I
came across this quote last week while working on my dissertation’s history
chapter: “Protestants believed that preaching was ‘the ordinary means of
salvation,’ for which there was no substitute. But less dogmatically and more
pragmatically, historians can agree that without their being preached, or imparted
through a sustained process of catechizing, the essential protestant doctrines,
and concomitant religious experience, were unlikely to take root. Not far short
of the end of the [16th] century, a Kentish minister claimed that
when he canvassed opinion in parishes where there had been no preaching, hardly
anyone knew they could never be saved by their own moral endeavours.
Justification by faith alone was something of which they knew nothing.”[1]
And
if preaching today is doctrine free (most popular Christian music and songs in
worship certainly are)? If those few minutes between congregation and pulpit
have more stories, jokes, and self-help moralistic bumper stickers or tweets
than doctrine or exposition of Scripture? Read the quote again. Parishes had
lost the Gospel. Lost it.
Pastors
must preach the Gospel often to themselves, and constantly to the congregation.
Congregants must, too, learn to preach it to themselves, and preach it to
others.
The
above quote reminds me of something I was taught when I was being mentored in
ministry: ultimately, the problems in the church can be traced back to the
pulpit.
When
I taught a preaching class several years ago, I told them the first thing I
wanted them to do when preparing notes was to mentally (or literally, if need
be) put a cross on the page. Plan from the beginning on getting to the cross,
getting to the Gospel.
Artist
Shai Linne’s new album is entitled Still
Jesus (Lampmode, 2017). I hope it is still Jesus alone for us, Church. It
will only be so if we are purposeful and constant about it. What has Jesus
done? Why is it needed? How is it the only remedy for our greatest problem? Do
we still believe this? When we hear of problems in the world or in an
individual’s life, is the first solution that comes to our mind still Jesus?
Battle
for the parishes (or whatever we call them in all the places we live). They
must know the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
[1] Patrick
Collinson, John Craig, and Brett Usher, eds. Conferences and Combination Lectures in the Elizabethan Church (Woodbridge,
Suffolk: Boydell Press, 2003), xxiv.
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