Preaching the Gospel - Reflections and Resources

Bijbelbespreking Ter Apel (1)

2012-01-14T13:04:00.001+01:00

Samenvatting van de eerste Bijbelbespreking in de Protestantse Gemeente Ter Apel.

Onderwerp was Romeinen 1:1 - 4

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Preaching the Gospel: Authentically

2010-12-18T18:04:00.007+01:00

For more than four years I tried to ignore the voice in my head.

I had been a preacher in the Dutch Mennonite church for 14 years. There have been so many conflicts and problems in my various congregations, that I had given up. It wasn't just a difference of opinion or shades of difference between my faith and that of my fellow Dutch Mennonites. The division between us ran deeper. I had to come to the conclusion that among Dutch Mennonites the Gospel has been abandoned. It wasn't about a degree of faith, but a complete loss of it. Dutch Mennonites no longer believed in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, in his atoning death and sacrifice, and the Bible to them was an old wives' tale that belonged to the past. They sang the songs of the Church, they sang even the Psalms like mainstream Dutch churches, but they no longer believed the words they were singing.

So there were conflicts. When I tried to emphasize the calling of the Church, the Church Council emphasized the church being just a social gathering of like-minded people. When I preached about the Bible and explained its message for us today, they judged me as being Orthodox. Every attempt to treat the Church as a learning community was blocked. So I finally had to make a decision, a painful one. Many of my friends were still member of this church. Most of my revered teachers were still engaged in an attempt to strengthen the church and its witness. But my time had come. So I left the Mennonite church and after six months of deliberation I joined the Protestant Church in the Netherlands.

And then I continued to try and ignore the voice in my head.

When I left the Mennonite Church I thought that my career as a minister would be over. I preached now and then in my own congregation, but that was it. I tried to start a new career. I became a philosophy teacher and a part-time e-marketeer. I was convinced that my preaching days were over. And before me was a good and comfortable life without the pressures and responsibilities of my vocation that had weighed upon me before.
But the words came to me: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me." Especially the words "deny himself" gained a great weight for me. By changing my career, by leaving not only my church but also the Ministry, I wasn't denying myself. I was looking for a secluded place to be comfortable and have some peace and quiet. During a sleepless night in November 2009 however I finally gave in. I decided to answer God's continuing call to preach.

The first thing that happened afterwards, was a decisive change in the way I preached in my own congregation where I did not have the responsibility of a minister. Before that moment I had tried to preach the gospel indirectly with an attempt to modernize the story. I was always trying to avoid any controversy or conflict. I wanted the congregation to like me. So I poured water into the biblical wine until it became a sweet lemonade, harmless and entertaining.

Now I understand that this was useful, because I learned many things. It's not bad to be entertaining. It is not bad at all to know your audience well, and to be able to predict their responses. But I was confusing the means with the goal. After November 2009 I started to think about the message I was proclaiming from the pulpit. It seemed to me that I had been presenting a wonderful wrapping, full of color, but without any content that challenged my congregation. What was missing in my preaching of the Gospel, was the Gospel itself.

Now what is the Gospel?

It is not a sweet entertaining story, but it is a serious message from God.

It's the announcement of a divine verdict upon humanity, and an invitation to accept salvation in Christ as my Redeemer as well as a calling to a life of obedience to Christ as my Lord.

All of that goes against my natural instincts. I do not like the idea that God has to pronounce judgment over my good intentions and decent actions that justify me in my own eyes, but still make me a sinner in God's eyes. And because I think I can justify myself, I hesitate in accepting the salvation that is offered to me in Christ. As a Mennonite friend once said to me: "Nobody has to die for my sins, they are not that severe. Besides, Christ dying for me would not help me at all." Finally, the word obedience goes directly against my instincts to liberate myself, to be free. The word obedience was especially heinous in the ears of Dutch Mennonites. They simply said that faith was about love for the the neighbor, and leading a decent life and to be productive in society. The values therefore of liberalism.

So how can one preach the gospel without provoking serious conflict? I have been trying to do so for four years. I have even succeeded. That is, I have managed to conceal the Gospel, not preach it.

