The Theological and Existential Shape of  Dr Dan’s Preaching Ministry: Musings and Convictions

Whatever is true about preaching follows in the wake of one simple dictum. Christian preachers are commissioned to preach the the Gospel. Reduced to its elemental truth claim the Gospel asserts that Jesus of Nazareth was and is the Christ – the messiah who the Hebrew Prophets foretold. In his coming, his life, his death on the cross, and in his resurrection Easter morning on or around Passover weekend in Jerusalem 33 C E the Kingdom of God was born. This Gospel, bequeathed to us by the Apostles, asserts that in and through the Christ the Kingdom of God foretold in the Hebrew Scriptures made its debut and will soon be consummated. More over the Apostle’s Gospel asserted that the door to this kingdom, lubricated by grace and grace alone, was and is now opened wide to all. Jews and Gentiles, the “good, bad and ugly”, are all called by the Gospel to freely enter and be saved.  All that excludes one from from being included in this kingdom, and all that prevents one from enjoying the friendship of God, has been removed through the suffering Christ. Hearing the Gospel through the Spirit faith becomes possible. “Without faith it is impossible to please Him” (Hebrews 11:6). Through faith in the good word of the Gospel one’s favour with God and one’s place in the Kingdom is secure and also one’s conformity to the life of the kingdom begins. This Introductive statement on preaching does not however comprehend all the challenges that come with preaching.

One of the challenges in preaching is to find the strength of the Christian way without falling into legalism or nomism (the reducing of ethics to rules, codes, laws, prescribed disciplines and moral proof texting ). The Christ we find speaking to us in  and through this Gospel, totally digests ‘Moses’ thereby transforming all ethics and morality. On the Mt of Transfiguration three figures appear in brilliant splendor, then two figures fade into the background. Elijah (cf the Prophets) and Moses ( the Law) recede and the light focuses on the remaining One – the Christ. It is then that a voice is heard “this is my beloved Son listen to him”. This side of Pentecost Christ has spoken via the Apostles’ Gospel witness which again and again is brought to life via the Spirit.

The preacher must seek to find the seriousness, the strength i.e. the rigorous claim of the Christian Gospel, without losing its foundation on grace. There is a liberality, freedom, compassion and its humanity in the way of Christ and the Gospel. “My yoke is easy my burden is light” Jesus said. All to often religion attempts to take the short cut home, that is to state, it attempts to stem human laxity, indulgence, sloth, and permissiveness by taking its texts and honing them into lonely sharp imperatives and binding these like heavy burdens to weak willed mortals.

Another challenge that I believe the preacher must shoulder is that of finding the salty difference of the Gospel of Christ and his way and place it in relief with the way of the world and its culture(s) that surrounds the followers of Christ in any given time and place (“you are the salt of the earth“). To find this difference without succumbing to division and separation from this world is the perennial challenge. When the gap becomes a gulch (i.e.the gap between ‘church’ and world) both the ‘church’ and world lose. When this occurs the church most often succumbs to ecclesial parallelism and then self righteousness, religious elitism, hostility and arrogance toward the world. All too easily the church succumbs to a false appraisal of itself as if it is not itself infected with the greed and sensuality alive and well in the world. Deprived of a real connection with the witness of a church struggling to keep alive Christ’s difference in the world the world become reckless and heady and commences to believe its autonomy from God and God’s ways revealed in Christ are the be all and end all. Such pride precedes a fall.  The struggle to find and re find the difference of Christ’s way vis a vis the way of the world prevents the church from succumbing to conformity with the world and gives its witness ( when derived from Gospel truth and not Law) an attractive edge (Romans 12:1-3). But when the moral and spiritual gap (difference) between the church and the world weakens or disappears then conformity to the ways of the world occur more or less. Lacking the abrasion of difference creates a down side. The church needs to encounter the difference that is alive in the world to understand and re understand its own unique identity and truth. As stated the downside cuts both ways. When the world is denied the salt difference of Christ and his kingdom which Christ has charged the church to keep in play in the world/”earth” it (the world) then commences to view itself as absolute. This ‘salt’ difference of Christ forces the church to find and re find its vital relevant difference to the world and thereby saves the church from resting in a pseudo once and for all formal dogmatic comfort zone more or less parallel to the world.

The church’s tradition, especially its Scriptures and its Apostolic transformation of truth is not to be denigrated or played with fast and loose, nevertheless preserving these is not enough. “The faithful scribe must bring forth from his treasure things new and old” Jesus said. But this “new” is not merely new for newness sake. It is the truth lodged in the old confession and tradition opened up in a new way such that it sheds light on the contemporary shape of  darkness, darkness that comes to be embedded in a person’s life, or a particular society’s cultural life, in a given time and place that is the challenge. In this way the bequest of truth given to the church is not static but dynamic and it is the preacher’s job through study and prayer by the grace of God to apprehend the dynamic edge of truth so that it can expose the present shape darkness for what it really is.

I believe that in preaching the stress often placed on persons to believe and open their hearts to a warm spiritual experience must be lightened. True preaching focuses on something far greater. The Gospel discovers all humans, Jew and Gentile, in the grip of something God has done for them in and through Jesus Christ. God, without our help, has reconciled himself to us through the Christ. The Gospel proclaims the friendship of God – upfront! First and foremost.  It (the Gospel) focuses not on something we sinners must do but on something God has already done for us all. Preaching proclaims this saving thing that God has accomplished in and through Christ so that upon hearing and understanding it, through the aid and power of the Spirit, any one weak or strong in spirit can be lifted up or humbled so as to commence trusting their life, their future and present security, temporal and eternal to God ( i.e. secured by God in Christ).

