In any city, in any century, a decision to preach the gospel in a manner calculated to draw attention to the cleverness and rhetorical skill of the preacher amounts to a denial of the very message that is being preached; the same can be said of a church culture that idolizes skilful communicators as celebrities and puts its trust in their rhetorical power to draw a crowd and impress the hearers. In place of this misdirected trust and adulation, Paul urges a consistent focus on the message of the