Now I am again looking for a congregation to serve as a minister. There are many hurdles to be overcome. There is an official procedure for ministers applying for a vacancy that have come from another church. I need to be accepted as a candidate first. That will take time. But during that time I can contemplate what truly is the essence of the Ministry. It is about denying yourself, the natural instinct to be pleasing and entertaining and to avoid all conflict at all costs. It is about learning again that the Gospel goes against all natural pagan instincts.

I hope that I will be able to preach the Gospel authentically. That is my prayer to God. But the past four years I also learned something else that might be useful: to take the congregation seriously. In its faith but also in its doubts and in its hesitations it is just like me.

If you are a minister or preach as a layman in your congregation, make the pledge now:
I will make the Bible….

Mennonite Peace Theology: From the History of Political Systems: Constitutional Democracy

2010-07-15T18:11:00.000+02:00

Mennonite Peace Theology: From the History of Political Systems: Constitutional Democracy

The Impossibility of Heresy or Why is Dogmatics Necessary?

2010-07-13T13:48:00.003+02:00

One of the first issues that needs to be decided, is the criterion of the knowledge that any dogmatics claims to be. There is a need to discuss the legitimacy of the dogmatic claim to know the truth of faith. That need is grounded in history. There is such a thing as a conflict of faith with or within itself. This conflict is basically the paradoxical fact of heresy.

Heresy as Contradiction
Although heresy is a shape of Christian faith and a possibility of interpretation that arises within the life of the Church, it is in truth to be considered a contradiction to faith. A contradiction to faith that claims to be the true faith, that tries to establish itself as the legitimate way of being Church. Heresy always starts as a contradiction to what already has been established. It is however not coming from the outside. Its motivation, its possibility is grounded in the content of faith.
It's quite common to find that an heresy emphasizes certain aspects of faith to the extent that others are lost out of sight. Yet, even if a heresy establishes itself successfully as a church or even establishes itself as the dominant and universal Church, it would still be contradiction, a deviation from the true shape of Christian faith. At least one can argue that basically this is the meaning of heresy. Any deviation of traditional faith, that is grounded upon a long Christian principle of understanding and seeks to refute and replace traditional face and ventures to base a separate church on it. That is a heresy. That implies that individual believers may be wrong or unclear about the criterion of face them deviates from the common confession or may entertain points of view that our difference, contradictory or downright hostile to the contents of the Gospel. But as long as they do not consider their points of view to be of such validity that others should follow them or if they do not try to ground a church on their opinions, they themselves would not be seen as heretics and neither would their doctrines be considered heretical.

Roman Catholicism and Modernism
Karl Barth established two points of view as basically heretical. The first one is Catholicism and the other is modernism. By discussing a twofold shape of Christian heresy, the question about the criterion of dogmatic knowledge has to be raised. In other words the questions what his revelation? And the question how do we use revelation to express the truth of faith. These questions can be on search in the context of discussion of this twofold heresy.
We have said that heresy is a contradiction to faith that claims to be the true faith. So how do these heresies themselves express the criterion of the truths of faith? By examining the way in which a heresy claims to be truthful, the status of the criterion is made clear.

Modernism
First of all we need to take a look at modernism. The Christian religion is conceived as a particular shape of a universal religion. A general understanding of human beings and their existence in the world, that is not specifically determined by the contents of Christian faith, is the starting point here. This assumption is not a philosophical understanding of the world would be logically prior to an understanding based on faith. The particularity of Christian faith will then be a secondary determination of a general possibility. All humans have some degree of religion. Religiousness is a universal trait of humanity. Christianity by default is just one way in which this universal religion becomes manifest. Christianity is just one of the ways in which human beings try to express their inner religion.

Roman Catholicism
Roman Catholicism is the second type of heresy that Karl Barth discusses. The point of origin for this heresy is not a universal outside church, but instead the particularity of the Church. Now it is argued that the meaning of the gospel can only be established and discerned from within the life of the Church. In a way revelation is now completely bound up with the institutions of the Church. As he explains: "the being of the Church, Jesus Christ, is no longer the sovereign Lord of its existence, but is totally bound up within the existence of the Church." Revelation becomes identified with the tradition of the Church.

