By Dr. Albert R. Mohler Jr.
“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.”
Read more at http://www.albertmohler.com/2013/10/14/falling-on-deaf-ears-why-so-many-churches-hear-so-little-of-the-bible-2/
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My Wife and I searched for years to find a church that was not The Church of Pastor Jones or Smith but the Church of Jesus Christ. We went sent to a small church in a rural village that had a Pastor who had come a few years before. He only had 35 in his congregation and found them Biblical illiterate. He changed that and when we arrive, the congregation had grown to over 200. We were feed that Sunday and not pabulum for the first time in years. Other pastors in the Presbytery asked him how he grew his congregation. He told them he taught the Word and only the Word. I have never fallen asleep during his messages for the True Word of God awakens. What it requires is a preacher in love with the Lord and not his culture.