R. Albert Mohler Jr. is president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. He is known as a preacher and enjoys his role of cultivating preachers. Mohler has a new book out on preaching from Moody Publishers this year with the title He is Not Silent: Preaching in a Postmodern World. One of his chapters focuses on “preaching the Bible’s big story.” In it he stresses the need for preachers to situate the text they are focusing on within the bigger picture of God’s redemption story. He uses a particularly poignant example playing off of the children’s Sunday School song that starts with the line, “Zaccheus was a wee little man, and a wee little man was he.”
…One of the great problems with much evangelical preaching today, and one of the reasons so many saints are not growing to completeness in Jesus Christ, is that so many of our pulpits are filled with what you might call “Zaccheus sermons” — or to put it more bluntly, wee little preaching.
Every Sunday, far too many preachers read a wee little text, apply it in wee little ways to their people’s lives, and then tell everyone to come back next week for another wee little story.
That tendency to isolate our sermons to one tiny piece of biblical text is a major problem, and it also explains why so much evangelical preaching is moralistic. It is easy to pick out a familiar story, make a few points from it about what people should and should not do, and then be done with it. But that kind of preaching will leave a church weak and starving, because the Christians who sit under it never find themselves in the big story of God’s work in the world. If we as preachers want to see our people growing to maturity in Christ, we must give them more than a diet of wee little morality sermons. We must place every text we preach firmly within the grand, sweeping story of the Bible. (p. 89-90, emphasis added)
…Our people can know so much, and yet know nothing, all at the same time. They can have a deep repository of biblical facts and stories, and yet know absolutely nothing about how any of it fits together, or why any of it matters beyond the wee little “moral of the story.” (p. 95)
…We want our people to leave the preaching event asking the right questions. If our preaching is too small, their questions will be equally small. If we neglect the big story — the gospel metanarrative — they will be satisfied with small questions and will live on small insights. They may take home an insight, a story, a principle, or perhaps an anecdote. We should not be satisfied with that. They should not be satisfied with that. Our ambition — our obsession as preachers — should be nothing less than to preach so that the congregation sees the big story of the gospel, the grand narrative of the gospel, through every text we preach. (p. 102-103)
I say “amen” to Mohler’s assessment on this. I’ve heard too many “wee little” sermons in my day. May God grant the rising generation of preachers the wisdom to unpack God’s Word for us in such a way as to highlight the Gospel story and the grand narrative of Scripture!
Robbed of a broader meaning to our lives, we appear to have entered an era of mass obsession, usually with ourselves: our appearance, our health and fitness, our work, our sex lives, our children’s performance, our personal development…. [We have created] a culture that gives [us] nothing greater than [ourselves] to believe in — no god, no king, no country.
These words were spoken 25 years ago by an Australian academic, but they still ring true today. If anything, social media and the internet has fueled that personal obsession. Now more than ever, our poverty is exposed: “nothing greater than ourselves to believe in.”
Dickson, is an Australian himself, and is a fellow of Ancient History at Macquarie University, the founding director of the Centre for Public Christianity, and senior minister of St. Andrew’s Roseville. He describes Eckersley’s essay as “a famous government report on Australian youth” and goes on to say: “I remember the report so well because it came out the year before my [book] A Sneaking Suspicion, an attempt to explain the relevance of Christianity for teenagers. The report helped frame some of my thinking, then and now” (A Doubter’s Guide, p. 161).
I want to share a longer excerpt from Eckersley’s essay, which I found is available online in a scan of the publication on Eckersley’s website, here.
Eckersley starts by recounting his reaction at coming back to Australia after several years in Africa, Asia and Europe:
My first reaction on flying into Sydney from Bangkok was one of wonder at the orderliness and cleanliness, the abundantly stocked shops, the clear-eyed children, so healthy and free of the cares of living. Later, however, this celebration of the material richness of life in Australia gave way to a growing apprehension about its emotional harshness and spiritual desiccation. By ‘spiritual’, I don’t necessarily mean believing in God (I am not myself a practicing member of any religion), but having a deep sense of relatedness to the world around us.
