When Bible Teaching Is Like Folgers Crystals

Folgers

Many years ago, Folgers coffee ran commercials in which someone secretly exchanged a gourmet coffee with their brand.  Of course, in the commercials, the unsuspecting coffee drinkers could not tell the difference.  Additionally, many even claimed Folgers was better than the original brand.

Sadly, I see a similar trend prevalent in Christian circles – not with coffee, but with preaching and teaching.  Many preachers today stand a passionately deliver messages to people who stand in great need to hear from God.  But some deliver what amounts to a coach’s locker room speech rather than a clear, anointed message from God’s Word.  They exchange the gourmet truth of God’s Word with the Folgers crystals of human insight and perspective.

[Tweet “If the message is not based on, rooted in, and filled through with God’s Word, it is merely a speech.”]

Things to Consider Before Drinking the Folgers

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Are You Prepared to Hear the Sermon?

ear helpMost pastors I know work very hard at the most important thing we do – teaching and preaching God’s Word. I am sure there are a few who take short cuts and preach sermons already prepared in a book or online, but most that I know spend a good amount of time and pour a lot of spiritual energy into each sermon. Many of us prepare three sermons a week.

More than 20 years ago, God led me to Colossians 1:28-29, and that passage has since been the Biblical motivation for me as I prepare and preach. I see it as God’s commission to me as a preacher and because I take the verse and commission seriously, I prepare as fastidiously as possible.

Him [Jesus] we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. For this I toil, struggling with all His energy that He powerfully works within me. – Colossians 1:28-29

I’ve heard some preachers confess that they spend as much as 12-20 hours on the Sunday morning sermon alone. Thirty years of preparing sermons week after week has taught me how to research and compile material more quickly than I did at first. Digital tools and resources (which I have amassed over the last several years at the cost of a small fortune) have made the process more streamlined for me and saved me some time as well.

I wondered what would happen if listeners prepared themselves to hear as diligently as preachers prepare themselves to preach. I certainly wouldn’t expect it to be an equal amount of time, but my fear is that most hearers sit down in church to hear a sermon having given little to no thought or prayer to prepare themselves for what God wants to say to them.

Yesterday, Thom Rainer, president and CEO of LifeWay Christian Resources posted an article on his blog that gave some practical steps we can take to prepare ourselves to hear God speak through the sermon. I am including a link to the article below, and I want to challenge you to read it and take some time this week (and every week from this point on) preparing yourself to hear what God wants to say directly to YOU on Sunday.

I believe your preparation will make you a better hearer and certainly make your preacher a better preacher.

Use the comment section below to share ways you prepare yourself to hear God’s Word.

 

Seven Ways Church Members Should Prepare for a Sermon by Thom Rainer

 

 

Challenge #2 – What Do We Do With Worship?

I believe in the value of music in a believer’s life as I wrote in an earlier blog.  I strongly believe in the value of music in the corporate worship experience. I do believe, though, that we have made the music the central focus of worship.  How often have you heard people refer to the musical portion of the service as “worship” and the pastor’s part as “preaching,” as if the two are mutually exclusive? The so-called “worship wars” that have pervaded many churches indicate we have crossed an idolatrous line and have begun to worship worship.

My point is not to argue worship styles or to defend one style over another.  I like them all as long as they are done with energy, enthusiasm, and genuineness.  My point is we have made the wrong thing central to our worship.  The church is in a mess because PREACHING is no longer central in our worship experience.  I once heard the joke about a young child critiquing his first visit to “big church” by saying, “The music was good but the commercial (preaching) was too long.”

Here are my thoughts on what we need to do to recenter our worship around the Word of God preached.

  1. PREACHERS – stop slacking!  Spend the necessary time to deliver to your dear people a Bible centered message.  Quit stealing sermons from the internet, quit filling the time with cute sound bites, quit tickling ears, but proclaim the Word and apply it to life.  Make it interesting and make it meaningful, but by all means preach it!  That is the PRIMARY task to which God calls us.  (2 Timothy 4:1-5)
  2. PREACHERS – pray!  You cannot deliver a WORD from God if you don’t have a Word  FROM God.  A sermon is not a speech.  It can be erudite and alliterated; it can be humorously illustrated and cleverly applied; it may be entertaining, but it cannot accomplish with human instrumentation anything of Spiritual significance.  Bathe your message in prayer and preach with confidence that only comes from the anointing of God.
  3. CONGREGATIONS – come hungry!  Don’t come to church with your mind already made up about what you want to hear or not hear.  Expect that God knows what you need better than you do and come with an empty heart to hear what God has for you.
  4. CONGREGATIONS – free the preacher to preach.  I have been misquoted as saying that I am a preacher and not a pastor. That is wrong on at least three accounts.  First, I never said that nor do I believe that.  Second, you cannot be one without the other.  I cannot connect my people to the Word of God if I do not sympathize and move among my people.  I love them and because I love them I want for them what God wants for them.  Third, preaching is pastoring.  The term “pastor” sounds an awful lot like “pasture” which conjures up shepherding images.  The pastor’s primary task is to lay spiritual food before Jesus’ sheep.  Free the pastor up to give ample time to study and pray.  You will NOT be sorry you did.  (Acts 6:1-7)

When we return preaching to the place of prominence in our public worship – as God prescribes – we will be inching closer still to revival.

See also 1 Corinthians 1:21 and  Romans 10:14