Saturday 26 February 2011

PREACHERS PROCRASTINATION

If you are a preacher you may know what I am talking about. Somehow, even though there's a limited amount of time available for sermon preparation, I seem to be drawn to doing inconsequential and time consuming things rather than getting my head down to study through the Scriptures, meditate, see the patterns, repetitions, key words, links, study the commentaries, word studies and so on. But no, there's my email account that's not sending, financial information for the book-keeper, phone calls to make that just seem very urgent at that moment, my calendar to plan, and so on and so on. Any body with me on this?

In a recent trip to another nation, Nola and I visited some churches. In most of the churches I felt like I was sitting in a Psych 101 lecture with a few Scriptures bolted on. The Bible is the heart of the church. Without it, we are nothing. Scripture is so powerful. When we preach it as we should, God is glorified and people are strengthened, admonished and encouraged. I think we could do a whole lot less vision casting, topical sermons and so on, and preach through books of the Bible. Let's put in the effort of good exegesis, in order to preach the Scriptures accurately and powerfully. God's Word cannot be chained.

[I recommend reading John Piper's book The Supremacy of God in Preaching]

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