When Christ is not preached
In Preaching for Revitalization, Michael F. Ross describes one of the symptoms of a congregation that has lost its love for Christ:
First, human personalities begin to take preeminence in the life of the church, over the person and work of Christ…
When Christ is not preached (1 Cor. 2:2) then a vacuum is created; people need some leader, some champion, some “holy man” to cling to other than Christ. Therefore it is essential that preaching be both Christ-centered and devoted to regularly focusing on the beauty and bounty of Jesus Christ.
September 8th, 2007 at 8:10 am
A great example of preaching Christ:
Making a pilgrimage means setting out in a particular direction, travelling towards a destination. This gives a beauty of its own even to the journey and to the effort involved. Among the pilgrims of Jesus’s genealogy there were many who forgot the goal and wanted to make themselves the goal. Again and again, though, the Lord called forth people whose longing for the goal drove them forward, people who directed their whole lives towards it. The awakening of the Christian faith, the dawning of the Church of Jesus Christ was made possible, because there were people in Israel whose hearts were searching – people who did not rest content with custom, but who looked further ahead, in search of something greater: Zechariah, Elizabeth, Simeon, Anna, Mary and Joseph, the Twelve and many others. Because their hearts were expectant, they were able to recognize in Jesus the one whom God had sent, and thus they could become the beginning of his worldwide family. The Church of the Gentiles was made possible, because both in the Mediterranean area and in those parts of Asia to which the messengers of Jesus Christ travelled, there were expectant people who were not satisfied by what everyone around them was doing and thinking, but who were seeking the star which could show them the way towards Truth itself, towards the living God.
We too need an open and restless heart like theirs. This is what pilgrimage is all about. Today as in the past, it is not enough to be more or less like everyone else and to think like everyone else. Our lives have a deeper purpose. We need God, the God who has shown us his face and opened his heart to us: Jesus Christ.
Wonderful, huh?