bahula-blog » Preaching

The Building is the Message?

Tim Bahula — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 07:26:05 +0000

A famous Canadian (is that an oxymoron?) once said, “The medium is the message.” Chris Taylor of Legacy Baptist Church, Arkansas, contends that “The building is the message” (or something close to that) in his article Our Architecture and Our Message on The Gospel Outpost. He writes in part:
bq. At the same time though, I believe the contemporary architecture of today’s churches that is intended to enhance our evangelistic effort, express subtle, unintended messages that are actually counter-productive. Casual and informal are seen as careless and unimportant. Comfortable and relaxed are interpreted as complacent and optional. What’s even more alarming is that the message proclaimed from these new structures is just as comfortable, relaxed, complacent and optional. Moralistic platitudes have replaced the bold, life-changing message of the Gospel. The central theme is no longer Christ and Him crucified, but man and him satisfied.
HT: Tim Challies
BTW, the famous Canadian is Marshall McLuhan.

Jesus & Preaching

Tim Bahula — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 08:19:43 +0000

Daryl Dash has a great post on DashHouse.com about Missing Jesus in preaching. It would be nice if all preachers were this honest.
bq.. Four or five years ago I was unhappy with my own preaching. I knew something was missing, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. It was a highly frustrating time for me.
This past Saturday, one of our church leaders told me that a friend visited the church during that time. “Your pastor doesn’t talk about Jesus a lot in his sermons,” the friend observed. The church leader who told me this argued at first, but then listened for a few sermons and concluded that the visitor was right.
Something was missing. Someone, actually. Jesus.

Preaching 50 Great Bible Chapters

Tim Bahula — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 22:52:18 +0000

At the end of November, Wayne over at ekklesia asked what 50 Chapters in the Bible I would preach if I only had one year left to preach and could only focus on one chapter each week… okay, he didn’t put it quite like that. Since I blogged that I had started my list and Wayne picked up on that, I figured I better come clean. After all a New Year is about to dawn.
The task turned out to be a little more challenging that I anticipated. There are 1,189 chapters in the Bible; selecting 50 great chapters means that 1,139 need to go unpreached. That means I’m selecting 1 in 20 chapters. Some choices are pretty obvious. After all not many preachers are going to take up preaching -1 Chronicles 4-… wait, that’s the “prayer of Jabez”… make that 1 Chronicles 3. On the other hand, I would expect that most preachers would take a chapter like Ephesians 1.
BTW, this type of preaching series is not new. Spurgeon had his commentary on Great Chapters of the Bible. For that work, Spurgeon included 31 great chapters. You can see the table of contents on the Amazon site. Kyle Yates published a book in 1957 Preaching from Great Bible Chapters, but I can’t find many details on that work. G. Campbell Morgan did 49 chapters in Great Chapters of the Bible. I guess that he must have had an extra week of vacation?! I assumed that vacation is why Wayne asked for 50 and not 52.
Without further ado, here’s my list in the order in which I wrote them down.

Exodus 20
1 Corinthians 15
John 1
Luke 2
Isaiah 53
Jeremiah 31
Psalm 119
Psalm 133
Psalm 1
Genesis 1
Genesis 3
Lamentations 3
Ephesians 1
Galatians 5
2 Corinthians 3
1 Thessalonians 1
Matthew 13
Acts 10
Ezekiel 8
Hebrews 11
Revelation 1
Romans 8
Deuteronomy 6
1 Peter 1
Numbers 14
Joshua 1
2 Peter 3
1 Samuel 25
2 Samuel 7
Romans 3
Philippians 2
Colossians 1
John 11
Mark 8
Matthew 5
Luke 23
Daniel 3
1 Timothy 3
2 Timothy 2
Ezra 8
1 John 5
Judges 18
John 19
Proverbs 8
James 3
Joshua 14
Luke 15
Revelation 22
2 Chronicles 24
Job 1

50 Chapters?

Tim Bahula — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 21:59:32 +0000

Wayne over at ekklesia wonders…

“If I had one year to preach/teach, and I could only focus on one chapter of the Bible a week, what fifty chapters in the Bible would I pick as the most important to communicate?”

I’ve started my list.

Theocentric Preaching notebook

Tim Bahula — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 22:07:37 +0000

Daryl Dash has posted the notebook for his recently conducted Theocentric Preaching seminar on his site in PDF format… Theocentric Preaching Seminar Notes. It looks helpful, although I haven’t worked my way through all of it yet. I was struck by this statistic:
bq. According to a study by _Preaching and Pulpit Digest_, 80.5% of sermons are anthropocentric. Most sermons are not grounded in the
character, nature, and will of God.
One of the ironic things is that Daryl cites the source as being Wells, “The D-Min-ization of Ministry.” Yet Daryl is pursuing a D.Min. in an attempt to help reverse this trend in preaching.

Theocentric Preaching

Tim Bahula — Wed, 05 Jul 2006 23:23:28 +0000

Daryl Dash has begun a new blog about preaching called Theocentric Preaching. It actually began with a series of posts on Daryl’s blog, some of which (Theocentric premise one: The Bible is not a book about you… Theocentric premise two: The Bible has a story line… and Theocentric premise three: The text has a point) haven’t made it onto the Theocentric Preaching site.
How often do I skip right past God (and the point of the passage)? Okay, don’t answer that question!

Video preaching at church?

Tim Bahula — Mon, 21 Nov 2005 21:12:37 +0000

I guess I had never thought about this before… so I’m a little naive… Steve McCoy in his post Reformissionary: Video Preaching at Church introduced me to how big-time preaching is done. I knew of simulcasts for conferences and such, but I never thought that churches would use this as a regular part of their Sunday services. Steve highlights some of his concerns with video preaching:
# There’s a dynamic that isn’t there when the preacher isn’t standing in front of his people.
# Video preaching is, it seems to me, a way of doing an ‘end run’ around the real need: more preachers/more churches.
# Video preaching seems like the result of personality-driven ministry.