Having just commented on people yearning for substantive preaching, I came back across this quote from Al Mohler which I read a few years back. He says it well- as usual. 🙂

When you hear people speak about how to grow a church, how to build a church, and how to build a great congregation, few and far between are those who say it comes essentially by the preaching of the Word. And we know why, because it comes by the preaching of the Word slowly; slowly, immeasurably, sometimes even invisibly, and hence we are back to our problem. If you want to see quick results, the preaching of the Word just might not be the way to go. If you are going to find results in terms of statistics, numbers, and visible response, it just might be that there are other mechanisms, other programs, and other means that will produce that faster. The question is whether it produces Christians.
Indeed, such techniques will not produce maturing and faithful believers in the Lord Jesus Christ because that is going to come only by the preaching of the Word.
– “The Primacy of Preaching,” in Feed My Sheep: A Passionate Plea for Preaching, ed. Don Kistler, p. 17-18