Ep. 170: Teaching vs. Preaching

Kourtney Cromwell:
Welcome to the indoubt Podcast where we explore the challenging topics that young adults often face. Each week we talk with guests who help answer questions of faith, life and culture, connecting them to our daily experiences and God’s Word. For more info on indoubt, visit indoubt.ca or indoubt.com.

Ryan McCurdy:
Hey everyone, so good to be with you today. I’m really excited about this conversation I have with Paul Park. Paul is the lead pastor of a church called South Delta Baptist Church and he’s been there for about five or six years. One of the things that we get into topic about for discussion is talking about preaching, talking about the difference between exegetical teaching and preaching and what that looks like. And then we get into, and we touch on briefly topical in this episode, but talking with Paul is awesome to hear his story of how he got into ministry and how he has been working in a church and what it means to be people of God’s word. So how we understand how to apply God’s Word. And so I hope you take a listen to this episode and learn a lot actually about the different styles of preaching and teaching. So take a listen.

Ryan McCurdy:
So today I have with me, a guy named Paul Park. He’s the lead pastor of South Delta Baptist Church, not too far from where we are in the studio and he has been there for the last six or so years. And Paul is married to his wife Sarah, has a young son named Nathan. Paul, it’s so great to have you.

Paul Park:
Yeah, it’s an honour to be here. It’s really actually exciting. I love what you guys do here. So thanks for having me.

Ryan McCurdy:
Yeah. Cool. So if you could, Paul, would you be able to give us a little bit of your story? Who’s Paul Park? Where did you grow up? What’s your intro into faith? And some of that stuff.

Paul Park:
I think, well, I mean depending on how long of a version you want out of this, but I guess the basic story for my life would be of course, like God is the central character in my life. We say that, and it kind of almost sounds cliche at times, but I really do believe that God has really worked in a meticulous way in my life. I grew up as son of a church planter. My Dad was a pastor, a church planter. I don’t remember him ever not being a pastor. So that’s kind of the family I lived in. But at the same time, we had this weird thing where my dad was planting a church in Korea, decided that it was really unhealthy for him to be apart from his wife for extended time. So while we here lived in Canada, he decided to call us back and focus on the church plant. I resisted, this is about me grade nine-ish because I grew up here and recognizing that cultural challenges and differences exist, I didn’t feel comfortable moving back to Korea.
So I resisted. So I ended up doing the homestay student here and they went, my mom, dad and my brother, they went and lived in Korea. I lived here alone from grade eight on but then because I went into bad situations like partying, other stuff, so I ended up actually being kicked out of all the homestay situations and ending up living alone in a condo like when I’m 14, 15, all the way through college, right? So because of that, I lived in a more secular setting. So it’s a really interesting kind of mix. I grew up in a Christian home, went to Sunday school, heard the gospel, and yet for a lot of my formative years, I lived apart from the Lord, never doubting God’s existence or that Jesus is really what Bible claims him to be, but just not living it. That was not a part of my life and lived in a very, very secular setting. Very, probably even anti-Bible because I believe if you’re not of the Lord, then your anti-Lord.
So that’s kind of how I lived, I grew up and found that my life was worthless, useless and woke up one day in an empty condo, young kid and the fridge, when you’re alone in a condo, you hear your fridge like kind of going and that’s the only sound and it kind of gets depressing at some points, very lonely because all the other kids have families. And I realized if I die today, no one would miss me. If I just disappeared, the world may even be a better place. That’s when I realized I just, I got to fix something, I need some sort of purpose, I need a reason for me to live on. That’s when I remembered that, Sunday School is so important, right? I remembered always teachers saying, whenever you want to come back to Jesus and ask for forgiveness, he’s ready for you, open arms.

