In John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, we meet a man named “Formalist.” As Bunyan describes elsewhere,

Formalist . . . is a man that has lost all but the shell of religion. He is hot, indeed, for his form; and no marvel, for that is his all to contend for. But his form being without the power and spirit of godliness, it will leave him in his sins; nay, he stands now in them in the sight of God (2 Timothy 3:5), and is one of the many that “will seek to enter in, and shall not be able.” (The Strait Gate, 85)

Bunyan assumes this man is unregenerate, and there is reason enough to think so. Notice: this man is not without some fervency, but the object of his heat is merely forms, traditions, and rituals. He is passionate about the husk or scaffolding of religion, but not about God himself. If one has the correct forms or doctrine, it is enough. If one’s church attendance is consistent, he is good to go. So he thinks.

Formalism in the Old Testament

Formalists believe that a right show of religion merits favor in the eyes of God. They are deceived into thinking that God is impressed with the externals even when there is no heart of worship within — an error that many prophets in the Old Testament denounced. In Hosea, God tells the people, “I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings” (Hosea 6:6). The problem is even more pronounced in Isaiah:

What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices?     says the Lord;I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams     and the fat of well-fed beasts;I do not delight in the blood of bulls,     or of lambs, or of goats.When you come to appear before me,     who has required of you     this trampling of my courts?Bring no more vain offerings;     incense is an abomination to me.New moon and Sabbath and the calling of convocations —     I cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly.Your new moons and your appointed feasts     my soul hates;they have become a burden to me;     I am weary of bearing them. (Isaiah 1:11–17)

Such language may seem severe, and it is. God is speaking to a very formally religious people. They consistently bring their offerings. They appear before God on a regular basis. They observe the Sabbath, convocations, new moons, and feasts. But something has gone terribly wrong. They are doing the right activities, but God is outraged.

Why? Their religion is just a shell. It is what Jesus calls a whitewashed tomb (Matthew 23:27). The outside looks ritzy, but inside are bones and cobwebs. There is no life, no desire for God. They are walking in dead orthodoxy.

Formalism in the New Testament

Formalists worshiped freely in the temple during the days of Christ. The temple was one of the wonders of the world. Its exterior was made of marble and gold. The Middle Eastern sun radiated off its walls, causing it to shine for miles around. At one time, as many as eighty thousand people worked on the temple complex day and night. When complete (after decades of construction), the full grounds spanned the length of about eight football fields. Inside the temple was the treasury, holding the equivalent in our day of more than two billion dollars.

The temple was magnificent. It was flashy. It was religious. Sacrifices were performed around the clock. Josephus estimates that, during Passover week alone, there would be 250,000 lambs sacrificed. It was regularly thronged with pilgrims. It was dotted with priests, scribes, and religious teachers at all hours of the day.

“How often do people go through the motions in their Christian lives, including on Sundays?”

But how did Jesus react to it all? “Do you see these great buildings? There will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down” (Mark 13:2). In AD 70, this is exactly what happened. The Roman army burned the city to the ground, including the temple, and put an end to the priesthood and sacrifices. It was all gone. Jesus explains that the judgment resulted from this exceedingly religious people rejecting their Messiah. They had a form of godliness, clearly. They burned with zeal concerning the law and its performances. They grew exacting in their rituals. But their religion was dead. It was a shell. So God ended it.

Formalism Today

What of our forms, traditions, and religion today? How often do people go through the motions in their Christian lives, including on Sundays? The practices of the Christian faith are not bad in themselves, of course, but if they do not stir up our affections for Christ, they become not only bad but damnable.

J.C. Ryle described formalism as “when a man is a Christian in name only, and not in reality — in outward things only, and not in his inward feelings — in profession only, and not in practice — when his Christianity, in short, is a mere matter of form, or fashion, or custom, without any influence on his heart or life.”

In The Pilgrim’s Progress, what surprises Christian most about Formalist is not his disdain for the gospel in preference to custom and tradition, but that he refuses to accept Christian’s counsel about his soul. Formalist tells Christian to “look to himself.” Don’t trouble your head about it, he tells him. Like so many, the formalist doesn’t like to be corrected. His doctrine is precise; his church attendance impeccable. Who are you to tell him he doesn’t have the real thing?