The great scandal in light of the Gospel and the truth of the Gospel is unbelief. Light has dawned but men and women loved darkness rather than light John writes (John 3:19 ff). Warnings against unbelief in the face of Gospel truth that are present in both word and Spirit, not the failure to engage one’s will to believe, as if the will was the key that opened the door to believing, is what the Apostles confront us with.  The preacher must help people see themselves as God sees them in and through what God has done for them (2 Corinthians 5:18-21). Only after this is comprehended can the   the business of believing and repenting be embraced for it is the “goodness of God that leads to repentance” ( Romans 2:11) . And be sure this “goodness of God” of which the text speaks is not as an abstract virtue of God but that revealed by Gospel where his radical grace and love is on display. Believing simply means integrating with the new reality that the Gospel brings to light. In its essence faith simply means to integrate into or conform to the reality of the new thing that the Gospel asserts has already occurred, already become historically established. Faith ceases to act and think contrary to the new thing God has done for us in and through the resurrection of the crucified Jesus. God, not humans, has overcome the chasm between Godself and human kind. The gospel declares that gracious ground has already been provided for all to stand on. The preacher’s job is to urge all to stand at rest on this gracious invisible ground and commence to integrate their life and spirit accordingly. Faith and New Birth have often become a subtle Evangelical Mt Sinai and those who have climbed this mountain all too become a spiritual elite contrary to Jesus’ benediction – “blessed are the poor in spirit”.

Faith is carried by community. It is not only an individual thing.The preacher is one instrument in an orchestra. Inside community through the word and spirit of Gospel the way of faith, hope and love is taught, prayed, sung, preached  and collectively believed and confessed. Invigorated by two simple ordinances commanded by Christ, Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, faith becomes supra personal and thereby personal. But when this community of believers is identified with its leadership, or any gift or office within it, then faith is short circuited. People start looking and trusting in the seen rather than through faith trusting the unseen One. Faith in a person’s soul comes alive for the first time and is renewed by the community’s collective profession and confession. Through the believing community, its fellowship, its spirit nourished by the Holy Spirit and the gospel preaching and teaching occuring in the church God’s covenantal grace under each and everyone’s lives faith is formed and reformed. “Where two or three are gathered together in my name I am present” Jesus said. The self as ‘member’ located in a body, interdependent on, and contributing to a body with other members, is the New Testament vision. In the body versus out of the body existence is Apostle Paul’s challenge to the church to be an organic community of faith and service respectful of individual gifts and calling, a challenge that is not merely a churchly spiritual ethic but one that mirrors and witnesses to the present and coming reality of the kingdom – God’s future for humanity.

The preceding discourse on preaching and faith may lead the reader to conclude that in my view preaching must only dwell on Evangelical themes. Under my Bio a Mission Statement venue tab I have taken care to show the wider circumference of preaching and teaching. Gospel preaching, often referred to as evangelical preaching, is falsely separated from other kinds of preaching but this is a false division because Paul asserts  “All the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in Christ” . No treatment of a particular truth or subject from the pulpit ceases to intersect in some significant way with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In any given world (i.e. any given time, place and culture) there are lies that become embedded and enshrined as if they were truth. In preaching there is a need to attend to the particular historical context and culture a given people are living in. The good in any socio-cultural setting must be elevated to its true meaning and place in God to the glory of God and the bad that becomes rooted and established in any given socio-cultural setting must be exposed. But this exposition should not occur by frontal attack. Truth exposes error, light exposes darkness as darkness. Evil is overcome by good. Here and there in this blog I have addressed this. *( Note ‘evangelical’ for me best corresponds to the Pauline meaning where this word for the church was born and then the historic Protestant Reformation meaning and is best not neatly identified by the contemporary American usage of the term)

*Billy Graham once said the things Christians hold in common are far more significant than the things upon which they differ. There is a center and circumference to Christian life and teaching – the Gospel of Christ is the center. Working out of this center, and correlating all things on the periphery to this center, I have set about to serve churches, colleges and seminaries from many different backgrounds.  Many churches and schools in Asia, especially in China because of their particular history, unlike in the West, have little or no affiliation to denominated Christian groups. The luxury of secluding oneself within one’s denominational borders is greatly compromised in Asia. I am an ordained American Baptist minister and in America my ministry has be cradled within this denomination. In Scotland my ministry was shared between Baptists and Presbyterian (i.e. the Church of Scotland) In Asia I served many Christian groups.

The absence of one area in this brief on preaching may alarm some readers. What about preaching and the great need for justice for the oppressed in this world and what about the need for social change here and now in this world? In my book Religion and Life in Three Movements: Faith,Hope and Love especially under my chapter on hope I have addressed the unique relation the church sustains to needed social change in this world. Also under the venue tab “Dr Dan’s Bio and Mission Statement I have made some important comments about the unique character of Church’s witness in word and act in this world and how it can indeed stir up positive social change.In August 2019 I posted an article on Justice. In the month of February 2020 I spent a full month teaching Baptist students in a college inside a refugee camp along the Thai-Burma border ( Mae La Camp KKBBSC). The central theme of my lectures was Justice. A comprehensive posting on the prophetic call to do justice by the prophet Micah is soon to be posted in this blog. It is sufficient to state that the divide in American churches between Justice Churches ( churches making doing justice the apex of their mission and Evangelical Churches Churches making preaching the Gospel and calling people to Christ the apex of their mission has no basis in Scripture!