Good preaching?
Further to my post on good Bible teaching.? It has been pointed out to me that good Bible teaching consists of more than preaching. It includes all of the access points to the Bible that occur in a local church setting, including Bible study groups, off-site camps (house parties for those in Eastern Australia and the UK), and conferences etc.? While I adhere to the need for this “cross-referencing”, the question still remains: Does all of that equate to qualitatively better Christians?
A comment by Steve Timmis to me on the phone the other night gives some clarity to the issue.? He told me of two churches in a small UK town.? One was a conservative evangelical church replete with a good teaching ministry, while the other was what is often called “evan-jelly-cal” bordering on what many would call liberal, with a (not surprisingly) lower view of teaching the Bible.? Yet when it was examined which church had more impact in, and involved itself more self-sacrificially with, the local community and all of its no-go lower socio-economic areas, it was the latter not the former that scored the points.? Steve commented that often the definition of whether the teaching is working or not in evangelical churches is by ticking the boxes of what congregational members are NOT doing.? As if the best we can hope for is a tabula rasa – a blank slate just waiting to be written upon.? The question is, how much IS being written?
Which brings us back to our original question of whether the current biblical teaching model is resulting in qualitatively better Christians.? ? Perhaps the problem is the model of community we see in many of these churches.? It’s often been said that small groups during the week are the place to work out the application of the passage preached on Sunday – but surely application is something to be WORKED out, not talked about how to be worked out.? After it’s been preached about on Sunday, then talked about on Wednesday night, where is the time left over to go and do it?
What if small groups were established with a time-limit?? What if they were told that their role was to do some research about their local area then find a way to go out and do together as a smaller group, what they in the large group were told to do on Sunday.? Application is almost invariably privatised.? Rarely is it seen as something we are physically going to go out and do together.
I hate to go on about our experiences at TCH (please, please go on, we love to hear about it! – Ed), but what we found in our household congregation was that our relationships were fast-tracked by being involved in mission together, and our expectations of each other and how we would respond to gospel truth was heightened.? On top of this there was a genuine excitement over the way God was working in the lives of our non-Christian friends as we carved out space as a group to include them in things like meals, pub visits and trips out to the countryside.
Comments and brickbats appreciated
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