Assessment of National Baptist preaching

This is a post to ask for some help and insight. It has been over six years since I've been a member of a traditional Missionary Baptist church. I left that particular church only after a few months of joining because it was a faulty church without good pastoral leadership and good, solid gospel preaching. Before this church, I spent just short of ten years at a National Baptist church where I served as an associate minister, Sunday school teacher, Youth worker, and chairman of the Young Adult Ministry. I loved that church, but becoming a Calvinist paved my way out of the door.

After I became a Calvinist, my whole perspective changed regarding the Church, especially preaching. I realized that my pastor preached little of the gospel. He was no whooper; he tried to "tune up" at the end. He failed to give biblical texts their justice. At the end, I was disappointed and grieved over this.

I often wonder what did I think preaching was before becoming Reformed? I enjoyed good explanation of the text, but I especially enjoyed the "gravy!" For most of my ministerial life, that was my style. I was (still am)an expository preacher, but I could tune up and whoop. After embracing the Reformed faith as an African American Baptist, I stopped tuning and whooping. I focused much more on exposition and then clear applications. One sister said my preaching had become "lectures." I still possessed the passion for the word of God; in fact, I had more passion, but I left out the relish African American Baptists associate with preaching.

Since being a Reformed Baptist, I've heard some great preaching. Cultural aspects aside, most National Baptist pastors come nowhere near the substance and richness of preaching I heard in Reformed Baptist circles. There are a couple of African American Reformed Baptist pastors here in the US; I am a part of three African American men who fill pulpits. We all preach expositional with pointed applications, but with passion.

I pray that National Baptist pastors focus more on the text and applications and less on style; this is not to say that they should come from without the African American Baptist tradition. This tradition at its best elevates eloquence, wonderful tonality of voice with clear textual exposition and stirring applications.

Oh, let us return to strong, clear gospel preaching without the taglines of "purpose" and "destiny."