Why Many Pastors Struggle with Narrative Texts

Many American pastors struggle with narrative texts in scripture. The reason is quite simple. Most pastors have a tendency in the current day to isolate texts. The failure to use scripture to interpret scripture makes narrative preaching quite difficult.

You see texts in scripture can never be seen in isolation. It is somewhat easier to faithfully isolate a piece of Paul's writing, but still the preacher's sermon is poorer for it.

The modernist revolution hit biblical interpretation in a hard way even amongst conservative circles. There is a scientific method of interpreting scripture even in most conservative seminaries that tends to be overly rational and apply principles to interpretation which are too rigid.

I once heard a pastor remark on Paul's exegesis of an Old Testament text that any student in a seminary who did such exegesis would receive a failing grade. He was of course correct, but you see it simply means that principles which are too rigid have been brought into modern interpretation.

Each text in modern interpretation (even conservative interpretation) is seen in isolation. Rather we need to not isolate texts as they are. Often I feel the tendency of pastors is to preach on far too few verses.

Not only is the text in isolation but the text is one verse. To get better preaching it seems necessary that texts cannot be isolated from the entirety of the Bible and it seems that preaching may often be helped by taking large chunks to preach form.

Finally pastors will be better served to not pre-determine the format of their sermon. A three point sermon used by many pastors pre-determines in a sense what the text will say. It is not a rational approach to fit the word of God into a pre-determined mold.

Maybe in the text God has made only one point and maybe God has made seven points in the text. Many sermons would be greatly helped by at least at times moving away from a pre-determined format.

Of course it takes time to consider a text in a way that someone might vary their delivery of it. Of course you see that time is never wasted. Even if the format is kept, the openness to the text is important. The less presuppositions we bring to a text of what it will say and how it will flow, the more likely we will understand a text.

Bonhoeffer on Preaching

Bonheoffer spoke of how when seminary students were preaching a sermon he would always sit and listen to the sermon and never critique it while the sermon was taking place.

I have always found some wisdom in this. The sermon is a method by which God is attempting to speak to us through the preacher.

Sometimes the message of course is hopelessly lost if the preacher cannot convey the message of the word of God, but the reality is that God is attempting to speak to us.

When God attempts to speak we should listen. It is interesting that throughout scripture God has a tendency to speak in unusual ways.

He is not a respecter of persons and often does not bring his message to people in any way in which they expect. He may find a tiny shepherd by to kill a great warrior or find someone hopelessly lost in son to convert into his messenger.

Always God is a being who wishes to speak and be heard. He often does so in unusual ways.

Why does God not speak directly? Sometimes it is as if he does not wish to be heard.

The reality is that he wishes to be heard if we wish to listen. He has communicated more than sufficiently and always will communicate with us sufficiently about our lives. We often do not care to listen. We ask for a clear sign when often the clear sign has already been given many times.

Sometimes we wish and answer the question and the answer is that it is not good for us to know.

We always think that knowledge is good. Knowledge is good in general but for fallen men we often could not make use of it and sometimes it would be of danger to us.

Always God knows better than we do but we cannot see it. He wishes to speak and the question is if we wish to listen.

A Theology Guest Post by me

Faith is Content Based

One thing that is missing in the Church today is an insistence that worship be content based (propositional). Preaching has become topical and often moralistic. There is a failure of many pastors to insist that their congregation know the contents of the bible.

Unfortunately many of our churches are beginning to almost worship the “unknown god” like the idol Paul found in his travels. It is widely documented that many youth cannot describe any of the contents of Christianity.

This is a truly sad state since God’s son Jesus, fully God himself, took on human flesh (incarnation) and dwelt among us.

The gospels contain an extensive interaction between Jesus and humanity. If there was not enough revelation in the Old Testament to know something of God then surely there is after reading the gospels.

The sad state of the moralistic preaching of today is that it is not morals that make people good it is being in relation the Father that makes one start to become good. One cannot separate sanctification from the knowledge of God like the church wishes today.

Actually one cannot even know to the fullest extent what is “good” without knowing God. Many truths about ethics can be found by reason, but some truths about ethics can be found only in God’s revealed will.

It is not as if there is something strange or wrong about this (that God has set ethics into place) since God created the universe according to a purpose. To know right and wrong to the fullest extent is to understand something about who God is.

So to divorce morality from the knowledge of the living God is a futile effort. It is great folly to just go out and seek to do good without first standing in a relationship with God. All relationships of meaning are based on knowledge of the other. You cannot have a fulfilling relationship with good without first knowing facts about who he has revealed himself to be.

It is not surprising that the sermon has lost its place at the center of worship. Since we do not want to have knowledge of God we instead wish to have 15 minute bites of moral advice.

Actually preaching is of the upmost importance since God has always intended to be worshiped in “spirit and truth”. There is no true worship of God without truth and God cannot be worshiped in truth without knowing facts about him.