Is it a Christ-Centered Sermon? Appendix One
For fear of frustrating those bloggers who have informed their readers that this series is over (you know who you are...), instead of adding more parts I will add a few / several appendices. So, here is appendix one (he smiles as he types):
“There are great stories in the Bible...but it is possible to know Bible stories, yet miss the Bible story...The Bible has a story line. It traces an unfolding drama. The story follows the history of Israel, but it does not begin there, nor does it contain what you would expect in a national history…The story of the Bible is real history, wrought in the lives of hundreds and thousands of human beings. In a world where death reigned, they endured, trusting the faithfulness of God’s promise. If we forget the story line of the Old Testament, we will also miss the witness of their faith. That omission cuts the heart out of the Bible. Sunday school stories are then told as tamer versions of the Sunday comics, where Samson substitutes for Superman. David’s meeting with Goliath then dissolves into an ancient Hebrew version of Jack the Giant Killer. No, David is not a brave little boy who isn't afraid of the big bad giant. He is the Lord's anointed...God chose David as a king after his own heart in order to prepare the way for David's great Son, our Deliverer and Champion” (Edmund Clowney, The Unfolding Mystery: Discovering Christ in the Old Testament, 11-14).
The entire nine-part series of blog posts can be found here.
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As I've read this series, I at first felt amazed and inspired...now I'm feeling a bit baffled and discouraged. Not because of anything you've written (it's all been fantastic--thanks for sharing these resources) but because never in my life have I been part of a church--or even VISITED a church (and in four years of traveling on ministry teams at college, I've visited a LOT of churches)--where the pastor has preached this way.
I've never heard sermons that are cross-centered, gospel-centered, rather than moralizing or whatever. It was a huge revelation to me just over the last few months that the gospel isn't just for non-Christians. And I have been in the church my WHOLE life! How sad is that?? It grieves me to know what I have been missing and what most of the church is still missing.
If you don't go to a church where the pastor preaches the way you describe (the sermons are expository, definitely not fluff, but I don't necessarily recognize the gospel-centeredness you have outlined here)...how do you learn to read the Bible this way for yourself? How do you learn to see the gospel in every chapter, and teach your kids this way rather than the adventure stories??
Amy,
It's a vicious cycle. Most pastors do not preach this way. I agree. It takes a lot more work to preach this way (I'm finding out as a new church planter committed to this God-centered form of teaching through redemptive history).
But I'm also finding that most people do not want to hear their pastors preach this way. In a humanistic world, where life is all about us, people want the preaching to assume they are capable people. They want to be taught pithy little statements of truth, and law, and principle -- things that they can just DO and feel good about themselves. They don't want to admit, deep down, that they struggle with idolatry of the heart that saps their joy and freedom in Christ. They want to think of David, and Samson, and Joseph, and Daniel as the heroes, because then maybe they could be the hero too.
So maybe some pastors have tried to preach this way and their congregations have turned on them. It's not what they want to hear. So the pastors go back to preaching moral aphorisms and encourage their people that "God is always there for you when you need Him." Probably far more pastors don't even see this and have never tried to preach the gospel every week. But I think we're all at fault. It's a systemic problem in Christianity.
The only solution I am finding as a new pastor is extensive, labor-intensive discipleship that also uses the gospel approach. It's only in this context that I can answer the objections and really drive home the need for confessing our own inadequacies and Christ's all-sufficiency.
Provacative thoughts, here. God help us to preach Christ and Him crucified at the center of every sermon.
Amy,
If it makes you feel any better, you have joined a growing company of believers who have experienced the same thing. Whether it's generational or whatever, it is evidence again that Christ (alone) is building His church. I have wondered where I was for so many years that I read the Word and heard the Word and studied the Word and still missed the gospel. I mean by that, that I missed the "good news". As I reflect back, so little of what I heard was, in truth, good news. Most of it was just more bondage. Time and experience (not to mention the patient Spirit of God) have brought me with an ever increasing frustration to and end of hope in myself and my performance. Incredibly humiliating - yes! But ultimately, freedom from the bondage and hopelessness. I had turned over the leaf so many times the stem broke off. Praise God for those who, like Paul in Galatians, are pointing us back to our first love in the gospel. It was good for justification and it is good for sanctification as well. It takes time to learn the new paradigm and make it habitual in your thinking. It takes incredible grace too to avoid the inclination to make Meccas out of the places where gospel/Christ centered preaching is practiced. God will give you eyes to see what the preacher himself does not see in the truth he is unwittingly (sometimes) obscuring. The Rev. 5 worship service speaks ultimately to the power of God to build His church, often in spite of clergy who have done more to mask the gospel than expose it. Be patient as you have known God's patience with you. Grace to you friend!