…I became aware of the cultural myths that define and support our society. For most of us in the west, the poverty of Africa and Asia is synonymous with misery and squalor; yet it is not. We see their people as crippled by ignorance, cowed by superstition, and oppressed by the harshness of their raw environment; we don’t see the extent to which we are crippled by our rationalism, cowed by our lack of superstition (spiritual beliefs) and oppressed by our artificial environment. (p. 3)
Eckersley goes on to paint a stark picture of the current age (in 1992). Later in the essay he gets to the section from which the opening quote above is taken.
When a society fails to imbue people’s lives with a sense of worth and meaning, then they must attempt to find these qualities as individuals. It is a task that many find extremely difficult, even impossible. People want to know what is expected of them; they need to have something to believe in.
This absence of belief in much beyond ourselves, and the consequent lack of faith in ourselves, are undermining our resilience, our capacity to cope with the more personal difficulties and hardships of everyday life.
Robbed of a broader meaning to our lives, we appear to have entered an era of mass obsession, usually with ourselves: our appearance, our health and fitness, our work, our sex lives, our children’s performance, our personal development.
The consequences of this loss of belief are more serious, I believe, for the young than for grown-ups… [They are] particularly vulnerable to the uncertain culture of our times. (p. 14)
He quotes a study exploring the state of Australia’s youth, and concludes:
But perhaps the most disturbing finding of the study concerns young people’s moral sense. Mackay found that they believed that moral values were in decline, and often found it hard to identify an accepted moral framework within the community — unless they were religious. Moral responsibility to ‘the group’ is much stronger than to ‘the community’, Mackay says:
“Thus the ethical sense is rooted in a social sense, but that social sense is very limited, very transient, and very fragile. Lacking a broader sense of ‘the community’, many young people have difficulty in establishing an ethical framework which has any application beyond the boundaries of their own immediate circle of friends.” [italics original to the article]
The picture that emerges from the Mackay study is of a youth culture that may be meeting the needs of its members in terms of providing them with meaning and an identity, but only just. It is of a culture that is barely holding together, certainly not enduring — a mass-media culture marked by frenetic fashions and polarisation between self-destructive recklessness and abandon, and a more insidiously debilitating cautiousness, social withdrawal and self-centredness. (p. 15)
He then turns to a July 1990 article in Time focusing on “a new generation of young American adults grappling with its values.”
…According to Time, a prime characteristic of today’s young adults is their desire to avoid risk, pain and rapid change. They feel paralysed by the social problems they see as their inheritance: racial strife, homelessness, AIDS, fractured families and federal deficits….
It may be, then, the greatest wrong we are doing to our children is not the broken families or the scarcity of jobs (damaging though these are), but the creation of a culture that gives them nothing greater than themselves to believe in — no god, no king, no country — and no cause for hope or optimism…. (p. 15)
Eckersley goes on to summarize the problems of society and looks for a cure in an optimistic embrace of science and technology — and, ironically, his hope rests ultimately in mankind = ourselves!
The growing crisis facing western societies is, then, deeply rooted in the culture of modern western societies: in the moral priority we give to the individual over the community, to rights over responsibilities, the present over the future (and the past), the ephemeral over the enduring, the material over the spiritual.
Our cultural flaws and confusion both reflect and reinforce our economic, social and environmental problems. They also undermine our ability to resolve them effectively. Unless we forge a new culture, then it is unlikely we will overcome these problems because we will lack the will, the moral courage, to confront them….
…I believe that the problem rests more with our immaturity in using a cultural tool as powerful as science, and I am hopeful that with growing experience and wisdom, together with advances in science itself, we can create a more benign and complete culture, and so a more equitable and harmonious society. (p. 19)
Eckersley explores physics and how “a more flexible approach” has arisen in “how we use science.” An approach he approves of that allows for finding “purpose — or ‘God’ — in the world described by science.” (p. 23). He hopes this scientific endeavor may:
allow us to create new concepts for expressing religious or spiritual beliefs, different from, say, the traditional notion of a supreme being ‘out there’ watching over us, and judging us — metaphysical metaphors more appropriate to our times and our understanding.
