my life and my doctrine

I was at Engage conference last weekend and surprised even myself with how strongly I reacted, both positively and negatively to various aspects of the weekend. The next few posts will give me a chance to reflect on the weekend. I hope that if you were there you’ll comment and help me think through the weekend.

By way of introduction I’ve never been to Engage before. It is aimed at Christians in the workplace, generally on the younger side of things. ie not pre-retirement, but twenty and thirty somethings. I’d just come off the back of two full on days of a ministry development training conference where William Taylor and Mark Dever emphasised for me the importance of gospel ministry as God’s word is taught well, taught deeply and taught faithfully. The speakers at this year’s Engage conference were William Taylor and Matt Chandler.

The highlight of the weekend was hearing William Taylor. Sure, I’d heard the three talks only days before, but they were great. The key verse for this three talks was John 5.24:

“Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.” (John 5:24 ESV)

I can now, without the aid of my notes, remember the things he was trying to teach us from John’s gospel.

Q: What on earth is God doing?
A: He’s doing what Jesus is doing?

Q: What on earth is Jesus doing?
A: He came to bring life now and judgment later.

Q: How is Jesus doing this?
A: Through his word.

It was a great reminder of the powerful message of the gospel. That without Christ all people are dead, condemned, helpless, blind, enslaved children of Satan. God, out of his love and mercy alone, acted to bring us life. And he does this powerfully through his word. That same word is what turned water into wine, fed a massive crowd, healed a paralysed man, healed  a man from a distance and raised Lazarus from the dead. When Jesus speaks, his word is powerful.

It is therefore of utmost importance that we continue to preach the gospel, the good news that Jesus offers life to those who are dead.

I thought I’d reflect on our seven week series on Psalms. In particular the challenges and thoughts I’ve had preaching on some Psalms.

1. What I thought would be the biggest challenge at the beginning was working on preaching an Old Testament passage. How do I do this and recognise we live after Jesus? Is it okay to preach a sermon a Jewish Rabbi would agree with? I’ll admit now that I don’t think I had great success with this. One week the Psalm was almost overshadowed by reflections on a New Testament passage. Other times the realisation of our time felt forced and inappropriate.  However, I think it got better as I kept two things in mind. Firstly, the goal must always be to preach the passage, not my biblical theology. Secondly, I think some Psalms have quite a direct relevance to us today, without some ‘forced’ NT interpretation being added, which leads me to my second challenge.
2. How do I preach the Psalms as a genre? It’s wasn’t often that the preceding and/or following Psalms shed a great deal of light on the context of the Psalm in question. Only Ps 137, of the ones I looked at, had significant clues to determine historical context. And yet, the further I got through the series, the more I realised that the genre of Psalm doesn’t necessitate looking for a specific historical context before being able to understand it. As I mentioned in my reflections on preaching Ps 137, I’d underplayed the importance of the emotional response a Psalm is trying to elicit. Now, I could be wrong on this, so challenge me to think harder about this.
3. So, how important is it to attempt to recreate the same affective response? At the moment, I think it’s vital, for without it we can miss out on the Psalmist’s purpose in writing/composing. I’m not suggesting that the Psalms aren’t to challenge our thinking. Rather that our thinking needs to be so changed and challenged that our affections are affected too.

So, as we move on to the next series there’s a challenge from lessons learnt. All preaching ought to be based on the passage expounded and have an affectional response. If you come to evening church at St Matthias, let me know how you think this next series goes.

Last Sunday, after the sermon on Psalm 139, we had the longest question times I’ve been a part of at evening church. It gave me a greater appreciation for how good they are.

I must admit that I was initially quite scared of the concept. It was something I inherited from the previous minister. It would mean I’d have to know what I’m talking about when I preach. It would require having answers to questions I may not have thought about during my preparation.

Yet I also realise that it is a good thing. It gave the opportunity the answer some questions I didn’t address in the sermon. Surely this would be a more beneficial thing, as people would keep learning as they ask their questions of the Bible passage. Also, there would be things in my preparation which ended up on the cutting room floor and yet could still be of use. Lastly, it could be used to clarify what I’d said in case it wasn’t clear enough.

What was most encouraging about Sunday night was that the questions were of the clarifying kind. Further it also became an ongoing discussion, rather than a couple of unrelated questions. They kept building on the previous ones.

I’m now a big fan. Still scared of the curly question I may not be able to answer. But most of all, glad to be involved in a process that enable us to study God’s word and learn together.

If you go to church, what are your experiences of having questions about a sermon? What do you think of the idea of question time? Lastly, if you ever preach, would you do it?