"It is well and good for the preacher to base his sermon on the Bible,
but he better get to something relevant pretty quickly, or we start
mentally to check out.” That stunningly clear sentence reflects one of
the most amazing, tragic, and lamentable characteristics of contemporary
Christianity: an impatience with the Word of God.
The sentence above comes from Mark Galli, senior managing editor of Christianity Today in an essay entitled, “Yawning at the Word.”
In just a few hundred words, he captures the tragedy of a church
increasingly impatient with and resistant to the reading and preaching
of the Bible. We may wince when we read him relate his recent
experiences, but we also recognize the ring of truth.
Galli was told to cut down on the biblical references in his sermon.
“You’ll lose people,” the staff member warned. In a Bible study session
on creation, the teacher was requested to come back the next Sunday
prepared to take questions at the expense of reading the relevant
scriptural texts on the doctrine. Cutting down on the number of Bible
verses “would save time and, it was strongly implied, would better hold
people’s interest.”
As Galli reflected, “Anyone who’s been in the preaching and teaching
business knows these are not isolated examples but represent the larger
reality.”
Indeed, in many churches there is very little reading of the Bible in
worship, and sermons are marked by attention to the congregation’s
concerns, not by an adequate attention to the biblical text. The
exposition of the Bible has given way to the concerns, real or
perceived, of the listeners. The authority of the Bible is swallowed up
in the imposed authority of congregational concerns.
As Mark Galli notes:
It has been said to the point of boredom that we live in a
narcissistic age, where we are wont to fixate on our needs, our wants,
our wishes, and our hopes—at the expense of others and certainly at the
expense of God. We do not like it when a teacher uses up the whole class
time presenting her material, even if it is material from the Word of
God. We want to be able to ask our questions about our concerns,
otherwise we feel talked down to, or we feel the class is not relevant
to our lives.
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