Never assume the gospel.  Proclaim it.  I have been teaching now for thirty plus years, and I have often said that if I have learned anything from all of these years of teaching it’s that my students don’t learn everything I teach.  What they tend to learn is what I emphasize – what I’m excited about.  The danger of many courses in seminaries, the danger of many sermons preached, is that we assume the gospel and then focus on what flows from the gospel.  That is a mistake.  Preach the gospel.  If I assume the gospel, believing it with all my heart to be central, but that is not where I fasten my attention, then my students are simply not excited about the gospel, and their students won’t even know what it its.  The gospel is best preserved not by arguing about it (though we need to argue about it to make sure that we sharpen one another and understand what the scripture actually says and be mutually corrected) but by proclaiming it.

– D.A. Carson, 2009 National ETS Meeting