RIP: The Neutralizing of Preaching Personalities

Alas, it happened again. It came unexpectedly and painted a question mark on my mind that couldn’t be ignored. That question I’ll pose to this illustrious forum.

Today we lost an undeniable ‘preaching’ personality in Pentecost with the passing of Charles Mahaney. He was one of a number of preachers that stormed into the Apostolic movement whose ministry was marked as much by ‘personality' as ‘preaching’. Understand that I’m in no way being critical of that. In fact, I think it was a great ‘plus’ to have people of famed personality among us.

Names that rush to mind when I speak of ‘preaching’ personalities are men like:
* Charles Mahaney (rough as a corn cob but passionate to the extreme).
* Jeff Arnold (the man whose slang makes the starchy among us cringe but whose revelation of truth is remarkable).
* Murrell Cornwell (whose confidence in God and his own ability to reach the lost is sometimes misperceived as obnoxious).
* Murrell Ewing (who weeps his way through life changing sermons and heart altering songs).
* G. A. Mangun (who suffered the critical tongues of men but persevered by living and breathing revival).

Names of those now gone could range from:
* Bishop Morris Golder (the silver tongued preacher who could tell you truth and make you like it).
* Joe Duke (tougher than leather and loved souls).
* Verbal Bean (made you love chewing the carpet in front of an altar).

Doubtless there are many others that you could add to the list but they had one thing in common… they are all ‘preachers’ who are known by their unique personalities. It was the combination of the ‘preaching’ and personality that made them so effective!

But we live in a different day now. We live in a day of ‘non-contradictory’ messages and cookie cutter preachers that have learned the fine art of preaching politically correct sermons that have about as much spiritual value as the plaque on your teeth.

This generation runs to the ‘smiling’ preachers of issue-less, feel good religion. The prominent names that society pushes at us under the guise of ‘successful ministries’ are lackluster and bland in matters pertaining to spirituality. The smiling non-issue hero of Houston or the joke telling comedian of Cajun descent are spiritually bland and morally indistinguishable at best.

Whether we want to admit it or not we have to confess that, in many ways, this appetite for the non-confrontational sermonette has reached even into the sacred boundaries of Apostolic truth. Just one short scan of forums like this reveals the sad truth that there are those whose idea of a ‘preacher’ is little more than a figurehead who looks the part rather than a firebrand that preaches the message.

I sat in my office today and wept like a baby when I surveyed the cult of cookie cutter preachers who would rather be known for filling certain pulpits than to be known for proclaiming God’s ways with a passionate personality. Without those rough, weeping, ‘in your face’ personalities the effective ministries listed above would have been irrepairably crippled.

My question is one that perhaps only time can answer;
* Can this generation ever again lay aside our carnal opinions and allow ‘preaching’ personalities to rise up and make a difference among the Church and the world we’re called to reach?

* Have we reached the point that our fleshly reasoning has forever neutralized preaching personalities?

* Can this generation open their hearts to new faces of those 'John the Baptist-esque' ministries that come looking outdated and disheveled to our keenly 'religious' eyes.

* Have our attitudes towards the ministry become so jaded that we refuse to allow room for ‘preaching’ personalities into our sphere of influence?

We should pray, for our own sake and the sake of a lost world, that’s not the case.