Examiner.com article: Sunday 101: Preaching to the choir
I’ve published another article for Examiner.com as the Raleigh Practical Christianity Examiner. This article is part of my “Sunday 101” series. It is called “Sunday 101: Preaching to the choir.”
For the modern church, the focus of church life and discipleship is preaching, which has been defined as a 30-45 minute monologue lecture. But, while preaching was very important for followers of Jesus Christ in the New Testament, it took a very different form and it was presented to a different audience.
Here is part of my article:
The over-emphasis on preaching by a pastor/elder to the church today tends to deemphasize the importance of proclaiming the good news to those who are not part of the church and to deemphasize the importance of all believers preaching the good news. Furthermore, the over-emphasis on preaching today leads to a misunderstanding about how the church should speak with one another when they gather together.
Please use the link above to read the rest of my short article.
I loved this one too. Reading these are just good for my soul. It’s just so nice to see there are others out there that God has revealed similiar truths to.
This is so central. It affects so many things.
The over-emphasis on preaching and the fact that to many people today leading = preaching… creates a skewed view of leadership… what the ‘job’ of leaders is…. it empowers so little.. which is one reason we don’t have many leaders to lead.. and so the cycle continues…
it seems to me that if I WAS one of those people sold out for the Sunday morning program/service thing… and attracting people to it… you would think I would use that time to preach the gospel…. you’re only going to gather 1 morning a week and you’re going to use that stage time to speak on ANYTHING other than Jesus Christ crucified!? what are we doing?!?!!??!
the teaching should be in our daily life with God and in our walk alongside others He points in our path. That’s a great opportunity pass along some teaching…. teaching is way more effective when it comes from somebody who knows your heart, situation, anyway…….
what in the world are we DOING anyway!? I get so confused looking at how we “do” church these days…
Randi,
Interestingly, if you look at Luther’s example, he wanted meetings that look exactly like modern church meetings specifically for the purpose of proclaiming the gospel to unbelievers. However, he did not consider this to be a meeting for believers (i.e., the church). Instead, he wanted another kind of meeting for believers – a meeting that did not include preaching, as far as I can tell. Unfortunately, Luther never realized his dreams, and most of the protestant churches followed his plans for meetings for unbelievers.
-Alan
wow i didn’t realize that. that’s AWESOME. well it’s not awesome at all. it’s terrible & mixed up really…. and so history repeats….
praise God for being the PATIENT Loving merciful graceful God He is!
where can i find out more on luther? geesh – how did we miss that part of his message?
Randi,
Here are a couple of posts I wrote about this a few years ago: “Luther and the Church” and “Luther and the non-Christian ‘Worship Service’.”
-Alan
thank you!!