21st Century Gospel Preaching

It is so very important that, in today’s anaemic church, a preacher is known as an evangelical.   It is the in thing to be especially in theologically mixed denominations.  The idea that these denominations are becoming more evangelical and that there are now more evangelicals in the ministry is a cause of great pride in these churches.  And if this were really the case, then the church on earth would be triumphant in its thanksgiving to God for calling such men into its ministry.

But while numerically this is the case in some denominations, the sad reality is that the churches in which they minister have seen no improvement in her spiritual life as a result.  It was very disturbing to hear a retired evangelical minister in one of the mainline denominations admit this to me in the Summer of 2011.  Many more evangelical ministers, but no improvement in church life!

Now if that does not beg an obvious question, I do not know what will!  Why does an increase in evangelicals into the ministry not make any difference?  Well, it is all down to what you believe an evangelical is!  Perhaps the reason is that the church today does not know what an evangelical is!  She can longer define an ‘evangelical’!

It is true that there is an intolerance to defining anything today.  The church has done what the world has propagated – or maybe the world is merely imitating what the church did from the mid 1800s – and that is, she has re-written biblical history and theology to fit in with the modern way of thinking; and this has been imbibed by those who call themselves evangelicals!  If ‘grace’ is something so wonderful, so sublime, so out of this world, that it defies definition, then don’t define it; and if someone else uses this term, the just accept it, asking no questions.  If ‘love’ is such a warm thing to talk about, then talk about it and don’t define it; then if someone else talks about ove, then just accept that he means the same by it as you do, and ask no questions.

If the Gospel is the most wonderful thing in the world, and if a man says he preaches the Gospel, and if his congregation thinks he preaches the Gospel, and if non-evangelicals, liberals, ecumenicals, use this precious term, then that’s good.  Just accept them as fellow-believers and ask no awkward or embarrassing questions.

So in preaching, especially if you are in a denomination that does not know the difference between truth and error, or who is a Christian and who is not, or even what a Christian is and is not, then proceed as if everyone who attends your church is a Christian, but throw in a few Gospel ideas just to keep the unthinking professing evangelicals on side. 

But don’t be too pointed in your preaching!  This could be very costly to you personally.  You don’t want your congregation to even suspect that you do not think some of them are Christians at all.  And you certainly do not want the church eldership to get the impression that you think this.  So keep your preaching very low-key, not too pointed, and no application.  You don’t want your members, who have professed their faith in Jesus Christ and who have been accepted as true Christians by the eldership, to start being converted, do you?  You don’t people to start being saved in your church because that will be to question and challenge the judgement of the elders.  And you can’t have that! 

In a future post, I will seek to delineate what it is that constitutes an evangelical, just so that there is not confusion about this precious term.