I am not encouraging us to call out every person who is not as warm or zealous as they should be. I am encouraging us to examine our own hearts and to consider the counsel we have received regarding our own souls. We pastors might also consider our own churches. Both individuals and churches can both get to a place where — because we have correct doctrine, an order of worship regulated by the Scriptures, God-exalting music, and expository preaching — we think we have everything we need. But without the Spirit of God, the best outward forms are only a husk.

How many churches today are looking to pageantry, liturgy, pragmatism, and other outward forms of religion to juice up their congregations and fill the spiritual void in their worship? Others lean upon traditions and rituals. But it would be better to have a church that sings out of tune from the heart than one that sings in tune for the sake of self-glory. The same is true of sermons or prayers or any other practice in the church. When it comes to the Christian religion, externals are not everything — not even close.

Form and Power

Every Christian experiences drought and deadness from time to time. I’m not speaking of that common grief. Formalism is more deep-seated, more insidious. Are there any readers who go to church, read their Bible, catechize their children, know plenty of doctrine, are exact in their duties, but have never been born again? Some do these activities simply because they were raised to do so, or because they want to stay out of hell.

Do you know your confessions and creeds but refuse to forgive your enemies or spend time in secret prayer? Are you an expert in theology but a stranger to what Paul means when he says, “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Romans 5:5)? We’re told in Psalm 34:8 to “taste and see that the Lord is good!” Have you tasted this?

The person and work of Jesus is the only way we are made right with God. He is the only road that leads to life. In The Pilgrim’s Progress, before Formalist goes off to his destruction, Christian warns him, “You come in by yourselves, without his direction; and shall go out by yourselves, without his mercy.”

Has Christ shown you what real, living, experiential Christianity is? If not, ask him to take out your stony heart and give you a heart of flesh, one alive and sensitive to the things of God, sin, and your neighbor. He is the one who gives sight to the blind. He is the friend of sinners. He is the one who came to seek and to save those who are lost. Go to him today. Call on him now, without waiting. Jesus says, “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (Luke 11:13). Jesus has been saving formalists for centuries, and for those who turn to him in faith, today is no exception!

In 1959, Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1899–1981) preached a series of messages on the topic of revival, including one called “Revival Sermon: Dead Orthodoxy.” In the sermon, Lloyd-Jones argues that “dead orthodoxy” is the greatest threat to revival, to the church at large, and to all individual Christians.

Such an observation merits careful inquiry. What is dead orthodoxy — and how might we discern its presence in our own souls and churches?

Dead Orthodoxy

To help us get at the substance of dead orthodoxy, consider some questions:

What happens when we love the creeds and confessions of the church, but they have failed to make us more like Jesus?
What happens when right doctrine makes us haughty, gruff, impatient, and hard?
What happens when we are experts in theology but perpetual delinquents when it comes to the prayer closet?
What happens when we love doctrines more than the God whom the doctrines are about?

The answer is dead orthodoxy. Dead orthodoxy is a form of godliness, but without the attending power (2 Timothy 3:5). It is a case not of zeal without knowledge, but of knowledge without proper zeal (Romans 10:2). Paul tells Timothy to “avoid such people” (2 Timothy 3:5) — that is how serious dead orthodoxy is.

In one sense, of course, the word orthodoxy presupposes right belief, and right belief assumes warmth and vitality, producing a genuine growth in Christlikeness and love for God and man. As God’s truth works in us, a transformation takes place. This leads to more and more life, not deadness.

And yet, the phrase dead orthodoxy recognizes that it is entirely possible to have correct doctrine without a regenerate heart or a saving trust in the person of Christ. Think of the demons in the Bible. They knew the truth about Jesus and assented to Jesus’s gospel being true. But they refused to trust him. They didn’t love him. The devils believe God is one (James 2:19) — and so do many hypocrites.