The true criterion
In the examination of these two heresies it becomes clear what the real criterion of faith and dogmatics actually is. It is not an universal philosophy of the nature of humanity. It is not the priority of the traditions and institutions of the Church. Jesus Christ is not a symbol for a particular type of religious faith, nor is he identical to the church that he grounded. Jesus Christ is the Lord of humanity and the Lord of the Church. That means that his particularity has priority over both philosophy and the Church. He is the revelation of God. Jesus is God's self expression. Therefore he is not only the criterion of dogmatics, but also in a very full sense of the word the wisdom that supersedes philosophy and the sovereign spirit that rules the Church.
The criterion of dogmatics is the Word of God. Why is that the case? Because the being of the Church is Jesus Christ who is the Word of God. The church was called into existence by Jesus, and that existence in response to the call is only valid in as far as its reflects its origin.
That leads to a discussion of the threefold status of the Word of God. We will talk about that next time.

PODCASTS ON BARTH AND MODERNISM

Teaching by Podcast

2010-07-06T13:49:00.001+02:00

Coming soon! In the mean time, check out the main site: http://HegelCourses.com.

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Biblical Hebrew Study at WIZIQ.

2010-07-05T17:53:00.001+02:00

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Biblical_Hebrew_Alphabet.ppt (782 KB)

Biblical Hebrew Alphabet

Power Point Presentation

In august 2010 a new Course in Biblical Hebrew will start at WIZIQ.com.

The main focus will be on reading the text from the Torah - I believe that you will understand the grammar of a language best by just reading and hearing the text explained to you. Grammar after all is not a goal in itself, just a means. You will never be called upon, probably, to speak fluent Biblical Hebrew. That's why I focus on reading more text and studying as little grammar as possible.

To prepare for the Classes on Biblical Hebrew the best thing to do is first learn the alphabet by yourself. In this post I attached the FREE power point presentation that you can use for that purpose. It is also to be found on WIZIQ.com. Just take a look at the free content.

You can also listen to the FREE VIDEO'S I made about the Hebrew Alphabet and you can apply for a session on WIZIQ if you get stuck and need assistance with the alphabet. Classes on Biblical Hebrew will start in August.

The classes will consist of readings in Tenakh, with short explanations of Biblical Hebrew Grammar, which we will keep to a minimum.

Download the FREE e-sword program at www.e-sword.net.

There is a Hebrew Bible available, and also a Hebrew Bible with Strong notes, but both only give the consonant text. I encourage you to use that program to help you read the Torah.

You would also need a version of the Torah in Hebrew with the masorectic vowels, that you can read and download here:

Hebrew Torah at Scribd.com

Most of the teaching will consist of podcasts on this site. Every week I will also take you through the text of the Torah at wiziq.com. I will schedule one hour sessions for that purpose.

Classes on the hebrew Alphabet are free. WIZIQ lectures on Biblical texts are free also.

The courses on Biblical Hebrew Grammar and avanced level Biblical Hebrew are separate and NOT FREE. I will charge 6$ per hour for these advanced level classes.

You can watch the free video's here:

Biblical Hebrew Alphabet part 1

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Biblical_Hebrew_Alphabet_1_of_2.wmv (9993 KB)

Biblical Hebrew Alphabet part 2

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Biblical_Hebrew_Alphabet_2_of_2.wmv (8117 KB)

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A Messy Bible and the Art of Comments

2010-06-29T17:58:00.001+02:00

Dinah is raped and Jacob's sons exterminate the people of Shechem. Kanaanites are being slaughtered because God commanded it. Families of Israel's enemies are being killed for the sins of their fathers. daniels accusers were thrown into the pit with the lions, as well as their wives and children for their crime against Daniel. The God of the (hebrew) Bible is vindictive and cruel.

