If the great need of this hour, as of every other, is preachers of the gospel, then it is surely worth while to reflect on a regular basis on the nature of, and qualifications for, a call to the ministry.I don't want to engage here his thoughts on the subject of calls but to question the original premise: are preachers of the gospel the great need of the hour? I ask simply on the back of preaching through 1st Peter and the decided lack of emphasis on that topic. And Peter doesn't seem to be alone in that regard: yes, Paul wants ministers of the gospel to be all they should be and John is concerned that people recognise true teaching from false, but their letters don't seem overly heavy on saying that preachers are the great need of the hour.
What they do emphasise, it seems to me, is the need for churches and Christians to be what they are and what they are called to be. And Peter, along with his Lord, sees that as properly evangelistic (1 Peter 2:11,12; cf. Matthew 5:16).
Now, of course, faithful preachers are essential in that task; after all, they are given by the Lord to equip the saints for works of ministry. But that isn't the same as saying preachers of the gospel are "the great need of the hour" - or is it?
Maybe this is related to where the church finds itself. During Christendom's long years, there was a shared body of truth that was accepted, albeit only nominally by most. Perhaps the great need then was for those gifted in opening up the tacitly agreed metanarrative (ie. gospel preachers). But in a pluralistic age, not too unlike the context into which Peter's letter was sent, where there is not even a nominal agreement on truth, perhaps the greater need is for the kind of thing Peter calls for in the main body of his letter: deeply authentic Christian living.
So: a great need for gospel preachers? Yes. An even greater need for gospel living? I think so.