Paul Park:
And that simple concept of the gospel was embedded in my heart and I think God used that. I came back hard. I started to argue with some of my friends on my 20th birthday or 21st birthday, I don’t remember, but they had, my friends had lined up 21 shots for me to take and, because that’s how we did it, right? We partied, we got hammered and I realized, you know what, I’m going to say no to this. That’s when I was starting to walk with God, reading the Bible again and all that. So there was some friction. We’re all good friends now still, but I struggled. And here’s the biggest part of my testimony, when I struggled, the young adult group back then that I mocked and made fun of because I thought they were losers and they were only there because they didn’t have any other friends, so they were at a youth group or whatever. I thought they would just push me away because I was that kind of bully, that guy who mocked the church and yet they welcomed me with open arms and actually shared the love of Christ with me.
That’s when I knew this was real and powerful and that, that hit home more than just, Oh yeah, I believe there’s a god. Say no, no, God matters and God loves me. And I’m seeing that in his people. And that’s why I really love the community of God that God calls around us. When Paul was first led into believe in Jesus, the first thing God did was he gave him people around him, a community. He gave him Barnabas, first, he gave him Ananias, he gave him automatically people, they’re just like, ‘Hey, this is going to be a struggle for you to turn back and pursue a different life now, but don’t you worry, I got you covered.’ And that’s how I felt. In a nutshell, that’s kind of how I came to the Lord and really live a life that wants to pursue him.

Ryan McCurdy:
Yeah. That’s so cool. That’s a beautiful story. I think that’s, even as you preface this, that God’s the main character in my story. And I was like, he’s the one that brought you and wooed you back and healed you. I mean, that’s the story of the Gospel for all of us, for every single person. Right? Even there’s some people are talking about like, ‘Oh, I don’t know what my testimony is. I just grew up in a Christian home and I went to church all the time.’ And it’s like, no, that’s beautiful that God kept you and you stay like, and vice versa. Even when you turn away from God in your teen years and like, your story is similar to mine. I had a similar upbringing, Christian family, Christian all that and then I kind of did my own thing for a few years in my teen years. And then between 18 and 19 is when I kind of was like having those questions about like, what is my life about? What’s my purpose? And God’s in that story too. And so that’s so cool. So after this all kind of happened, you’re in your early 20s and then you started wanting to dig into the Word, and how did you get to be a pastor that you are now?

Paul Park:
Yeah. So I ended up resisting being a pastor because I saw what happened with my dad and everything. Not that anything bad happened, but recognizing that it takes a toll on your family and yourself. So I resisted for a long time. I went into teaching. I always wanted to be a teacher. One of the people, when I got expelled from high school a couple of times, all the teachers gave up on me, and I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced this, but when you get expelled, you get released and you have to go around to all your teachers. So all my eight teachers in high school, they have to sign off and release me. It’s kind of like a walk of shame and all the teachers ended up saying, “I knew this was coming, that you deserve this,” and poured more shame on you, which is to me anti-Gospel. Right? Just keep pouring shame.
But then one teacher who was a Christian, she ended up closing the door in saying, “Paul, I want you to sit down.” I’m like, Oh man, she’s going to give me a lecture. She was my English Lit teacher and she said, “Here’s all the essays that I pulled out for your file. You are a good writer. I don’t want you to waste your life. Here’s adult education. You can graduate, you can finish school, you should go to college, you can really make something of yourself. You have potential. Paul, don’t waste it.” And she just poured like 30 minutes to an hour into that conversation and wanted me to do well. And because of that, I wanted to be a teacher like her who is able to work with students that are maybe like me, who are struggling and give them more grace than not. Right? So I ended up pursuing education and when I went to college to study something, I realized, you know what, I’m going to be a Lit major. So I studied English Lit at UBC and when I graduated that I wanted to be a teacher. So I went to do another degree to be a teacher and then ended up really enjoying teaching.
And yet, I was working with the seminary at the time and I was involved with First Nation Ministry in Tsawwassen. I was involved with youth groups and young adults leading worship. And through all that, people kept urging me to go into seminary and actually be a vocational minister. And I said, no, no, no, I’ve chosen my path. I believe, and I still believe today that I can honour God by being a teacher just as much as I can by being a pastor. And so I resisted, resisted, resisted. But when I started working with the First Nations, I worked with them for eight and a half years. I worked with the team that was there, planted a small church, worked with very difficult situations, drug addiction, abuse, all sorts of things. And when I got there and started ministering to them, I fell in love with it, I absolutely fell in love with it and recognized I need to fill myself if I’m going to help them in their walk with Christ. I need to make sure I’m equipped. So I actually did want to go to seminary and at first, I was like, I’m not going to be a pastor, but I recognize I need some more support and education, so I’m going to go to seminary.

