is sufficient.

He said, all scripture is breathed out by God, it's profitable. And then he says, these times are dark, but you've got a sufficient word, so preach it. That's a simple math, that's two plus two. You've got a sufficient word, preach the word.

And that's Paul's advice to Timothy, who's a pastor. And I believe that's his advice, not to Timothy just out on the street corner, but that's his advice to Timothy within the walls of a building where he's ministering the word to the church.

The Preached Word as the Church's Primary Means of Grace

Yeah, I'm gonna read, you said something that sparked my mind here, Romans 10, 14. I'm gonna read the LSB because the LSB translates this very good. And there's maybe something that some of our listeners haven't considered, but Romans 10, 14 says, how then will they call on him in whom they have not believed?

How will they believe in him whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher? Now I'll go back to that. How will they believe in him whom? Okay, now it's a lot of translations say like, in whom or of whom, but the text just says, the Greek, how will they believe in him whom they have not heard?

In other words, I believe very strongly here that what Paul is communicating there is that I'm not talking about an audible voice and I'm not talking about every time that every word that the preacher says is what Jesus is saying, okay?

But I'm saying there is a mysterious element in the preaching of the word of God that it's the very voice of Christ that is piercing the heart through the faithful preaching. So I think that's Paul's view of preaching.

I think that should be our view of preaching. And how will they hear without a preacher? That is, they're not gonna hear. Now, obviously we could talk about the evangelistic preaching here, sure. But they're not gonna hear the voice of Christ in any other way without the preaching of the word of God.

And that's what you mean, right? In the primary means of grace, that's the other thing I wanna flesh out there for a second. What do you, tease that out for us. What do you mean preaching as a primary means of grace?

Yeah.

Yeah, in that, I mean, we believe in the means of grace and the ordinary means of grace and we fellowship as believers and we have the word of God that we read, we pray. And a lot of things that we have as means of grace that God has given to us in the local church, but I believe that the primary means of grace is it actually comes from that text, that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of Christ.

And so people need preaching to strengthen their faith, that it is the primary means by which that is done. And I think, again, what we see all throughout the New Testament and Old Testament is that it is preaching that does the bulk of the legwork in the work of God.

I mean, we even see this when it comes to like the building of the temple when the exiles come back into Jerusalem and you got the ministry of the prophets, Haggai. I mean, that's the means by which the people were encouraged to go and preach.

It wasn't just like a little business meeting where they just met with people. Prophets stepped forward and they proclaimed the word of God and that moved them to act on the word. And you see this just again and again and again all throughout Old Testament, New Testament history, church history.

And I make a very bold statement in my book that there is no church history without the preached word. And I know that that might be a little bit, people might hear that and say, I don't really know about that.

If you think about it, I mean, it doesn't mean that there were no acts of courage or there's nothing else, but without the preaching of the word, I don't believe there is anything else. You wouldn't have a church.

So I believe at the center of it all is that primary means of grace. And it is the preaching of the word of God. And the power is not in the preacher. It's important to note that. And I do that in the book.

It's in the word and the spirit. It's not in the messenger. We're just channels, but Christ does speak through us. And he does it when the word is faithfully preached and done in the power of his spirit.

Amen, that's good.

Why a Church Cannot Exist Without Preaching

So if you're out there, young guy, or maybe a church, you're thinking about church planning. Yeah, I've some particular views on that, but there's a lot of things you can do without in church planning.

You don't necessarily have to fundraise. You don't necessarily even have to have a building, convene a home, such. You don't necessarily have to have hymnals, all these things. But there is one thing that you can't do without.

And that is preaching.

Right.

You've got a faithful God called man to preach. There's a lot of other things that we could build later on that can come later on. We could build around as it were. I'm not saying those other things don't matter.

They do, they're important. But you can have all those things and not have a church.

Right.

But you can't have a church without the preaching. So these other things can come. I'll tell you a story. Another thing I thought about, just while you're talking, you'll appreciate this. So my first senior pastorate, if you will, I was in 2010 and I was called in October.

And in December, the church had a Christmas cantata. And it was my first year there as a senior pastor. And so we have a cantata and I'm like, okay, well, after that, I'm gonna preach. I'll be mindful, I know.

But anyway, after the cantata, I preached. Well, at the deacon's party, a few days later, a week later, something like that, I was approached by one of the deacon's wives. And she said, you better not ever do again what you did Sunday.

And I'm thinking to myself, what did I do? Like, did I offend somebody? Did I like, was my tie crooked? Or did I look disheveled? Like, did I say something offensive? And I was like, in my mind, I'm a young pastor running all these things.

What did I do? And she said, you preached after the cantata. And I thought to myself, you know what? There are churches out there all over the world, or at least all over the United States, that that's actually, they do that kind of stuff.

We're gonna have the cantata. And that's church today, right? You hadn't had church without preaching.

Right.

I don't know if you have any feedback, thoughts, comments on that, and we can move on.

Absolutely. Well, brother, I think it just goes to show, I think that that statement that was made to you is reflective of what most of what, I shouldn't say most to overgeneralize, but what much of the Western church, so-called professing church, believes about preaching.

I don't even think they know what preaching is. I frankly don't think they know what it is, so that if they ever heard it, it would offend them. It would drive them crazy. And that's why I say professing church, because there is no church without preaching.

And I think Peter's message just gives us in a nutshell what kind of preaching true preaching actually is. It's authoritative, it's biblical, it's Christ-centered, it's heart-directed. Those are some of the key components that we see in his sermon.