Additionally, it is entirely possible to be a genuine Christian but have an inconsistent outworking of that faith in one’s life. This inconsistency can be seen in all of us to a degree. Isn’t all sin inconsistent with faith and the love of God? But sometimes a Christian’s inconsistency becomes so deep and habitual that his faith, though orthodox, looks more dead than alive. He desperately needs reviving.

Four Signs of Dead Orthodoxy

The following four signs of dead orthodoxy are not meant to help us point fingers at others’ deadness in contrast to our own liveliness. To do so would be to fall into the error that some of these signs address.

“What can you do in the boneyard of dead orthodoxy? Call upon God to revive you, to bring you back to life.”

We must first point the finger at ourselves. Where have we exhibited tendencies to deadness — to coldness, to hardness, to formalism, to theological tribalism or elitism? In what areas do we need to seek Christ’s face afresh? Dead orthodoxy certainly describes some churches, denominations, and people, but the seeds of it undoubtedly find a home in our own heart as well. In the words of Nathan the prophet, “You are the man” (2 Samuel 12:7).

Let repentance from dead orthodoxy work tenderness and warmth in our own souls first.

1. Smug Contentment

I believe the truth, I know I believe the truth, and few are as smart as I am about the truth. This smug contentment leads to an attitude that is excessively polemical, where much of my time is spent criticizing theological opponents, especially on minutia and tertiary issues. I begin to nitpick anything or anyone not in line with my views. This smugness also produces tribalism, since only my camp is right, and so I refuse to work or fellowship with other Christians — or if I do, I look down upon them.

2. Dislike of Enthusiasm

This sign appears when the cold, proper, and intellectual is preferred to the fervent, excited, and exuberant. Dry academic lectures become preferable to preaching that is searching, close, or (as the Puritans described it) “painful.” Lloyd-Jones goes so far as to say that “dislike of enthusiasm is to quench the Spirit,” and that “this charge of enthusiasm is the one that has always been brought against people who have been most active in a period of revival” (Revival, 72–73).

Along with this dislike comes an inordinate fear of disorder. Those with this dislike can easily become rigid and inflexible, even in matters not limited by the Scriptures. Because of wild revivalists of the past, too much talk of revival or Spirit-led spontaneity is frowned upon as sheer emotionalism, animal excitement, or mass hysteria. Lloyd-Jones comments, “There are churches that are orthodox, but absolutely dead, because they are so afraid of false excitement, and the excesses of certain spiritual movements, that they quench and hinder the Spirit and deny the true” (78).

3. Pining for Social Acceptance

Someone overly concerned with social acceptance cannot stand to be considered a radical, an enthusiast, a fanatic, or a fundamentalist, and so he becomes overly proper. This concern often focuses on moralism and not rocking the social boat. It is dignified and prim, but it knows little about the cross as “folly to those who are perishing” (1 Corinthians 1:18). Such moved J.C. Ryle to comment,

There is a generation that loathes everything like zeal in religion. There are never wanting men of a cautious, cold-blooded, Erasmus-like temper, who pass through the world doing no good, because they are so dreadfully afraid of doing harm. I do not expect such men to admire Whitefield, or allow he did any good. I fear, if they had lived eighteen hundred years ago, they would have had no sympathy with St. Paul. (A Sketch of the Life and Labors of George Whitefield, 34)

This attitude may even treat evangelism as distasteful because it offends people and causes trouble. Shouldn’t we mind our own business? Shouldn’t we stay quiet about the gospel since it stirs up anger and hostility?

4. Denial of the Miraculous

Some may think, God can still work in history, but let’s not expect anything too extreme. God stopped doing that a long time ago. This attitude is symptomatic of our secular age and society. Christians in the West are in regular danger of acting like deists or mere rationalists. We don’t typically deal with problems of animism and voodoo — we deal with atheism, scientism, Darwinian evolution, and secular humanism. We deal with materialism and the ramifications of Enlightenment thought.

Such views so dominate our society that their influence can find a home in our hearts and in our churches. Syncretism is not just a blending of animistic and pagan religions with Christianity. Syncretism can also blend the Western religions of evolution, humanism, and scientism with the Christian faith. This blending leads to a distrust of the supernatural.

