What Ever Happened to Expository Preaching

"For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." (Hebrews 4:12)  

Granted it was a long time ago when we attended Bible college. At that time, we were told in homiletics class, approximately 80% of preaching should be expository. Expository preaching broadly means to expound or explain the meaning of Bible verses. We were taught and encouraged to study the Bible in such a way as to be able to understand and teach the meanings of the verses under consideration according to their original intent. To that end we took basic Hebrew and Greek classes and studied the scriptures diligently. Expository preaching was, we were told, to be preferred to either textual or topical sermons.

We are at a loss to remember the last expository sermon we heard. This is not an indictment against any particular church as we have been to many different churches recently. Expository preaching seems to have been lost in the race to be relevant somewhere in the past few decades. In the church's haste to be relevant in society, we seem to have lost sight of the concept that the Bible has been and is always relevant. "All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness" (2 Timothy 3:16) Speaking of Timothy, he was told to, "Preach the word..." (2 Timothy 4:2), not "Tell the people what you think."

The mode du jour for preaching seems to be the topical sermon. The preacher chooses a topic, from daily life or from the Bible, and searches out other Bible verses to validate his or her opinion on the topic at hand. Interestingly, we have had weeks when the Holy Spirit has put things together in such a way, that we have heard a recurring theme several times in the same week. These occurrences have come via Sunday sermons, Bible studies, morning devotionals, and materials that have been given to us personally. That kind of thing cannot be all bad. So what is the big deal about expository preaching if the Holy Spirit is weaving together topics that Christians should know? Were our college professors wrong? Perhaps expository preaching has simply run it's course and is no longer relevant?

Review the scripture verses in italics above. Now let us look at what they do NOT say. Neither of them says anything remotely resembling "The word of the Sunday morning speaker, small group leader or Bible study teacher." Nor do they include writers of devotionals, books about the Bible, etc. God is the sole author of truth. Any truth that is spoken, written or taught is simply a reiteration of His truth.
It probably would not be so bad that we have done away with expository preaching, but most churches have also done away with Sunday School and have replaced Bible studies with "fellowship groups" under whatever name they have chosen for them. Not having either of those times of teaching the Bible has created a generation of Christians that is largely ignorant of basic, Bible doctrines (teachings) and their application to daily life. As a result, there is little sound, consistent doctrine throughout the church. Many Christians believe anything they hear from a pulpit on Sunday morning because they to not have the understanding and discernment to know whether the preacher is telling them the truth.

Most all preachers endeavor to tell the truth, and even go to the Bible to validate their version of it. A large percentage of the time they are correct, but the times they are not could mean the difference between spirit and soul, truth and error, life and death, heaven and hell. (Sorry to be quite so blunt there.) This is why Christians generally do no better at living the zoe, the God kind of life, than do unbelievers. That is also why The Church in Santa Maria has failed to recognize the insidious affects of the religious spirit that rules in this valley. As Pastor Jack Hayford has often said, "A diluted Gospel has produced deluded Christians."

I am guessing I probably get a C for effort in shortening these posts. Still some room for improvement there. I am working on improving that mark and still saying everything I am hearing. God bless!

Where Have All the Worship Leaders Gone

I have been challenged by two different people to shorten the posts to this blog. This is the first attempt at doing that. We will see how it goes.

Jesus said, "But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him." (John 4:23)

Somewhere in the past dozen or so years, most churches seem to have lost the concept of what a worship leader is and does. We could just keep this simple and say a worship leader leads worship. That is probably too simple. It implies we understand what worship is. Most people, it seems, do not know the difference between "praise" and "worship." The difference is critical if we want to truly worship God. Praise is a function of the soul. Worship is a spiritual activity.

We have usually called the time we are in the church building, doing things together, worship. To the contrary, worship is the time when we are one on one with God, in spirit, no distractions, no disruptions. We cannot really worship "with" other people. We can worship in the same place (body), at the same time, and even do the same things, (soul). To truly worship, we must move into the spirit and be alone with God.

In any church service there are three different groups of people. One group does not need any help to worship. Tell them it is time to worship and they begin. The second group, knows about worship and has experienced it on some level, but they need to be helped, to be led, into the presence of God. The third group has no idea what worship is about. They have to be taught whatever cannot be caught during the worship time. Even when they catch onto what is going on, many find it helpful to be given the whys of those things.

A worship leader has a sole purpose when he or she is standing before an assembly. That is to lead each person into the presence of the Almighty. It stands to reason then, that the worship leader must know how to move into the spirit himself or herself. However, simply playing an instrument and/or holding a microphone while worshiping on stage is not leading worship.

Some people think the worship leader has to have superior musical abilities. Seven times in the Psalms we are encouraged to, "make a joyful noise" not "be excellent in music." The truth is that average musical abilities will suffice if the worship leader is able to bring people to the door of the most holy place and then get out of the way so each person can stand face to face with God.

We have visited a number of churches of late and have found it difficult to move past the distractions of cumbersome, wordy songs that most of the congregation finds difficult to sing. It is often as though the person or group on the platform has no idea the difficulty of the songs gets in the way of worship. We used to attend a church where the worship leader had decidedly average musical abilities. Yet somehow, he managed to lead people into the presence of God on a weekly basis, and sometimes mid-week as well. Conversely, there are many very talented musicians and song leaders who simply cannot make the move from soul to spirit to truly lead worship.