Paul Park:
And then the seminary president, I don’t know why he did this, but he dared to pray, when he prayed for me as I was considering going to seminary, he said, “God, just use him, and use him,” and he’s like, “if it’s pastoral ministry, I want you to just embed that in his heart.” And I was like, “Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, wait. You don’t have any right to pray this over me right now.” But sure enough, God moved my heart and now I came to a point where I wanted, I wanted God to work in me, I wanted God to do this. And I was super insecure partly because of my past. So I said, “God, if you just, if I’m misreading you if I’m not hearing a clear voice, please shut me down.” So my first ministry opportunity, my vocational paid ministry opportunity at South Delta, I told God, “God, if you don’t want me in this field, I can go back to teaching at any point. So please shut me down. Make everyone hate me, make it clear to me that I’m not supposed to go down this path.”

But I think God graciously moved in a way that he affirmed me more than what I actually deserved. Much, much more. The people were way more welcoming than they should have been to me. They gave me opportunities that I never deserved. And I think God created environments to tell me that he’s going to be with me. And so here I am today.

Ryan McCurdy:
That’s cool. That’s awesome and so beautiful, again, beautiful story. Just all of those steps of saying like, I don’t know if this is for me. I don’t know if I should go this way. I don’t know. And there’s elements of yeah, like the past and the doubt or the self-doubt more so and God being consistently there. He’s consistently there, he’s present and he’s guiding and leading. And I wonder if there are people who are listening who resonate with your story, right? Young adults wanting to either pursue ministry or they’re asking questions about God and they hear a story of a lead pastor and they’re like, oh, most lead pastors are like, they have their life. It’s been perfect. It’s been easy. It’s been a clean, comfortable road. And your story is like, actually no. But here I am and I got to where I am by God’s grace and that’s such a cool encouragement. So yeah, thanks for sharing that.
And it’s cool because you said one of the things that you love is teaching and you wanted to be a teacher because of the experience you had with that one teacher and in a roundabout way you kind of are a teacher, right?

Paul Park:
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Ryan McCurdy:
There’s a lot that goes into pastoring. But maybe we could talk about this element of teaching and preaching. And maybe this question might just put you on the spot a little bit, but how would you differentiate in most people’s mind the difference between teaching and preaching?

Paul Park:
Yeah, it’s interesting because a lot of churches are using those terms lately, I’m a teaching pastor or a preaching pastor. What does that even mean? And I don’t know if there’s a definitive way of categorizing the two. I personally prefer preaching, like the word, preaching. I think preaching, it could include teaching. I think there’s good use of both. I think the Bible talks about it in a separate manner where you can teach someone like literally teach them and whether you’re giving them information about the Bible or it could be a Bible study, it could be a topical study of marriage, it could be a marriage counselling situation. So there’s teaching and there’s a good place for that in the church. But I also think there’s a preaching element where you preach Christ at the end of the day. Paul talks about how he decided to preach nothing but the crucified Christ, right? That’s all he’s going to know. And at the end of the day, the word of God always exposes Christ. And I think that’s preaching.
And I do think at some points, yes, we’re called to teach because it’s relevant, like I need to teach and not just me, but Christians need to help each other learn how you’re supposed to be a better husband or a wife or how you’re supposed to honour your parents, how you’re supposed to deal with finances. How are you to relate to politicians? What do you do in life? Like, yes, there’s practical, God is very practical and those need to be taught. And yet there’s also that other part of the mission, which is also very important, which is, yes, we do need to proclaim the Gospel. And that’s where I think preaching comes in and doesn’t have to be necessarily at a pulpit, but I think all of us actually are called to preach the word of God.

