CHURCH: The Late Great Body of Christ!

Recent survey results show a pitiful and putrefactive body of "christians" in the good ol' USA ... a kilometer wide and and a millimeter deep.

One thing is clear, as Billy Graham is given credit for saying,

"on Sunday mornings, the church is the richest mission field on earth."

Like Bambi, the people in our churches are some of the loveliest in the world, truly a joy to know. Yet again, like Bambi, when looking out of their darkness into the bright light of the Word of God, they stare, open-eyed, unblinking, not knowing whether to fight or flee.

Ironically, the pew people (plumbers, housewives, lawyers, mechanics, clerks, the unemployed, the dysfunctional, school teachers, and high-school dropouts) truly believe they know more about pastoring than pastors ... and they also believe it is their job in life to tell us.

How would it be if we dropped in on them, during the day, and waxed on about what they are doing and the way they are doing it?

Pastors were not to be their people's friends, they are to be their shepherds; they are to preach the Word, in season and out!

If we had more hell in the pulpit, we would have less hell in the pew. Billy Graham

All these visitation and relational programs are nothing but worldly human waste. The clergy is not better than the laity but they sure as h___ weren't intended to be tied up in an interpersonal touchy-feely wasteland.

Face it my peers, bringing the mulch of the world into the garden of God has produce weeds, not fruit! On any given Sunday morning, over half the people listening to you are lost ... LOST!!! What good is your new series on parenting to them? What good does it do to proclaim a "green" series them? What good does it do to preach the Ten Commandments to them? They need to know the meaning of the bronze serpent on the staff before they can comprehend the Manna from heaven.

What they need, and are not getting, is a message concerning their being "sinners in the hands of an angry God." [For a sad commentary see Yale's intro to this great message.]

Apostates, Christianity,
Church, Religion, Sinners

WARNING: Preachers beware!

If our people get their hands on one of these we'd better buy a one-way mirror for in front of our pulpits, or learn to preach more brief and pointed messages.

BLOGGERS BLOGGING:

Bela Meaad

Church, Gadgits, Preachers, Preaching

PREACHING: Dumbing Down the Message So the Dummies Can Understand!

WorldMag Blog frequently comes up with a link to a piece I feel is relevant to what I do; in this case a piece in Touchstone.

The article addresses preaching, specifically the subject of preaching the Word with relevance. David Mills writes ...

As a writer, I do not believe in relevance. I especially do not believe in relevance as a criterion for preaching, when that means the attempt to translate the biblical and theological language into words the average man already uses, from fear that he will not listen if the inherited language is used instead. Few preachers are good enough with words to do this without losing truths they should not be losing.

Let me make my opinion of all this clear ... "a picture is worth a thousand words" and two are even better!

Apostasy, Billy Graham, Christianity,
Joel Osteen, Preaching, Relativism