Talking to Sam Allberry today, curate of St Ebbe's, about preaching, he came up with a couple of golden sayings. Or, he may have stolen them, but they were pretty good anyway:
Don't turn church into an airport lounge - the kind of place that is threatening to no-one but home to no-one either.
Preaching ought to be to the converted.
Preaching is truth through personality.
14 comments:
He almost certainly stole the third... from Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones!
Yes, no. 3 is a definite Lloyd-Jonesism.
No wonder I had never heard it before!
Can you Lloyd-Jonesists help me: what is the theological basis for the whole 'anointing' thing? This whole language is new and rather odd to me in this connection. I suspect it is actually a questionable theologisation of a very good piece of practical wisdom: preach with passion!
No, it's more than that. In Acts, the apostles were filled with the Spirit in Acts 4 (subsequent to Pentecost) and therefore spoke the word of God with boldness. You will find references to preaching in the power of the Spirit in 1 Corinthains 2:4ff, 1 Thess 1:5, 1 Peter 1:12. Paul asked for prayer that me might preach with "boldness" and "utterance" in Ephesians 6.
The Spirit enpowers the preacher to proclaim the word with clarity and boldness. "Anointing" is not simply a matter of preaching with feeling, it is the Spirit coming upon the preacher.
Read the chapter on Demonstration of the Spirit and Power in Ll-J's Preaching and Preachers.
Hmm... yes, a crack is opened with this use of Acts through which you can drive a fairly large charismatic truck...
...and we wouldn't want that now would we!
Speaking of Acts...I do hope that you're taking Sam out of context with No 2. Paul seems to have a habit of preaching to the unconverted as well as to the church. Unless within the "ought" of Sam's quote there is the expectation that from time to time preaching will land on unconverted ears.
no, we wouldn't want that.
And Sam's point, though I agree with him, is that preaching in church that is always aimed at presumed outsiders is often very poor preaching even TO outsiders.
I don't really want to allow the charismatic movement to set my theoligical agenda. Prior to the charismatic movement, Reformed writers were happy to speak in the terms outlined in my previous comments.
For, me this is a matter of the relationship between Word and Spirit. In traditional Lutheran teaching, the Spirit works in and by the Word. But the Reformers and Puritans held that the Spirit works in by and with the Word. In the NT examples I cited, the gospel was preached not in Word only but also in the power of the Spirit. It seems to be that many Calvinistic evangelicals are more Lutheran than Reformed in their theology of Word and Spirit.
I think that the NT encourages preachers to pray for and expect an anointings or fillings of the Spirit that will enable them to preach with liberty, boldness and power. As I suggesed, have a look at what Ll-J has to say in Preaching and Preachers. In case you thing that my view is just a Celtic aberration, see also Walter Kaiser's final chapter on The Exegete/Pastor and the Power of God in his Toward an Exegetical Theology,, Baker, 1981.
I quite agree that we need all our preaching to be in the power of the spirit, but am hesitant to use the terminology of anointing. It seems to me (and I'm happy to be corrected on this) that anointing is found (restricted to?) a messianic context. Not sure I want to transfer that sort of label onto myself wholesale. I'm not denying the substance of what the L-Jers are saying; just the label. We need unction, and for our preaching to PREACH, not just teach.
Am chuffed to be in the somewhat exclusive club of people-who-get-their-own-label-on-Michael's-Blog :-)
i thought "unction" was in fact the word used by L-J.
Ll-J tended to speak of "unction". I understand Sam's reservations about using "anointing" becasue of Messianic associations. But unction means anointing doesn't it?
But isn't there a link between Christ being anointed with the Spirit at his baptism and him being the one who baptises his people with the Spirit (Luke 3 & Acts 1)? Just as Christ needed to be filled with the Spirit that he might preach the gospel (Luke 4:18ff), so the early church was filled with the Spirit at Pentecost to equip the people to bear witness to Christ. Pentecost was obviously a unique, definitive event. But Christ continued to fill the apostles with the Spirit subsequent to Penecost (eg Acts 4) to enable them to preach the gospel with boldness and power.
We preachers need that same filling with the Spirit today.
Hmm: same as the apostles?
I guess it all depends what it all means in the wash, too. Filling with the Spirit is equated in the popular Xn mind with 'spontaneity' and 'passion'. 'Power' equals a certain rhetorical style... So, John Piper shouts a lot and gets very emotive (and is an excellent preacher of course) ...
Obviously there is a distinction between the apostles as epsecially comissioned eyewitnesses to Christ's resurrection and preachers today. But if they needed to be filled with the Spirit to preach effectively....
Besides is Luke's purpose in Acts 4 to say, "Of course, this was for the apostles - don't you expect any such thing." Isn't the passage given to us as an example of what the church should do - pray and what God is able to do in response to her prayers - fill with the Spirit?
What of Jesus promise (not only to preachers admittedly) in Luke 11:13? If we limit that kind of promise to the apostolic era, have we not become dispensationalists (with a small "d")?
I agree that we should not identify the power of the Spirit with a particular kind of preaching sytle as if shouty = Spirit-filled. Johnathan Edwards was no less a powerful preacher than George Whitefield.
I'm not sure anyone's denying the need for preachers to be spirit-filled. I'm just uneasy with the extra step taken that we also need to be anointed/Christed.
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