Ryan McCurdy:
Yeah. It sounds like even in that, it’s like you can teach anything, but when it’s preaching, it’s explicitly the Gospel. It’s explicitly pointing people to Jesus. It’s explicitly sharing the faith. And so you can teach, preaching and teaching they’re often intermingled, right? You’re teaching as you’re preaching and you’re preaching as you’re teaching, but the element of, in pastoring is like you’re landing scripturally on Jesus, you’re landing, you’re bringing the focal point to Jesus. And that’s a good way of putting it because sometimes it’s helpful to even recognize like, oh, what are the tendencies that my church that I belong to, what’s our gravitational pull? What style of preaching and teaching, and like what, how do we deconstruct that and make sense of that? And so even in that, you and I had a conversation earlier today just briefly about how you’ve been at your church for a number of years and one of the things that you did, as you were kind of candidating for your role, is that you were preaching consistently. And we talked a little bit about the difference between expository and topical preaching. So here’s a question. What is expository preaching? What does that mean? When you hear the word expository preaching, what does that mean?

Paul Park:
Yeah, I mean, I think there’s so much discussion around this. You can probably check it online or you heard maybe your pastor talk about it. And I think there’s different views. So I don’t claim to be the definitive, I guess, the definitive answer to what is expository preaching. I come from an education background, right? I used to be a teacher and an English teacher at that. So obviously I’ve taught expository essays. You might remember your high school days, narratives and expository. And I guess the key differentiation between those two essays, is narrative is like, yeah, free for all. You can go, it’s your idea, it’s your story, bring it. Expository, it has to be, no, something’s already there. There’s already a truth. That’s the premise, right? There’s already a truth and you have to expose it. You can’t make things up. It’s actually wrong if you do. That’s why you need to cite properly, and I know students sometimes hate that.
But that’s why citation is important because, in real life, I always tell my students in college too, in real life, if you don’t cite, and if you plagiarize, you go to jail for that, you can go to jail for that. It’s actually a criminal offence to plagiarize. It’s a huge deal. And I think sometimes we forget that when we preach, that’s what I take expository preaching to mean. We’re exposing a truth that’s already there. So in essence, the posture of us as preachers, whether you are a vocational pastor, or you’re preaching in a context that’s unique, when you’re doing expository preaching, what you’re saying is, I am just the messenger. So my role is to be faithful to the message that was portrayed by God. So God is the speaker and not me. So I can’t make up anything. I don’t need to make up anything. God has already spoken and revealed his word in the Bible. So what we need to now do is faithfully convey what was actually spoken. We can’t misinterpret, that will be a poor messenger. So, of course, the historical, social, cultural and canonical context, we talk about all of that.
But really you study all of that so that you can be clear on what God is saying so that you can faithfully deliver that to the people. To me, that’s what expository preaching is. It’s just exposing what’s already there. It’s the truth that God has already spoken. So I think that’s the mindset. I think that’s actually very freeing for the preacher. It takes a lot of pressure off of us. I don’t need to create something. I don’t need to be wise. Because if I preached out in my folly, I mean come on, right? It’s not worth listening to. But because I know I’m standing on solid ground, it’s actually pretty exciting for me to preach.

Ryan McCurdy:
Yeah. And even in that, that kind of answers, that question answers some of the things that are turning around in my head, which is like, what is expository preaching? It’s exposing the text for what it’s, the truth that it’s implicitly saying, how does expository preaching accomplish its goal? There’s probably ways of illustration and ways of communicating, but fundamentally it’s about, it’s like you’re walking around with a flashlight and you’re saying, hey, look at this text. Let’s look at this text, let’s unpack it, let’s make sense of it, and then that’s how it accomplishes its goal. It’s being applied to us in different ways. And so here’s a question and it might seem like an odd question. But you mentioned narrative and expository and so maybe for right now we’ll just talk about expository and then maybe we can talk about narrative or maybe what another word do you use for narrative style of preaching as like topical?

Paul Park:
Uh, yeah, yeah.

