One view of preaching sees the congregation as dead people and they need to be raised on Sunday. No amount of rhetorical power can raise them except spiritual power (the power that raised Jesus from the dead) which can only come from the Holy Spirit. “If the Spirit of God is absent, all that the church does will be as lifeless as the rustle of leaves above a tomb, like the congregation of the dead turning over in the graves” (Charles Haddon Spurgeon).