Even now, however, science and spirituality are not mutually exclusive. I think it is less science and the scientific view of the world that cripple us spiritually than it is the busyness and artificiality of our modern lives, the all pervasive manifestations of rationality — an environment that we have created through science. (p. 23-24)
He goes on to focus on environmentalism and how mainstream science is clarifying the need for care of the environment, a cause young people can rally around. His essay aims to change science too, but ultimately the solution is what we make of it. Believing in ourselves and our ability to create a better culture — that is all that people can cling to apart from a religious worldview, such as what we have in Christianity.
I share this long excerpt from this decades old article to make a point. The long decline of our culture has been happening for a long time. There is something missing, and Christians have found the answer in Jesus Christ.
We have a God, a King, and a Heavenly Country to believe in – and that gives us great cause for hope and optimism. We don’t ground our hope in creating a social and cultural dynamic that frees us from the self-obsession of our age. Our ultimate hope, instead, is found in the precious promises we have in Scripture — promises that our God-King, Jesus Christ pledges to fulfill on our behalf.
As citizens of a greater Country, we must resist the urge to focus our hopes only on this present age and our own country — whether Australia or America. We need to work for the good of our city, and shine the light of Christ as we brighten the corner where we are, but we must always remember our faith lies in Someone greater and Something grander. Our obsession must center on our God-King, Jesus Christ. He is the one who calls us to live out our lives with ultimate purpose and meaning as we journey toward our Heavenly Country.
Everyone is sharing their thoughts on the Supreme Court’s recent decision to establish marriage as a right to any two people (regardless of gender). And from the intensity and number of both positive and negative reactions, this certainly does feel like a momentous step in our nation’s history. I wanted to bring together some rambling thoughts I’ve had on this issue and point to some resources that may prove helpful.
1) This is not a simple question.
Should we be against “gay marriage” in the civil arena? In light of developments and where we are now at, many Christians would say “of course!” But it isn’t as easy as that.
On this question I have been moved (in a humane way) by the desire of two people for mutual connection and a permanent relationship, and especially about their need for legal status when it comes to end of life scenarios and other important concerns. Some thought “civil unions” was a way to permit this and yet hold marriage for one man and woman, as it has always been. But that solution no longer is viable, it would seem. For more on this line of thinking (the plight of those who experience same-sex attraction) I strongly recommend Wesley Hill’s book Washed and Waiting: Reflections on Christian Faithfulness and Homosexuality (read my review here).
I have also been keenly aware of just how clear Scripture is on the nature of true marriage and the intent of marriage – to be a picture of Christ and the church. Redefining marriage doesn’t change its nature, it just lessens the idea and makes it more of a bland, pliable entity. Joe Carter explores that angle well in an article for Tabletalk called “Defining Marriage.”
A third consideration has been the futility of legislating morality. I can hold onto a biblical definition of marriage but allow others to have their own opinion – why do we have to force others to live up to Christian values? Additionally, should the church really be focusing so much on political questions? John Piper didn’t think so, and I agreed. Furthermore, focusing clearly on the marriage issue can tend to obscure the Gospel and imply that Christianity is just about morality. This is why I was leery of the Manhattan Declaration. Yet, morality and law do go together, some laws clearly are moral concerns. And encouraging a good society – protecting children and the rights of biological parents, these factors all make this particular issue (gay marriage) one that may very well be worth fighting, just from a pragmatic standpoint.
2) What about America?
Many Christians love America, and to a certain extent I do too. So how should we feel about our nation’s embrace of gay marriage?
Well, I agree with John Piper that we should weep over the “institutionalizing” of sin that it represents. And we should not be afraid of standing up for truth and owning the offense of the Cross.
But in another sense, America has always been a pagan nation. We can certainly pray for God to bless our country, but the direction she is going puts the lie to the commonly held assumption that America somehow deserves God’s blessing. Christians are citizens of a heavenly country, and God used this sociopolitical nation to advance his Church, just as he used other nations in other times. God is doing big things in other places, and we don’t have a corner on Him.
As for strategy when it comes to pastors and how they go about marrying heterosexual couples only and avoid legal troubles, I actually think Roger Olson’s proposal is worth considering. Be sure to read his follow up post too.