Ryan McCurdy:
Yeah. Similar camp. So maybe we’ll get into that in a sec, but the question that might seem a little odd is, why do preachers preach this way? Why preaches in exposition? What’s the goal? What’s the aim for those who are listening to the preacher?

Paul Park:
Yeah. I think, well, first I already touched on this, but it takes pressure off of us. It’s not our authority that we’re leaning on. And I think also when we say, you know how like in the Pentateuch we see Moses trying to reveal God’s glory, right, we see, talk about God’s glory. How Moses, his face shone after he had conversation with the Lord, it’s actually quite interesting, right? And I think exposing, at the end of the day, when you expose truth in the Bible, it’s always to the glory of God. And to be particular, some would argue it exposes Christ at the end of the day, that’s the whole Bible. So when we expose that, I guess what we achieve is God’s glory. But when we preach our wisdom on how to be financially wise, and if that’s it, then we actually fail to expose God’s glory. And sometimes people misunderstand glory. It’s like, oh, let’s make him look good. No, no, no. He is good. It’s the very substance of himself that defines what good is.
So what we need to do is actually just be able to unveil our blinded eyes, to unveil it, to see God in the way he actually is. We don’t need to sugarcoat him. We don’t need to make him look better. We don’t need to defend him. There’s this weird story in Acts where Demetrius, he wants to defend, as a tradesperson, he wants to defend Artemis, the goddess because if we don’t defend, then all of a sudden these gods are no longer going to be relevant. And sometimes Christians think that’s how we should be with God. If we fail to defend God, if we fail to do apologetics, well, I’m not saying, apologetics is very important. I’m not saying it’s not, but if we fail to defend for some reason like God’s going to be irrelevant or God’s going to fail in his mission. No, no, no. God’s way more powerful than that. He doesn’t depend on our preaching style, skill set or anything like that. Right? So I think expository is a posture of a preacher where we say, we just want to reveal your glory. And we want people to know you for who you are.
And that way there’s no pressure. But then it leads us, if you actually stand in the presence of the glory of God, I believe it will lead you to repentance and it will lead you to follow after him and love him more. And I think that’s what happened with Paul when he met Jesus and he saw the light. In that presence of that glory, he quickly recognized that he was wrong and that he was running the wrong way. He repented and passionately followed after Christ. And so it’s not like I want to convince you, even though I do want to convince you, my ultimate goal is really if I can just get you to see the glory, if I can just unveil that, then it will all happen.

Ryan McCurdy:
And that piece when you were saying how we don’t need to defend God, he is glory. He is powerful. He is good. He is all of these things, we don’t need to portray him as that because that’s already how he is. It makes me think that sometimes even in our own style of preaching and I’m preaching and in my context as well, it’s like there’s times where our insecurity comes up, the preacher’s insecurity comes up. Well, I have to convince other people about God’s goodness because I’m not convinced. And that can be a really dangerous place to get into. And so what would be your encouragement or even advice to somebody who wants to be more expository and sees the good in it, but has a hard time doing that? Would you encourage them to study the word or find resources?

Paul Park:
Yeah. I mean, I think studying the word is never a wrong answer. But I also think having the confidence, and I guess this is our posture. I love your point about that. Young people, we’ve always been throwing around recently, the young people care about authenticity. I think it’s true. And I’m relatively young so I can definitely attest to that. Yeah. I want authenticity. I don’t want phony. It really turns me off. So when you’re preaching and you’re not confident in God’s truth, you’re insecure. That does bleed out, right? And I get it, we all have moments of unbelief, even though we don’t want to admit it, right? And we struggle with faith and walk, and I get that. But I think our posture is if we view the Bible as authoritative, if we view the Bible to be supreme, I do think that becomes the authoritative voice with authenticity that we can, through which we can preach. I think for people who are struggling and including myself sometimes to kind of like, oh, expository, a) can it be boring, b) does it only appeal to a certain demographic of people who are academically driven? Historical? Well, I think there’s homiletical, or the way you communicate, I think you can make sure that it’s not boring.
I actually do think boring sermons are bad sermons. I think there is a duty of a preacher to actually make the information accessible to the people that you’re speaking to. I think that is your job. If you haven’t done your job, I do think, yeah. I have preached in my view, one of the worst sermons just a few weeks ago that I think, and that’s of course-

Ryan McCurdy:
That you’ve ever preached?