All we do here is attempt to stimulate people and churches to better and greater things, hoping that in so doing we will not be a hindrance to the work of the Gospel and the removal of the religious spirit. Should any of these concepts resonate with your spirit, make the necessary changes. Ultimately we members of Christ's body will all come to unity of the faith. (Ephesians 4:13) God bless!

Now This is Interesting

I am just realizing, I do not even want to write this post. It could offend a lot of people. I guess we will just let that be my disclaimer. Now you can decide if you want to continue reading.

This is the post I warned you was coming. Well, maybe it is just the first of several. I just did not think it would take this long to actually get it finished and published. It is another one of those things I knew I knew, but had no idea why and did not have the statistics to back it up. (In re-reading, I think I might have pulled this off without being as offensive as I thought I might be. Of course, you will have to decide that for yourself.)

"The Left prefers top-down central planning by a bureaucrat in Washington. OUR strategy is to maintain the decentralized nature of this leaderless grassroots movement. Freedom is our strategy, because freedom works." Matt Kibbe, President of FreedomWorks

Facebook is an amazing invention. That is where I found the above quote. I did not even know there was an organization called FreedomWorks until I saw it on a friend's page. I could not help thinking how closely the concept the Left prefers, according to Kibbe, aligns with the way we usually do church. Since you are still reading, despite my disclaimer, get your toes off the floor now if you do not want them stepped on. Do not say I did not warn you.

Kibbe is advocating less government. Less government equals more control of our individual lives and destinies. This writer does not understand how fewer people telling me what to do can be a bad thing. To be sure it is a wonderful thing to have people and resources to help us meet the challenges of life, but think library. One either goes to the library to find help when needed or does not--that is his or her own choice. No one tells anyone to visit a library. Lest you argue that, but for the government, we would not have libraries, that is simply not true. There are thousands of private libraries in this country. The internet is still free, at least for the time being. My sources tell me there will shortly be a power-grab by the federal government to regulate the net.

When I first saw the quote, I immediately thought of Galatians 5:1, "Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage." and 1 Corinthians 14:26, "How is it then, brethren? Whenever you come together, each of you has a psalm, has a teaching, has a tongue, has a revelation, has an interpretation. Let all things be done for edification."  We have already discussed the latter verse in these pages so suffice it to say, if would appear we really do not do "church" very well, according to scripture, in this country.

Add to the previous remarks that yours truly has been reading  the book Grace, by Lewis Sperry Chafer and has been truly enlightened as to a lot of things we do routinely that serve to take us out from under the covering of God's grace and place us back under the law. Just another word on that, we have had that book sitting in our library probably the whole 35 years of our marriage. I even tried to read it a couple times, but apparently it was over my head, because I never did get very far into it. That is a painful admission since Dr. Chafer is theologically, diametrically opposed to me in some major areas.
  
According to the Gallup organization, approximately 17% of the United States population was employed by the government in August of 2010. 17% of everyone in the country receives his or her paycheck directly from the government. (Well wait, whose are only the ones working. I have not even seen statistics as to the number of people who are not working, but receive government checks of one kind or another.) It also does not include people who work on contracts that are funded by the government. Is it any wonder our taxes are as high as they are? Now, if you are not a government employee and want to be really disgusted consider one other statistic. The average federal government employee earns salary and benefits equal to more than twice the amount of compensation those working in the private sector earn. You are probably wondering by now if there is a point to all this. I was wondering that myself. I had to quit writing for awhile to discerne what that point is.

Drum-roll please. The point is very simple really. Whenever we depend on someone else to "pay our bills" we have limited the resources available to us and our ability to do what God tells us to do. I have already asked all the questions about that you are asking now. You will have to answer them for yourself. The point is that we have had it so ingrained into our culture and our minds that we have to have a consistent income and someone else writing us a check that we have compartmentalized our lives into soulical (work/law) and spiritual (faith/grace). The ironic thing about this is, it flies in the face of common sense and knowledge. Let me explain what I mean by that.

One of my best friends is a professional. He is the best I have ever known in his particular field. He considers his work his ministry to hurting people. He is not what most would consider wealthy by any means, but he earns more money than many other people I know. The point is, he writes his own paycheck. The money comes primarily from "services rendered" doing what he believes God has called him to do. Were God to tell him to do something, anything, different on any given day, at any given time, he would undoubtedly do it. He has the freedom to do that because he is not depending on anyone to write him a check at the end of the week. By the way, I write him a check on something of a regular basis.

Consider this question. (No worries, it is rhetorical and very simple.) Does God have more money than I do? So if my friend performs services for me--and many other people--and has an ample supply of resources, does it not make sense that if one were serving God, he or she would have at least ample resource? Again, that is a rhetorical question. It does not even require an answer.

At some point all these posts have to come to an end. I am in something of a quandary here. These posts are getting uglier and uglier--and I suspect they are going to get even uglier. That is not really an apology as much as it is an insight. From the first word of the first post, this blog was intended to make people aware of the affects of the religious spirit that hangs like the marine layer over the Santa Maria valley, keeping a lid on The Church. It is now becoming more clear that spirit is more pervasive than I had ever thought. For those of you who do not give up when things get difficult to understand or seem overwhelming, your continued reading and support is appreciated. God bless!