Jack Hyles, famous or infamous pastor of First Baptist Church in Hammond, Indianan, and founder of Hyles/Anderson Bible College. Hyles wrote an article entitled The Science of Calling a Pastor. In this article intended to instruct churches on how to call a pastor he wrote:
Choose someone who is not a Bible expositor. There is not one expository sermon in the Bible. All of them are topical. I am not fighting expository preaching, but that kind of preaching will destroy a great church. Do not be swayed by their suave teaching. The great soul-winning churches have been pastored by topical preaching. I am not talking about evangelistic churches; I mean soul-winning churches! If you want a soul-winning church, you must call a pastor who preaches topical sermons. Many of our once great soul-winning churches fell prey to the popular notion of expository preaching. They decided that they wanted more Bible, but when they got it, it cost them their effective soul-winning.
Contrast this rejection of expository preaching by Jack Hyles with the exaltation of expository preaching by Mark Dever in his Nine Marks of a Healthy Church:
The first mark of a healthy church is expositional preaching. It is not only the first mark; it is far and away the most important of them all because if you get this one right, all of the others should follow. This is the crucial mark. If you want to read only one chapter of this book, you’ve picked the right one. This is the one you should read first, before all of the others. This will help you to understand what pastors are to give themselves to, and what congregations are to demand of them. My main role, and the main role of any pastor, is expository preaching (page 19).