PREACHING WITH LOVE FROM GRACE CHURCH DULWICH

How can you tell whether a preacher loves people rather than preaching per se?

The best judges are surely the people he preaches to. Their judgement is of course not infallible but only those who listen to the preacher week by week and see him as a minister in other contexts are properly placed to testify to his integrity and whether he has the love of Jesus in his heart for his hearers.

There will also be signs of love in the sermons themselves that he delivers.

Cranmer's Curate has known the Revd Simon Dowdy, minister of Grace Church Dulwich, a south London church plant from St Helen's Bishopsgate, for around 25 years. Your curate recalls the then unrev'd Dowdy giving a talk on the Lord's Prayer as an undergraduate at a school and the promise was certainly there of an effective Bible teacher and a man of God in the making.

Mr Dowdy could not be described as a Spurgeon-esque pulpiteer - his delivery is measured and he eschews oratorical flourishes - but a sermon he recently preached on Romans 5v12-21, entitled 'A new identity', is exemplary of loving preaching in its effort to:

1). have a clear pastoral aim

2). be clear as can be in explaining the biblical text

3). have an easy to follow structure

4). graciously counter erroneous views and misunderstandings

5). use apt illustrations well suited for a congregation in south London.

The pains taken over these things are a good indicator of love for the listener.

The evangelistic appeal with which Mr Dowdy ended this particular sermon evidenced an authentic love for the lost, all the more so for the understated passion of its delivery.

If the Church of England had more loving biblical preachers like that, it would be in a much better state.