Romans 10:14B “And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?”

How can you hear about God without a preacher? In God’s plan to save people, preachers are a necessity, too.

Don’t think that is limited to people like Paul, who was writing these words, or people like me, who preach and teach for a living. “Preaching” isn’t limited to formal speeches delivered in front of groups of Christians on Sunday mornings.

Preaching is what happens when people deliver God’s good news. Preaching is going on when a college student defends or explains their faith to a roommate or friends in a college dorm room. Preachers are in action when the next-door neighbor gets cancer, or suffers a loss in the family, and the Christian next door not only drops off a meal, but gets up the courage to talk about Jesus and life that never ends.

Here’s the amazing thing: God has chosen to create a plan to save the world that needs people, people like you and me, to tell others about him. It’s true that we can hand out pamphlets, and distribute Bibles and mail flyers and postcards that have the gospel on them, too. But in almost 30 years of ministry, I can count on one hand the number of people I know who ever got to know God that way–because they read about him.

I know hundreds, personally, who got the gospel from a person. Generally speaking, our Lord wants us to meet him through a warm, living human being, not a cold piece of paper, though he will sometimes settle for the piece of paper if he has to.

Which would you prefer: if your pastor just wrote the sermons and let you read them? Isn’t it better to have him preach them from the heart? Maybe that is a dangerous question for me to ask.

When I was at conference several years ago, a number of people asked me to give their personal love and greetings to my wife. Of course, they are free to text or email her anytime they like, and some do. But there is something warmer, more intimate and personal, about getting a message through a live person.

When you call customer assistance, do you like the automated voice system, talking to the robot: “To make a purchase, press one; for help with installation, press two; for technical support, press three; to make a return, press four”? As often as not, you are just waiting to here, “to speak to a live operator, stay on the line and your call will be answered in the order it was received.”

So God wants people to hear about him through a warm-blooded, moving and breathing preacher. And sometimes that’s not me. Sometimes, that is you.