Cure for Dead Orthodoxy

If you see any of these tendencies in yourself, how should you respond? Ultimately, hope is only found outside of ourselves. Only Jesus can rescue us from such peril. We must keep turning back to him, who is the perfect example of right affection, right practice, and right belief fused together.

Perhaps your deadness is so deep that you fear you are not yet alive in Christ. Seek the Lord while he may be found. He can take out your stony heart and give you a heart of flesh, one alive and sensitive to the things of God. He gives sight to the blind. He is the friend of sinners. He came to seek and to save the lost.

Or maybe you have had seasons of sweet communion in the past, but now you feel dry and busy. Your faith has become nominal. Like the church in Sardis, you may have had a reputation of being alive, but now you find yourself dead (Revelation 3:1). Jesus tells this church to “wake up!” (Revelation 3:2). What can you do in the boneyard of dead orthodoxy? Call upon God to revive you, to bring you back to life.

Wherever you are, go to him today. Call on him now, without waiting. Jesus says, “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (Luke 11:13).

A few years ago, I was discussing open-air preaching with a veteran pastor in Missouri. He told me, “Thirty years ago, you’d maybe see five or six open-air preachers in the whole country. Today there are at least twenty in every city.”

The renewed interest in open-air preaching is not just happening in charismatic circles, either. It is taking place in pockets typically considered more reserved and evangelistically challenged. Confessional Presbyterians and Baptists now have men across America and the UK who regularly preach in the open air. Reformation Heritage Books even published a book about Reformed open-air preaching (with a foreword by Joel Beeke).

But questions remain for many: Is it effective in the twenty-first century? Is there biblical warrant for this type of ministry? What should a person do who is interested in open-air preaching? I would like to give some brief answers to these questions.

Open-Air Preaching Today?

When people ask whether open-air preaching is effective in today’s context, I find it helpful to consider what the Bible says about humans. Are people in the twenty-first century really that different from the people in Jeremiah’s or Paul’s day? The Bible answers with a resounding no.

People in ancient times felt the same natural aversion to the gospel as the people in our own day do — hence why Jeremiah was thrown into a well and why Paul was stoned and beaten with rods. Since the fall of Adam, man is born in sin, which means we have a nature hostile to God until we are “born from above” (John 3:3 NET). This is why the Bible says, “No one understands; no one seeks for God” (Romans 3:11). Thus, for man to be saved, God has commissioned us to go and seek them (Matthew 28:18–20).

But what methods do we use to seek such people? Many give their answers: seeker-friendly church services, Easter-egg drops, free lunches, feel-good sermons, car-wash outreaches, and so on. While some of these efforts can bear fruit, Scripture gives us a simpler way: share the gospel with them. Expose them to the message of Christ. “Faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17). “How are they to hear without someone preaching?” (Romans 10:14). “The gospel . . . is the power of God for salvation” (Romans 1:16).

Enter open-air preaching. Although many other ways to evangelize exist, open-air preaching is especially useful in the rush of a busy marketplace, on the hustle of a college campus, outside a sporting event, or at a local abortion clinic. Moreover, open-air preaching was a preferred method of Jonah, Jeremiah, the apostle Paul, and many others. They went to the people and preached God’s word. It is really that simple. Even Jesus went into the boat or up on the mountainside to preach the good news. Open-air preaching is a form of evangelism that communicates the gospel to a crowd of people at once.

Preachers Beyond Church Walls

Aside from the many examples we have of open-air preaching in the Bible, church history also lends its testimony. Charles Spurgeon points out, “It would be very easy to prove revivals of religion have usually been accompanied, if not caused, by a considerable amount of preaching out of doors” (Lectures to My Students, 275). Michael Green notes that the first two centuries of the church witnessed a plethora of open-air preaching, including that of Irenaeus and Cyprian at the local marketplaces (Evangelism in the Early Church, 304).

In the Middle Ages, Bernard of Clairvaux, Arnold of Brescia, and even Francis of Assisi were open-air preachers. In the Reformation days, John Wycliffe, John Knox, several English Puritans, William Farel, and others could be seen preaching in the open air. George Whitefield, John Wesley, Charles Spurgeon, Robert Murray M’Cheyne, and John Bunyan also add to the list. In recent decades, Paul Washer, Leonard Ravenhill, and Westminster Theological Seminary professor Cornelius Van Til have regularly preached in the open air.

