There is a pastor in the US who gets over 1 million itunes downloads regularly. This is amazing, and I have to admit to knowing nothing about him at all.

Have a look:
http://www.christiantoday.com/article/ americas.most.watched.pastor.osteen.hits .big.on.itunes/10006.htm

We live near the Elephant and castle, and the Metropolitan tabernacle where Charles Spurgeon used to preach. His sermon series were getting several hundred thousand copies read every month, in total, Over 3,241 consecutive weeks of sermons, amassed into over 50 volumes. I read a sermon by Spurgeon quite often for my devotional reading, and they are rich, fluid and well-researched - wonderful sermons really, and an inspiration.


By 1905 it was estimated that over 100 million of his sermons had been sold, in over 40 langauges, including Braille. Popularity in no way effected the quality, depth and faithfulness of his preaching, and he even had time to pioneer a churchplanting strategy for South london, get involved in national debates and start orphanges and schools and other charitable institutions.


http://www.spurgeon.org/misc/amm.htm


Though he faithfully expounded the word, he also was not afraid of taking things in a direction he felt appropriate at the time as the Holy Spirit led him. He had a horror of deciding oneself what God wanted to say to a congregation, and so would never prepare his Sunday evening sermons until the afternoon - to keep his spontaneous and Spirit-led approach. What a good model it seems, to be open to the leading of God, but not using that as an excuse not to prepare effectively. As I read through his volumes it is clear he often preached up to 10 new sermons in a week, and usually at least 4, which is only possible if one is drawing upon God for inspiration and His word not our own.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon:
I do not come into this pulpit hoping that perhaps somebody will of his own free will return to Christ. My hope lies in another quarter. I hope that my Master will lay hold of some of them and say, "You are mine, and you shall be mine. I claim you for myself." My hope arises from the freeness of grace, and not from the freedom of the will.



Preaching is a solemn discharge, and exciting privilege, as we are called to speak 'as one speaking the very words of God'.
1 Peter 4: 11
11If anyone speaks, he should do it as one speaking the very words of God. If anyone serves, he should do it with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To him be the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen.


Whether in evangelism - declaring good news and forgiveness for all who turn to him, or whether in teaching or exhortation, there is an expectation in Scripture which is humbling and awesome.

I am excited by the way the web can allow preaching ministry to go wider (as on the All Saints website), even as printing did for Spurgeon, but I suspect that brilliant preaching has always been fairly rare.