And of course, we should continue to resist the pressure to reinterpret the Scripture. Kevin DeYoung has given us a very helpful book that clearly explains the arguments being made that try to say the Bible doesn’t forbid homosexual practice. His book addresses the chief arguments and opens up the Scripture in a clear and forthright manner – and is careful to be charitable and loving in its tone. The book is from Crossway and is titled simply What Does the Bible Teach About Homosexuality?
Finally, we should not be surprised if we are misunderstood and hated. Jesus promised this: “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. 19 If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.” (John 15:18-19). Persecution is promised: “Through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22). A martyr complex will do us no good.
Christianity is a religion of the heart, and Evangelicalism especially emphasizes personal conversion and spiritual transformation. Our churches are very good at diagnosing spiritual maladies and confronting the problem of personal sin. But we often stumble in our efforts to help those afflicted by mental anguish, physical suffering and especially depression.
Depression directly contradicts the emotions that Scripture commends, and even commands. We are to “rejoice always” and to “count it all joy.” So a common temptation is to chalk up depression to the category of self-inflicted pain and ultimately reduce it to a sin problem. The conservative tendency to distrust psychologists and especially psychiatrists only adds to the problem.
Author Zack Eswine comments on this tendency:
Religion offers both a challenge and a help to those who suffer mental disorders. This challenge surfaces when preachers assume that depression is always and only a sin. They pour gasoline on the fire and wonder why it rages rather than calms those they try to help. At the same time, studies today confirm that those with mental health challenges simply do much better if they are part of a religious community. (Kindle location, 495)
This contemporary problem is not so contemporary after all. Charles Spurgeon the great Baptist preacher of the nineteenth century, was all too intimately acquainted with this problem. Eswine explores this little known side of the great preacher in his new book Spurgeon’s Sorrows: Realistic Hope for those who Suffer from Depression (Christian Focus, 2014). Spurgeon himself suffered from persistent bouts of depression. He sought medical treatment and at times took sabbaticals to restore his health. He was also never shy about admitting this problem, and his candor led him to be a magnet for those seeking help themselves.
Eswine’s book traces Spurgeon’s history and his approach to discussing this problem and counseling those with the problem. Spurgeon’s own personal thoughts and experience shed’s light on that of many in today’s church.
Eswine writes with care and resists a simplistic approach to the problem. He doesn’t shy away from spiritual considerations either. Spurgeon himself was like that. At times he spoke with great compassion of those afflicted by sorrows and despair, and at other times he challenged them toward greater faith. We are both physical and spiritual beings and no counsel is a one-size-fits-all solution.
Even the darkest pits that depression can lead to were roads travelled by the preacher. He found solace in Elijah and Job and others who like him, had despaired of life and wished to die. Eswine quotes Spurgeon and crafts his book with care, trying to help the wounded and encourage them to find hope in a body of believers.
The book is a bit disjointed and segmented. But that seems intentional, and is written with an eye to what those suffering from depression can withstand. Short chapters, brief thoughts, simple conclusions and applications. Encouraging thought and offering help without a judgemental attitude. One oddity in the book is the author’s repeated use of Spurgeon’s first name. This may be intended to be less off-putting for the depressed reader. It might make “Charles” seem more approachable. I found it jarring and odd, but that may just be me!
There is much that caregivers can learn as well in these pages, and the author’s use of Spurgeon’s insights along with some contemporary authors, provides help in how to deal with those struggling with this problem in our churches today. I recommend the book and hope its message is a blessing and help to many.
Disclaimer: This book was provided by the publisher for review. The reviewer was under no obligation to offer a positive review.
About Book Briefs: Book Briefs are book notes, or short-form book reviews. They are my informed evaluation of a book, but stop short of being a full-length book review.
“I Want to Be More than a Sunday-Go-To-Meeting-Christian,” says an old-time song. For many, that means we take pride in attending church every time the doors are open. Some church traditions have a mid-week service and others have a Sunday evening service, with many having both. These, of course, are in addition to the Sunday School hour and the Sunday morning worship service.
But in Evangelicalism lately, more and more churches are abandoning the Sunday evening service. Is this a move toward a “lite” version of Christianity? Are such churches compromising or lowering their standards?