And I would just believe that that's true of all true preaching.

You know, we understand the power of monologue. We understand the power of speech. I'm just talking about as a society, you know? We understand that. I mean, you have long-form podcasts now. This is not one of them, by the way, that will go three hours with just a guy, you know?

We're not doing that. You've got the guys that'll stand on the stage. You know, you think the late Steve Jobs and, you know, the guys that can capture it. So there's an intrinsic kind of understanding of the power of monologue.

And then that can be used nefariously in so-called churches. Now, I'm thinking about, you know, the Kenneth Copelands. I'm not talking about the conservatives. I'm talking about like openly in the book, that's a false picture.

The Joel Oaks things, those things. That, you know, you say, well, they are, it's not that they're faithful preachers. It's that there is something intrinsically about the monologue that can captivate people.

But then in too many churches, I would argue, and this is where we're kind of getting into more professing conservative churches. You're right. I don't know who said this, but I know it's a popular quote, and that is, if you have to ask the difference between teaching and preaching, you've never heard preaching.

Was that Martin Lloyd-Jones? I don't remember who said that.

Yeah, maybe, but it's true.

Hopefully it's a good guy, brother. Hopefully I'm not quoting.

Yeah.

You know, Charles Finney said that. No, I really don't think it was. So yeah, and the sad thing is, I'm afraid that we have a lot of people who've gone in, they've sat under some sort of monologue, and maybe it's not necessarily even bad, but a lot of that that is out there is bad.

There's not much gospel. There's not much exposition. And this is the kind of thing that is feeding, as it were, the evangelical church in America. And there's no wonder there's such weakness in the church.

I don't know if you, I'm just kind of rambling there. I don't know if you have any thoughts to that.

No, absolutely. I share a quote by J .C. Ryle in my book, and it's one of my favorite quotes of his on the subject of preaching. And he says, let me find it here. He says that the brightest days of the church have been those when preaching has been honored, that the darkest days of the church have been those when it has been lightly esteemed.

And I think that that is absolutely why we see what we see today. Preaching is so devalued. And again, I just don't think people even know what true preaching ought to be so that when they hear it, they just think that you're a radical, crazy fundamentalist to get up and passionately declare just what the Bible says.

Like you didn't even tell that many stories. You didn't make us laugh that much, and I'm not against illustrations. I'm not against humor when it's appropriate, but it's almost offensive to people when you just get up for 45 minutes to an hour and just say, this is what the Lord says.

This is what God said. And then drive it home with passion and conviction. It's like people are offended by dogmatism because dogmatism in many people's eyes, it's ego, it's arrogance. Like you're arrogant to be so certain about what you're saying, but we're not certain about this because it's what I say.

I'm certain about this because it's what God says. And so this is conviction that doesn't come in opposition to humility, but this is conviction that comes with obedience to us being heralds of the word of God and just doing our job.

This is what the Lord says, and we're going to make it known to you. And people just, it just doesn't sit well with a lot of people.

Amen, and I don't want to get into the debate with folks about how long to preach, but I would say the same, the timeframe you gave there, that you just kind of spat it off 45 minutes to an hour. But if someone preaches 40 minutes or 38 minutes, or I'm not going to argue about that, but I would say that as a whole, as a whole, I see the time of preaching driven, taking a nosedive.

Yeah.

Not long ago,.

It's either last Christmas or the Christmas before, I watched, I'm trying, don't want to be too revealing, but I watched a church's service, because I, well, I just, I needed to. And the sermon is like a long time of singing, and the sermon was 12 minutes.

Oh man, wow.

And you're just like, what are we doing? That is not teaching, that is not holding preaching as the means of grace.

Right, exactly. Yeah, our worship service really tells on the place that preaching has. And if we spend hours or an hour and a half singing songs and yeah, 10, 20 minutes preaching, and I'm not trying to be legalistic when I say, I mean, I've heard some faithful preachers preach 25, 30 minutes, and that's somewhat normal for them.

That's not what I prefer. I just getting started after 20 minutes. But when that's, you look at the order of service and you just got this little fraction of the service given to the preach word, it sends a message.

So yeah, it deserves more of a primary central place. And I believe that it should be the main event of our worship.

The Dignity of the Pulpit and the Problem of Props

Yeah, amen.

Well, I don't want to draw you into controversy here, but I do have some thoughts. And that I've developed over the years, just about the things that we communicate in the way that we present. So again, I'm not trying to be legalistic or whatever, but there is something about the way that we dress.

There's something about the way that we carry ourselves in the pulpit that all communicates a theology of preaching. So it communicates like, hey, I believe that what is about to happen is important. I believe that what is about to happen is tethered to the word of God and the power of the Holy Spirit and the exaltation of Christ.

That's not about me. I mean, I don't know if you want to, I know you could definitely put a target on your back if you weigh in too heavily on this, I've seen it. But I don't know if you have any thoughts, if you've developed any thoughts about that over the years.

Yeah, well, I mean, I just think that the office, I mean, of a pastor demands a level of dignity. And I don't mean that because of the person, but because of the task. I mean, you think of this in any other, if a man is given a high calling, you would want him to show forth some excellence in what he does.

And we're called to proclaim the excellencies of Christ. And that's true of all Christians, but especially as pastors, if we're getting up to preach the word of God, well, John the Baptist wore camel skin and John the Baptist was a fulfillment of Elijah.

And so, we're not called to do that. I believe that there should be a level of excellence that's set forth in the pulpit and dignity. And whether or not someone wears a tie, if they wear a polo or different cultures have different standards, I guess.