The Importance of Preaching
There are few activities in the life of a healthy New Testament church more important than preaching. It is one of the defining characteristics of an evangelical church.
But most of us in our tribe know that.
It's an assumption, an unwritten rule, the mood music in all our churches.
Through the Word we are converted, corrected, faithed, encouraged, comforted and warned.
But is preaching enough to grow in grace? Is preaching enough to disciple young believers?
That's the question.
Put it another way:
Did Jesus ask his disciples to show up once a Sabbath to hear a sermon?
Did the apostle Paul put on a Jerusalem Gospel lecture tour?
No and no.
What is needed to grow in Christ - in addition to good preaching - is close fellowship with other believers.
Here are some of the major reasons:
The first reason we need more than the preached word lies in the doctrine of the incarnation, the coming of God into this world in the Person of Jesus Christ.
The Word was made flesh. The Verbal or Written or Propositional Word or words of God became and came through a real human being who dwelt among us.
If only pure Word or words were needed, God could have remained in heaven and spoken pure words, perhaps received by earthly prophets, written down in books and then distributed across the world.
But instead, God enshrined his Word or words in a living breathing human being, the Son of Man. We have seen his glory, we were eye-witnesses of his majesty, wrote the apostles.
And through that living human being he imparted his words. In the last days God has spoken through his Son. Not merely as sound waves from the lips of the Son of God, but through a powerful, gracious and truthful life.
Jesus speaks not only with words, he speaks through human actions. This is the point.
New Testament communication is much more than verbal propositional sentences, it also comes, incarnationally, through the actions of the speaking person.
Life as well as lip.
What have the scholars discovered? In communication, we're told, 55% is transferred nonverbally, 38% vocally, and a mere 7% by words alone. These clever chappies may have their percentages all wrong, but I doubt if they are perfectly wrong.
The incarnation teaches us that when it comes to communicating New Testament style, with New Testament Truth, words are not enough. Embodied life is also required.
How did Jesus disciple his Twelve?
Did he command them to show up at a lecture every Sabbath?
Watch an additional YouTube video during the week?
No, the way Jesus taught was by life as well as by lip. The disciples not only heard Jesus speak truth, they saw truth demonstrated through his life. Love your enemies, they heard from him, and loving his enemies they saw in him. Have faith he taught them, and having faith they saw.
When Jesus gave his great commission he commanded the Twelve to make more future disciples by teaching them to obey. Not merely teaching them - a cerebral activity - but teaching them to obey. Helping them to work out what it means to live out the new life.
And how did Jesus do this practical part? By showing them through his life what he taught them with his words.
Show and Tell.
Show as well as Tell.
If we had asked Jesus, "What do you mean by the command 'make disciples'?" He would have surely said, "Do for the world what I have just done for my disciples over the last 3 years."
Spend lots and lots of time with them. Show them by life as much as by lip God's new and gracious ways.
So well were they discipled by this lip-life combination that everyone noted that they had been with Jesus. Not that they had been taught by Jesus (alone) but been with him.
Paul followed his Master and spent lots of time with converts, urging them to "Follow my [life] example, as I follow Christ."
(Kierkegaard, out of interest, someone I would not normally quote, suggested that Show was actually more important than Tell, when he said: "Order the parsons to be silent on Sunday. What is there left? The essential thing remains: their lives, the daily life with which the parson preaches. Would you, then, get the impression by watching them, that it was Christiantiy they were preaching?")
We may disagree with some of this quote, but SK is surely not far off the mark.
The great commission is not merely to Tell, but to Show and Tell.
The third reason we need living words as well as written ones is the doctrine of the church as a body, where one believer is a hand, another a foot, another an eye, and so on.
And where we each grow, the Head supplying the grace and power, as we are in community and connection with our brothers and sisters in Christ.
We grow as we are with one another.
Not by Word alone, but by brotherly and sisterly incarnational (small "i") word.
If we neglect the influence of life upon life and try to build the saints by word alone (preaching alone), we're likely to end up with lopsided saints. Full of knowledge but lacking in the graces that are forged in saint-to-saint iron sharpening iron fellowship.
If we try you build up the saints with knowledge only, we're likely to end up with religious people whose domestic lives are largely untouched by the transforming power of the Gospel.
So where has "Preaching is enough" come from?
But we should ask, Where does this preaching-only idea come from since it is nowhere found in Holy Writ?
One source is human pride. People, even Christian people, love to boast about doctrine.
Doctrine sells, Christ-likeness is a marketing flop. So often evangelical churches mimic the university model where knowledge is number 1.
A second source of this imbalance between Show and Tell is spiritual laziness. It's easier to listen to deep and wide doctrine than to love the unlovable, or to deny ourselves, take up our crosses or put sin to death.
Anyone can hide unChristlikeness under the cloak of sound preaching.
A third source of preaching-only inbalance is the numbers game.
The other day, I came across a Christian bloke on LinkedIn who styles himself "Trainer of 10+ million leaders."
Jesus managed to train 12, but this guy has managed to train 10+ million leaders.
You can only delude yourself into thinking you have trained 10+ million people if you think that training involves words alone - and virtual words at that.
As long as we chase the numbers game we'll fall prey to the preaching-only myth.
But the moment we realise that influencing others in the Jesus Way means spending a lot of sacrificial time with young believers, we'll settle for tiny little numbers, anonymity in this world, and heaven's well-done reward.
The need of the present hour is not more or better preaching but a revolution in our understanding of biblical discipleship.
If every believer made it their life aim to disciple say just two people, spending much time with them, teaching them to obey everything Jesus has commanded, the world would be won in not that many generations.
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