Through the centuries, God has used open-air preaching to bring the gospel to the lost. When done correctly, such preaching heralds the gospel to all who have ears to hear.

Who Should Street Preach?

Just as preaching the gospel is different from sharing the gospel, so preaching in the open air is different from evangelizing in private. As with church office, there is a public dimension to the work that makes it wise for an open-air preacher to be approved and sent out by his church. This process will look different for each person and church, but open-air preachers do well to be under some kind of accountability and oversight.

At the same time, churches might consider actively examining and preparing men to preach in public. Oftentimes, such a ministry will be new to churches, so the aspiring open-air preacher should exercise patience and understanding when broaching the topic with his leaders. At the same time, church leaders should be willing to evaluate biblical data and church history to see the justification for such a ministry. Ideally, the two sides will work together to decide how to best approach open-air preaching in their context, eagerly training men for it.

Also, since there is a difference between public preaching and privately sharing the gospel, only men are called to preach in the open air (1 Timothy 2:12). Churches would be wise to evaluate such men according to the qualifications of an elder (as laid out in 1 Timothy 3:1–7 and Titus 1:6–9), even if the preacher is not an elder. These passages describe a mature follower of Christ, and the open-air preacher will need such maturity to maintain a good witness when exposed to intense spiritual warfare, obscenities, lewdness, and theological challenges.

Preacher’s Training Ground

Open-air preaching is especially ideal for men who are training for the ministry. Formal preaching opportunities may be difficult to come by, but there is always a nearby college campus, street corner, abortion clinic, or sports event. Open-air preaching will help train the budding minister to crucify his flesh and reason with the lost in his community. It will help him learn to preach extemporaneously. It will remind him of how impossible it is to save people dead in their trespasses and sins. And thus, it will teach him our great need for God to move in the hearts of our hearers.

Assuming you have the backing of your church, the next step is to identify a good place to preach. Then go do it. Bring your Bible, some gospel tracts, and an amplification device (if permitted). As far as what to preach, the answer is the same as in pulpit ministry: text-driven, even expository, and directed toward an evangelistic call to repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. It should certainly be Christ-centered.

Before you preach, however, you will want to spend ample time in prayer. We need a demeanor sweetened by the Holy Spirit. The society we live in is hostile to the gospel, so expect rejection and scoffing. Responding to your enemies in a humble, patient manner is critical, and we cannot accomplish this without the softening influence of the Holy Spirit. As with any ministry, you will grow more comfortable with open-air preaching the more you do it. The butterflies will grow more faint. Responding to hecklers will become easier.

What About Fruit?

Will you see conversions? Will you see fruit? Yes and no. Every time you preach the gospel in the open air, you are leading people to Christ; whether God saves them or not is up to him. That said, testimonies abound of people being converted, strengthened, and convicted by open-air preaching. I’ll end with two examples.

In 2021, I was preaching weekly at a college in east Texas. A young man would come out and heckle me every time, shouting blasphemies and causing quite a stir among the student body. After eight straight weeks of this, I noticed the tone of his mocking began to change. His questions were becoming more sincere. Eventually, he came up and asked me for a Bible. Instead of mocking and challenging, he would now quietly listen. By the end of the semester, he had called upon the name of the Lord and was baptized. Recently he married a godly Christian woman and continues to walk with Jesus.

Another time, I received an email from a young man in Glasgow, Scotland. He said I probably would not remember him, but he had been heckling us when we were open-air preaching on Buchanan Street two years prior. He wrote to tell me that what we had been preaching had stuck with him ever since, and he recently started going to church and reading his Bible.

We live in trying times. Spiritually, things can seem bleak, depending on where we are looking. But God still has sheep who will hear his voice and be saved through the preaching of the gospel, including in the open air. Our job is to preach Christ, the name above all names, knowing that God is glorified when we do, regardless of whether we see conversions.