Theocentric Preaching

From an interview with Kevin Vanhoozer:

The problem in too many evangelical churches is that we know what we’re supposed to believe, but we’re not sure what practical difference it makes and so we’re unable to bring it to bear on everyday life. To be sure, biblical and theological illiteracy remains a problem too. But that doesn’t really explain why even in churches where the Bible is faithfully preached the congregation doesn’t look that different from everyone else.

My own hunch is that we need to recover the imagination in order to set the cultural captives free. I believe that many people in today’s society, and church, suffer from an impoverished imagination. By imagination I mean the cognitive power of seeing things together, as wholes; clearly a worldview is an affair of the imagination, at least in part. In any case, I believe that our imaginations are captive to secular stories/worldviews that do not nourish our souls. Eugene Peterson says something similar about the function of the 10 plagues of Egypt: they were intended to free the imagination of the Israelites from thinking that the power of Egypt was sovereign. The plagues systematically deconstruct Pharaoh’s power. It takes imagination to see that what God is doing with a small tribe of slaves is greater than the might of Egypt or the grandeur that was Rome. Similarly, it takes imagination to see that North Americans are not in bondage to similar powers and principalities: consumerism and therapism, to name but two. I wonder whether in our haste to preserve doctrinal truth, we have not done our evangelical churches a disservice in surrendering our imaginations to stories (and advertisements) that serve the interest of some worldly empire (or multinational corporation) rather than the kingdom of God.

Pastors need to make it a priority to teach their congregations how read Scripture theologically, and this requires the imagination, the ability to make sense of thing by fitting the little bits into larger patterns - the big canonical picture. It takes imagination to see the Bible as a unified whole, and then it takes even more imagination to fit one’s own time and place into this biblical drama of redemption.

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From Bill Wilder:

If I could issue a plea to our pastors and priests and ministers of the Word in the world today, it would be this: Give me Christ, or else I die.

I mean that in the most specific sense - not just what Christ can do in me or to me or for me or through me (or the church or the world), but Jesus Christ himself, clearly portrayed as crucified and preached as having been raised from the dead. Not Jesus Christ as the assumption or foundation or the means for all that is preached, but as its very content and core…

This is what I need to hear. Because my attention is so easily drawn to lesser things - to my plans, my ambitions, my problems, my triumphs, my failures, my family, my friends, my church, my community. So, please, turn my eyes upon Jesus. Help me to look full in his wonderful face. And the things of earth will grow strangely clear in the light of his glory and grace.

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I first heard of Tim Keller through D.A. Carson’s book Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church. Carson offered Keller as an example of someone who is reaching the emerging generation without being part of the emerging movement.

I don’t know when exactly I began to listen to Keller, but I’m certainly in a phase of learning from him. He has a grasp of theology, gospel, and culture that’s rare, and is a good example of an effective scholarly practitioner.

Keller gave a series of lectures on preaching at Gordon-Conwell last year called Preaching to the Heart, and I’ve been listening to the CDs this week. Here are the names of the sessions:

(1) Preaching to the Heart without being Legalistic
(2) Preaching to the Heart without being Piestic
(3) Unintentional Preaching Models
(4) Reading, Preparation, Conversation, and Preaching
(5) Preaching to “Emerging” Culture
(6) Preaching to the Heart without being Individualistic

The PDf files for these talks are also included on a separate CD.

Any pastor who takes the time to chew on these lectures can’t help but be changed. These are well worth ordering from the Ockenga Institute.

Steve Mathewson has a great post on how to connect to the storyline of the Bible. This is one of the most important concepts to keep in mind for true theocentric preaching.

Ray Van Neste writes that, contrary to what many think, people do indeed want substantive sermons:

Preachers are often told that people really are not interested in substantive content in sermons. I know of pastors who have been severely criticized for dealing with texts that people did not find easily digestible, or useful enough in drawing crowds. Shallow, generic “life-thoughts” will appeal to some, but there is an increasing number of people who are crying out for substantive teaching as they yearn to know God and to have something weighty enough to serve as an anchor for their souls…

Let us give them real substance, explained and applied of course, but not diluted and dumbed down.

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Tim Keller writes:

Ed Clowney points out that if we ever tell a particular Bible story without putting it into the overall main Bible story (about Christ), we actually change the meaning of the particular event for us. It becomes a moralistic exhortation to ‘try harder’ rather than a call to live by faith in the work of Christ. There is, in the end, only two ways to read the Bible: is it basically about me or basically about Jesus? In other words, is it basically about what I must do, or basically about what he has done? Example: If I read David and Goliath as basically giving me an example, then the story is really about me. I must summons up the faith and courage to fight the giants in my life. But if I read David and Goliath as basically showing me salvation through Jesus, then the story is really about him. Until I see that Jesus fought the real giants (sin, law, death) for me, I will never have the courage to be able to fight ordinary giants in life (suffering, disappointment, failure, criticism, hardship). The Bible is not a collection of “Aesop’s Fables”, it is not a book of virtues. It is a story about how God saves us. Any exposition of a text that does not ‘get to Christ’ but just ‘explains Biblical principles’ will be a ’synagogue sermon’ that merely exhorts people to exert their wills to live according to a particular pattern. Instead of the life-giving gospel, the sermon offers just one more ethical paradigm to crush the listeners.