12 Take care, brethren, that there not be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from the living God. 13 But encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called "Today," so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. 14 For we have become partakers of Christ, if we hold fast the beginning of our assurance firm until the end, 15 while it is said, "Today if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts, as when the provoked Me."
These are some sobering/encouraging words. I pray that today you would continue to hold fast to the assurance of your salvation, Jesus the Christ, and that you would encourage your brothers and sisters to do the same. He is WORTHY, live like it!
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Upcoming...
I received my advance copy of Dr. David Alan Black's newest book The Jesus Paradigm, due to be released sometime in mid July. I will be reviewing the book here as soon as a finish it. So far it has been a great read and I look forward to putting down some thoughts to share with you all!
Idolatry and Preacher Worship
I attended the Advance '09 conference last weekend in Durham, NC thanks to the good folks over at Journey Church in Raleigh who provided me with a free ticket 2 days before the conference started! At that conference Mark Driscoll spoke a scathing message against idolatry in every corner of the human heart. I can honestly say that I agreed with just about everything he said in that message. It was so cutting that John Piper declared himself to be "wobbly" when he took the pulpit just minutes later, "wobbly" to the point that he felt he could be "attacked from almost any direction right now." So, Mr. Driscoll had a lot of good things to say about idolatry in the heart and in the church.
So I'm here to add one to the list of his 11 or 23 points: PREACHER WORSHIP.
It seems to me like a no-brainer that you probably shouldn't set yourself or your ministry up as an idol for your people, no matter the size of your church. So, why are so many men ignoring Mark Driscoll's call to cast down the idols in their ministry? Why all the polity and ecclesiology that makes men say, "I am the only qualified elder/pastor/brother,etc. to preach on Sunday mornings"? Why not allow the body of Christ to be edified by many different men who are able to teach or who may be seeking to discover IF they are, in fact, able to teach? It seems to me that the only explination for such pulpit hoarding is preacher worship, whether it be in the heart of the preacher or the people.
I believe the worst manifestation of this sin of preacher worship-idolatry is multi-site video casting.
So I turn to a blog post I read recently, entitled "How to Be in More Than One Place at a Time." The post begins by saying, "This Sunday, June 14th, by God’s grace and enabled by technology, I will be simultaneously preaching four sermons in eight locations scattered across two states. As I prepared these various sermons it dawned on me what a truly amazing day we live in for the proclamation of the gospel."
In order to accomplish said feat of being in more than one place at one time, this pastor isn't even going to be using technology to fly or drive him to multiple locations on the same day. Rather he will be video broadcasting his sermon to several different sites. Did I say sermon? I meant sermons. That's right, 4 different sermons to 8 different locations at the same time. So, scratch broadcasting. Two of these sermons will be pre-recorded. One a week old. The other two will be live.
My question to this pastor is, aren't there any gifted teachers at these 8 other locations (it's actually more like 11 locations)? Couldn't a real live, flesh and blood man get up and preach a sermon to the people at 10 of those locations you're not physically able to be at? Guess not. Besides, once the buidling gets so big, most folks just look at the jumbo-tron screen anyways, right? So what's the difference?
The gross sin of idolatry in the form of preacher worship is running rampant around America.
I believe the only way to curb this form of preacher idolatry is to get invested in small to small-ish churches that are commited to letting all the gifts be exercised (that means you can still participate on Sunday mornings if you can't play the guitar). It just seems ridiculous to me that a man, any man, would come to believe that only he is qualified to preach the gospel to several locations, even in his absence! At least let some eager young teacher give it a shot when you're out of town.
Sorry this post has been more of a rant than anything else, but sometimes you just need to rant.
Oh, and if you're interested in reading that blog post, you can find it here.
So I'm here to add one to the list of his 11 or 23 points: PREACHER WORSHIP.
It seems to me like a no-brainer that you probably shouldn't set yourself or your ministry up as an idol for your people, no matter the size of your church. So, why are so many men ignoring Mark Driscoll's call to cast down the idols in their ministry? Why all the polity and ecclesiology that makes men say, "I am the only qualified elder/pastor/brother,etc. to preach on Sunday mornings"? Why not allow the body of Christ to be edified by many different men who are able to teach or who may be seeking to discover IF they are, in fact, able to teach? It seems to me that the only explination for such pulpit hoarding is preacher worship, whether it be in the heart of the preacher or the people.
I believe the worst manifestation of this sin of preacher worship-idolatry is multi-site video casting.
So I turn to a blog post I read recently, entitled "How to Be in More Than One Place at a Time." The post begins by saying, "This Sunday, June 14th, by God’s grace and enabled by technology, I will be simultaneously preaching four sermons in eight locations scattered across two states. As I prepared these various sermons it dawned on me what a truly amazing day we live in for the proclamation of the gospel."
In order to accomplish said feat of being in more than one place at one time, this pastor isn't even going to be using technology to fly or drive him to multiple locations on the same day. Rather he will be video broadcasting his sermon to several different sites. Did I say sermon? I meant sermons. That's right, 4 different sermons to 8 different locations at the same time. So, scratch broadcasting. Two of these sermons will be pre-recorded. One a week old. The other two will be live.
My question to this pastor is, aren't there any gifted teachers at these 8 other locations (it's actually more like 11 locations)? Couldn't a real live, flesh and blood man get up and preach a sermon to the people at 10 of those locations you're not physically able to be at? Guess not. Besides, once the buidling gets so big, most folks just look at the jumbo-tron screen anyways, right? So what's the difference?
The gross sin of idolatry in the form of preacher worship is running rampant around America.
I believe the only way to curb this form of preacher idolatry is to get invested in small to small-ish churches that are commited to letting all the gifts be exercised (that means you can still participate on Sunday mornings if you can't play the guitar). It just seems ridiculous to me that a man, any man, would come to believe that only he is qualified to preach the gospel to several locations, even in his absence! At least let some eager young teacher give it a shot when you're out of town.
Sorry this post has been more of a rant than anything else, but sometimes you just need to rant.
Oh, and if you're interested in reading that blog post, you can find it here.
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