Failure to Thrive
Why healthy churches need faithful preaching, active listening, and total dependence on the Spirit
Pediatricians use the phrase “failure to thrive” for children who do not grow as they should. Many Christians suffer a spiritual version of the same condition; they remain undernourished, shallow, and unstable because of what is offered from the pulpit, what they bring to the pew, and what they believe God is doing. A church that thrives requires three inseparable ingredients: expositional preaching that opens the Word faithfully, expositional listening that receives it actively, and a shared dependence on the Holy Spirit, who alone transforms the human heart. Hold them together, and the conditions for thriving are in place.
Expositional Preaching + Expositional Listening + Dependence on the Spirit = Thriving Churches
Expositional Preaching
What is expositional preaching? It is preaching in which the main point of the sermon is the main point of the biblical passage. It is more than running commentary. It faithfully handles the text in its historical, grammatical, and literary context and points people to Christ, the subject of every text (Luke 24:27), through whom every promise of God finds its yes and amen (2 Cor. 1:20). The aim of this kind of preaching is not merely information, but transformation. If a church is to be healthy, its teachers must labor to discover the meaning of Scripture and let that meaning set the agenda for the congregation.[1]
The preacher not only exegetes Scripture but exegetes his audience, bringing the ancient Word into living contact with the real pressures, griefs, and questions of the people before him. Faithful exposition is not a lecture; it is a summons. Let us look at the second ingredient: expositional listening.
Expositional Listening
The pastor can faithfully preach the Scriptures and fulfill his responsibility, but the congregation must also fulfill its role as active listeners. In What Is a Healthy Church Member?, Thabiti Anyabwile defines expositional listening as “hearing for the meaning of the passage and receiving that meaning as the controlling idea for our personal and corporate lives.”[2]
Expositional listening that receives the Word actively. As the preacher’s agenda is shaped by Scripture, so the listener’s must be. We do not come mainly for tips, therapy, or political ammunition. We come to hear God speak in His Word, for his glory and our good. Anyabwile identifies five clear benefits of expositional listening in the life of a church:
It cultivates a hunger for God’s Word. His voice becomes sweet to us (Ps. 119:103–4), drowning out the many rival voices competing for control over our lives.
It helps us focus on God’s will and follow him. God’s agenda takes center stage, reorders our priorities, and directs us in the course that most honors him. As Jesus said, “My sheep listen to my voice, and I know them, and they follow me” (John 10:27).
It protects the gospel from corruption. The failure to listen expositionally has disastrous effects (2 Tim. 4:3–4): false teachers find fertile ground, truth is displaced by myth, and the gospel itself is endangered. Cultivating expositional listening guards against “itching ears.”
It encourages faithful pastors. Our attentive listening becomes the double honor Paul commands (1 Tim. 5:17), helping prevent the unnecessary discouragement and fatigue that faithful ministers so often carry.
It unifies the gathered congregation. As we give ourselves to hearing God’s voice through his preached Word, we are shaped into one body, and that unity testifies to the truth of the gospel before a watching world (John 17:21).
Practical Ways to Apply This
Pastors are trained to preach expositionally. But who trains congregations to listen that way? Here are a few simple practices that help cultivate it.
Read the passage before the service. In our church, we read the upcoming text together at our small group — and it has transformed how our people arrive on Sunday, curious and already engaged with the Word.
Come rested. Receiving the Word requires real attentiveness, and fatigue is one of the quietest obstacles to a listening heart.
Before the sermon, silence your phone, not merely as a courtesy, but as an act of preparation. You are about to hear from God.
During the sermon, take notes. Write the main idea in your own words. Ask yourself: what is God saying to me, and to us, through this text?
Yet even when the pulpit is faithful, and the pew is engaged, something more is required, something neither the preacher nor the listener can manufacture.
The Spirit Who Is Life
Proverbs 21:31 reminds us: “A horse is prepared for the day of battle, but victory comes from the LORD.” The preacher can be ready with a faithful sermon, and the congregation can be primed to listen, and yet none of it is enough apart from the help of the Lord. Both preacher and congregation can be armed against all distractions, and still Jesus’s words press us toward a posture of dependence:
I am the vine; you are the branches. The one who remains in me and I in him produces much fruit, because you can do nothing without me. — John 15:5 (CSB)
The Spirit is the one who gives life. The flesh doesn’t help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life. — John 6:63 (CSB)
Both preacher and congregation are called to dependence on the Lord. In preparing and preaching, trust in the Lord is non-negotiable; it is the only way the preacher can speak with confidence that the first Speaker, who inspired the text, will also speak to his people today. In preparing to listen, trust in the Lord is equally non-negotiable. It is the only way the listener can come with the expectation that the same Spirit who breathed out the Word long ago is still at work to apply it to our lives now. All of this depends on prayer and on the One to whom we pray. The Holy Spirit must be invited to bring life. As a pastor, I’ve developed a practice of praying through our members while preparing my sermon applications. I’ve been consistently encouraged by church members who express their prayers for me. The preacher should pray for the hearer, and the hearer should pray for the preacher. Both should desire to see God glorified.
A Church That Thrives
Believers who fail to thrive need sound nutrition and the ability to receive it. Expository preaching provides the nourishment: God’s Word faithfully opened, Christ clearly proclaimed, and God’s glory kept at the center. Expositional listening is the ability to receive that nourishment: coming hungry, attentive, and ready to obey. Both postures depend entirely on the Lord.
Where these are present, a church does more than survive. It thrives. It grows into a people shaped by the Word, unified by the gospel, and sent into the world as living evidence that God still speaks.
Questions for Reflection
When you arrive on Sunday morning, what are you primarily expecting to receive: inspiration, information, or a word from God? How does your expectation shape what you actually take home?
What practical habits or the absence of them most shape the quality of your listening when the Word is preached?
In what ways might your church’s preaching culture and listening culture be out of sync? What would it look like to cultivate both together?
Where are you most tempted to rely on method, better preparation, better note-taking, rather than on the Spirit? What would it look like to hold both together without collapsing one into the other?
Do you pray for the preacher when you are listening to the Word?
[1]2. Mark Dever and Paul Alexander, The Deliberate Church: Building Your Ministry on the Gospel (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2005), 79.
[2]1. Thabiti M. Anyabwile, What Is a Healthy Church Member?, 9Marks (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2008), 19–22.