4. When we use preaching to promote our own agenda rather than God’s will.
No doubt, there are occasions when all preachers have been tempted to preach based on their ambitions and ego rather than being prompted by the Holy Spirit to preach a word from the Lord.
When preachers use the Bible or the pulpit to push forth their own agendas (whether to raise money for a building, to convince the people to go in a certain direction, etc., although God can and does lead us to preach at times on these topics), the bottom line is, we better have a pure witness in our spirit that it is the leading of the Lord and we are not using the pulpit to manipulate the saints!
We who preach will receive the greater judgment from the Lord (James 3:1-2). Thus, it behooves us to speak the oracles of God (1 Peter 4:11) and not our own agendas.
I have been in several services where professional preachers got their congregations all worked up to give finances based on their gift of rhetoric. People gave financially because of emotional hype and not due to faith in God.
Preaching is not a platform for show, hype or to fulfill our own agendas; it is a sacred stewardship God entrusts to fivefold ministers (Ephesians 4:11) to mature every person in Christ (Colossians 1:28).
5. When we preach out of frustration, anger and burnout rather than a divine overflow.
Overseeing a church can be one of the hardest things in the world!
To be effective, most pastors in North America need to have knowledge in leadership development and real estate, be a people person and a good speaker, work 60 to 80 hours a week caring for the flock and managing the vision, as well as deal with financial challenges, betrayal, family issues, and personal crises of faith and doubt.
Consequently, at times, burned out pastors have gotten up to preach with unresolved issues of anger, hatred, insecurity, resentment and pain, resulting in a mixed message conveying both truth and anger coming out of a damaged human soul.
I have even witnessed preachers using the pulpit to call out the names their (perceived) enemies, which amounted to employing a bully pulpit rather than a prophetic pulpit. When preachers do this, they damage their congregations and can even impart to them the same issues of anger, resentment and wrath, which will pollute their hearers rather than purify them.
When preachers are filled with anger and/or are experiencing burnout, they need to go away for healing and allow others to minister until they are restored to emotional and spiritual health.
