Welcome back to my interview with Mike Pierson, the senior pastor of Providence Church in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania. You can read part one here.

Mike, if you could study under any theologian in church history (excluding those men in Scripture) who would it be and why?

This is a tough choice. I’d love to travel around with George Whitfield and watch him preach the gospel.

However, my one theologian would be Jonathan Edwards. I love his view of the glory of God that allowed him to make insights like:

God is glorified not only by His glory’s being seen, but by its being rejoiced in. When those that see it delight in it, God is more glorified than if they only see it. His glory is then received by the whole soul, both by the understanding and by the heart. God made the world that He might communicate, and the creature receive, His glory; and that it might [be] received both by the mind and heart. He that testifies his idea of God’s glory [doesn’t] glorify God so much as he that testifies also his…delight in it.

I would want to experience revival with him and also sit and discuss the theological underpinnings behind his responses to it. If I studied under him, I’d have to ask him to speak about 10 grade levels lower than he usually spoke.

What single piece of counsel (or constructive criticism) has most improved your preaching?

I struggled greatly with fear and unbelief in preaching. God has used so many means to deal with this sin as it relates to preaching. One story that was particularly helpful was a story of how Corrie ten Boom’s father helped her trust God in fearful situations (as told in Overcoming Fear, Worry and Anxiety by Elyse Fitzpatrick). 

Father sat down on the edge of the narrow bed. “Corrie,” he began gently, “when you go to Amsterdam, when do I give you your ticket?”

I sniffed a few times, considering this.

“Why, just before we get on the train.”

Exactly. And our wise Father in heaven knows when we’re going to need things, too. Don’t run ahead of Him, Corrie.”

God used that story to help me see the foolishness of worry leading up to the preaching event afraid that somehow God will desert me in the pulpit. Now, almost every Sunday during worship, I look at the pulpit and thank God that, not now, but when I stand in the pulpit, He will anoint me to preach His word. He has been so faithful to do this.

What books on preaching, or examples of it, have you found most influential in your own preaching?

The Sacred Anointing: The Preaching of Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones by Tony Sargent. His example is where I learned to cry out for the presence of God while I prepare and preach.

Yes, that is a very helpful book on preaching. Thanks, my friend! Join me next time for the third and final portion of my interview with Mike Pierson.