It's been a while since I've found the time to sit down and write something (hopefully worth reading). Ministry continues to be full of blessings and busyness! I just returned from the BASICS conference in Ohio, a training conference for Pastors & church leaders. It was a wonderful time of encouragement and edification for my mind and soul. I picked up a book while I was there entitled, "Saving Eutychus" aimed at helping with sermon preparation and effectiveness. The humorous title reminds us that our preaching should not be sleep inducing but life changing!
As I was reading this book, a line in the foreword, written by Alistair Begg, caught my attention. In speaking of modern church culture, where the church has been less focused on preaching the word of God and more focused on entertaining. Begg writes: "I often think of that today when I enter churches where pulpits are moveable but the drum kits are stationary..." WOW! That is a loaded statement! How quickly we are to make the central thing the secondary thing and to make the supporting things the main things. The Bible is our source of truth. The Bible is the source of teaching. The Bible is the primary reason we gather together as the Church. What else than the encouragement and exhortation of God's Word that draws us together though the Gospel of Christ? Yet it is all too easy for churches today to maximize everything that should be mobile, and minimize everything that should be stationary. The preaching of the Bible must be so essential to the framework of the Church, that in order to pry it out you would need an army of jackhammers, shovels, and backhoes. May the teaching of God's word to us never be on wheels, able to be pushed aside and easily substituted with something noisier but less meaningful.
Scripture is a preaching book, so let it preach. I think Paul had this on his mind when he spoke to Timothy:
"I charge you therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead at His appearing and His kingdom: Preach the word! ..." (2 Timothy 4:1-2)
Preach the Word!
-In Christ,
Pastor Ben