Sharpening an Old Tool for the Harvest

I'm probably speaking as an "Old Guy" here. I know relational ministry is very important and always has been and is today, especially in this i-generation. I know that preaching gets elevated, sometimes, to an extreme, but God does say it's important. Timothy was charged to Preach the Word. It’s DTS's motto & I still get Goosebumps when I read the charge to Timothy.

I've been told my preaching is good, but I don't even hear that anymore. After slugging it out in two dying churches and wanting to make disciples in the harvest who make disciples who make disciples, I want preaching to be more than I've been able to make it. When the workers come out of the fields into the clearing (church on Sunday) I want to be able to encourage and strengthen and motivate and put a tool into their hands that they can use immediately, something that will make a difference for them the minute they leave the clearing and reenter the fields. But here's the thing, I want it all to be the Word itself. If they are going to find strength in the message, they have to find it in the Word. They have to know simply how to Open the Word and find that tool. They have to See it in the Word to pass it on to the next generation of disciples. It is my responsibility to encourage and equip them with the Word so they can equip themselves with the same truth from the Word.

I know you're lost, but here's what I mean.

So I heard a good message on a vital subject that had lots of energy and some funny lines. Here's the thing, it was supposed to be an exposition of a passage, but it really wasn't. It was a vague explanation of the passage at best, but did use certain words to springboard to the speaker's theme. Now if you called this a topical message, that would be better, but even there, I think it should be explaining a passage from the Word. Here's my malfunction.

How will a disciple go back to that passage and reconstruct what the guy preached? It was a good message on a vital topic, but the disciple can't do that. Most of it came from the mind of the speaker. If the exposition wasn't close and logically and thoughtfully developed, the disciple's ability to understand the Word and dig it out for himself isn't developed. He's not being equipped. He's not seeing the Word as critical to his life and walk as a disciple. When he thinks, "I need that truth," he'll have to go to a pod cast, not the Word, to get it.

I say this because I think we have a genetic fault that keeps us weak in the harvest. Rather than people being strong in the Word, they are trained to rely on secondary sources, to get their spiritual nourishment from the contemporary "voice" and not from the Word. The emerging church criticizes the seeker church and the seeker church criticizes the traditional church, but they all did/are doing it. And everyone is and has struggled with reproducing a reproducing disciple. It's not the Word, it's what Stanley, or Swindoll, or Lucado says from the Word. Now, the names have changed to Driscoll, or Chan or Bell or whoever. I haven't listened to these guys so I'm not saying they're doing anything wrong. I'm saying that if we are making disciples and equipping disciples to make them strong and reproducing in the harvest, they need to be able to take the passage we're preaching and reconstruct the message from the Word itself. This teaches them to understand and handle the Word. They need to be captivated by what God said and go to His Page, not ours.

Preaching will be here until Christ returns. It was the preferred tool of Jesus. It was the last charge that Paul gave to Timothy before he died. Preaching is vital for the harvest, for equipping and encouragement and strengthening and arming the harvesters, but the fully equipped disciple, in the heat of the battle needs to rally with the Word, not with my ideas. He should go to the Bible, to His Father, to His Savior, to the Spirit. He should go to the Word.

Mark 2:2 And many were gathered together, so that there was no longer room for them, not even about the door; and he was preaching the word to them.