Most of the time the answer is clearly no. There are a variety of reasons for abandoning the Sunday evening service. And one reason is that the tradition of a Sunday night service is relatively new. The notion of a Sunday evening service dates to the revivalist days of the 1800s where this service would often be evangelistic in nature – and an early draw was the modern innovation of gas lamps or even electric lighting. But this is not entirely a new idea. Earlier, in both the Reformed and Puritan traditions, there were often second services held in the afternoon (when it was still light). The second service was often for catechism, and spending the day at church helped prevent people from profaning the Sabbath.
There is nothing wrong with additional church services, but we must remember that the very notion of a church service is not possible in some scenarios where the church is persecuted. Certainly the custom of the Church has had to change over the years. It appears that an evening service was the only one possible when slaves were members in NT times (and they had to work 7 days a week). Culture and regional preferences resulted in a variety of traditions over the centuries. The Bible doesn’t mandate specific meeting times, other than an emphasis on meeting on the Lord’s Day. We should not be hesitant to adapt to the culture we find ourselves in. Our age is so busy, that packing in an extra service on the Lord’s Day usually doesn’t lead to a more restful and worshipful reality. More services might be better, but must all worship and study be done in a formal church gathering? In many churches, the faithful are worn out from all the service they render for the church and don’t have enough energy left to get much out of the final service of the day. It seems the more active a church is, the more services it requires of its members–and the more obligated and stretched these members feel.
Many consevative churches eschew the evening service to make small groups easier to schedule. It isn’t about avoiding church so much as encouraging more effective ministry and fellowship. Other churches don’t want to ask too much of people preferring their members to focus on the primary message and enjoy rest and fellowship with their families.
An extra service may weigh down the congregation. It can become a measuring stick to see who is performing well. My legalistic heart and background probably clouds my perception, but I find such demands burdensome and have a hard time resisting the urge to measure up every chance I can. Worship should be about the Lord, not about us checking off boxes or jumping through hoops. Personally, I enjoy the freedom of an extra night with family – and more time to think on the things I’ve heard and studied. Every other Sunday afternoon we host a small group in our home. We can do this much more easily without the extra burden of another service.
I’m spurred to share my thoughts on this in light of a recent article from a Fundamental Baptist leader, Paul Chappel. His article is not intended to offend, but it is almost impossible not to read between the lines and see what he really thinks of churches that don’t have a Sunday evening service. Another pastor recently shared a response that was charitably written and helpful. Reading the two posts back to back can give a fuller picture and provide a helpful contrast in evaluating this topic.
Don’t get me wrong, Sunday evening services can be wonderful. There is nothing wrong with churches choosing to meet regularly in this way. But neither is there anything wrong with churches choosing to drop such a service. May we view people on both sides of this question with respect and love. May God bless us as we seek to follow Him more closely, in our families and our churches.
Here are the posts for your further consideration and I welcome any comments below.
R. Albert Mohler Jr. is president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. He is known as a preacher and enjoys his role of cultivating preachers. Mohler has a new book out on preaching from Moody Publishers this year with the title He is Not Silent: Preaching in a Postmodern World. One of his chapters focuses on “preaching the Bible’s big story.” In it he stresses the need for preachers to situate the text they are focusing on within the bigger picture of God’s redemption story. He uses a particularly poignant example playing off of the children’s Sunday School song that starts with the line, “Zaccheus was a wee little man, and a wee little man was he.”
Robbed of a broader meaning to our lives, we appear to have entered an era of mass obsession, usually with ourselves: our appearance, our health and fitness, our work, our sex lives, our children’s performance, our personal development…. [We have created] a culture that gives [us] nothing greater than [ourselves] to believe in — no god, no king, no country.
Everyone is sharing their thoughts on the Supreme Court’s recent decision to establish marriage as a right to any two people (regardless of gender). And from the intensity and number of both positive and negative reactions, this certainly does feel like a momentous step in our nation’s history. I wanted to bring together some rambling thoughts I’ve had on this issue and point to some resources that may prove helpful.
“I Want to Be More than a Sunday-Go-To-Meeting-Christian,” says an old-time song. For many, that means we take pride in attending church every time the doors are open. Some church traditions have a mid-week service and others have a Sunday evening service, with many having both. These, of course, are in addition to the Sunday School hour and the Sunday morning worship service.