Paul Park:
Yeah. That I think.

Ryan McCurdy:
A few weeks ago?

Paul Park:
Yeah, just a few weeks ago. So I don’t get too depressed now. I used to be more dependent so that my Sunday mood would change on how I did. And I’m starting to learn that that’s a horrible way of misunderstanding the gospel, right? As if God’s love for me or God’s affirmation of me depended on me and not on Christ. Right? So it’s just the wrong view of the gospel. But I go and I preach and then I have this bad day and it is boring and it went long. So I put, our church we do this thing every Thursday, we debrief last week’s sermon, whoever it was who preached, and then we plan for the next sermon. So whoever’s preaching next week will kind of preach the sermon to a group of preachers and our staff, and then we will give feedback to each other. So I always ask for feedback and our staff, and I just completely openly admit that that was a bad sermon. I could’ve done this better, this better and this better. I’m always usually the hardest on myself. But then on that Sunday, two people came to know Jesus through that sermon.

Ryan McCurdy:
Right, isn’t that hilarious?

Paul Park:
God just does that. Right?

Ryan McCurdy:
Totally.

Paul Park:
It’s like as if God wants to make a point.

Ryan McCurdy:
Totally. Totally. The amount of times that I’ve been preaching and I leave and I’m like, oh my goodness, I just need to hang up the towel. I need to never preach again. Somebody will come and will be like, I don’t know if you even meant to say this, but when you said this and you revealed this about God, it made me think of this and it totally hit me and God met with me in that. And I’m like, really? If God can use that, like surely he’s God, surely he’s good because that was not anything eloquent or good on my terms. And those are encouraging things and they’re humbling things. And I think it’s definitely easy young people communicating the Gospel, even to their friends or maybe they’re starting preaching and they’re sharing their testimony or a passage from scripture with their youth group or the young adult’s group and they can feel a lot of the pressure. But ultimately if you can preach the gospel, reveal Christ, you’re doing something right. And so even in all of this, as we’ve talked about, expository teaching and preaching and the different nuances of it. Yeah, the goal is to preach the gospel, to preach Christ and let people come to that.
And so this has been a joy. This has been actually really fun and really engaging and I liked hearing your story and some of the stuff that you’re working on and so Paul, thanks for being with us.

Paul Park:
Thank you.

Ryan McCurdy:
We’re actually going to have another part to our conversation. So looking forward to having you back. And for those of you listening, we will be having another conversation with Paul soon up for you, and you can hear about a little bit more of the other side of what is topical preaching and what does it mean to communicate the gospel through that method. So again, thanks Paul for coming with us.

Paul Park:
Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Ryan McCurdy:
Thanks so much for joining us on this episode with Paul Park. It is such an important conversation talking about God’s Word and how it is communicated in churches all over the place. And so if you are curious about indoubt and you’ve heard this episode and you want to ask more questions, indoubt exists to bring the Good News of Jesus into everyday issues of life, faith and culture. We want to encourage you and equip you to engage in the tough questions of your life and your time in a way that honours God. If indoubt has encouraged you and you’re passionate to help others grow in the truth, we want to welcome you to a partnership with us. And partnering could be praying. It also could be financially partnering with us and helping communicate the gospel through this medium. It could also be through writing in and giving us some of your thoughts. We would love to hear from you. You can email us at info@indoubt.ca. And so thanks so much for joining with us. Like I said today, as we talked with Paul Park. Next week, and on our next episode, we’re going to talk with Paul Park again and we’re going to, instead of talking expositional teaching, we’re going to get more into topical teaching and preaching and the conversation around that. So thanks for listening and we’ll see you next week.

Kourtney Cromwell:
Thanks so much for listening. If you want to hear more, subscribe on iTunes and Spotify or visit us online at indoubt.ca or indoubt.com. We’re also on social media, so make sure to follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.