That is a powerful attack on the integrity on the Bible. So much so, that there is hardly a reason left to read and study it. Something that most people don't do anyway. Not anymore. The bible thumpers read their New Testament or interpret the Old testament allegorically or as preparation of the New Testament of love and forgiveness. In all these cases - whether you turn to atheism, remain a Jew and turn to the Talmud or just live according to ancient tradition, become a Baptist or evangelical, the Old Testament is lost. isolated as a holy relic or critically judged as a Bronze Age expression of cruelty. Apart from some stories in Genesis, the message of the Hebrew Bible is lost.

There maybe a Jewish way out. According to David Plotz one needs to understand that the Bible is a book to be argued with. It wants to evoke commentary and argument. This jewish dialogue over the centuries is far more important than the Book itself. Bible commentary and Talmud are products of a living dialogue, Whereas the Bible is in most of its parts a weird book that we need to go beyond. Plotz in writing the book simply called The Good Book, wanted to take a look at the Bible as someone who had no commentary, no teachers, just as someone who wanted to read a book without any expectations. This fresh look at the Bible was then blogged and ultimately produced this book.

One of the comments at the Fora.TV channel neatly summarized the point:

I would say that the old testament writings were compiled and perpetuated by an extreme authoritarian patriarchal elite of hebrew society. This served to consolidate power and frighten a weak and lazy population into some sort of social cohesion. The success of their society we see today, for those of us who are the result of it. An illiterate inbred tribe who rose to greatness and influenced the world, it is a pretty unusual story in the history of anthropology.

"The Bible" continues to be a glimpse into the relationship of a weak childish majority led by a strong mature minority. Rebelling against that authority has been a Jewish pastime for millenia, resulting in a constant supply of genetic and philosophical apostasy. We, the Jews, are the "Sons of Seth", and The Bible has been the ox-goad that inspires us to be the contrarians we are.

You are getting the drift.

Now I fully agree that the Bible is a book to be argued with. Argument and conversation is an intrinsic part of the way the Bible has functioned over the centuries. Not just in Jewish culture. But there is a problem here.

When confronted with a religious tradition in a society, there are basically two ways to deal with its authority. Against the simple acceptance and enforcement of that tradition one can choose the 'reflected life.' In stead of using the argument of authority, we make an appeal to reason and that means ultimately, consent. That is the path of Socratic philosophy, epitomized - though it would have surprised Socrates himself I'm sure - in the Politeia by Plato. That huge dialog is basically a conversation about Justice, a philosophical analysis of the tradition of social ethics and why a more rational approach is superior. Tradition is set aside, we move beyond it, and find a new source of authority. So we do what someone remarked during the David Plotz lecture: move beyond it, give it up.

Plato tried to enforce this rational solution in Syracuse, but it wouldn't work. The people resisted it, the King was not as persistent as he should have been, and there was a quarrel about the way to implement Plato's wonderful political solutions. The point of this being, that Plato represented the power and the majority that were supposed to deliver the groundwork of his political edifice. Still it didn't work.

Next to that is a different kind of solution that Plato never had to envision. What if you're a minority in a large society that has a totally different mindset and culture than your own? Plato's solution of the 'reflected life' wouldn't work here to maintain identity and guarantee survival. Israel would have been totally assimilated within Babylonian culture if it had tried to do so - it it ever had been a real possibility of course.

But what if you maintain the old traditions by writing them down, fixing in a way the religious culture that you have, but immediately set up a culture of debate, a 'legal' culture, which is directed towards the practical demands of every day life?

The Biblical texts are there, because there was a context in which they were edited and re-written, that was from the start contradictory to the original context of the stories. Setting them in the new context of the canon, making them part of a literature that is set up like a three story house: Torah - ground-floor, prophets - first floor, and then the Writings, second floor. All of that means that the moment and occasion of their publication lies in the communal conversation that existed between laymen, Priests and Levites, who ached for a return to the home land they had lost qwhen jerusalem fell to the Babylonians. They never functioned within the life of the people apart from the process of commentary. Maybe there were parts of Leviticus active for the priests when there was a Temple in Jerusalem. Maybe there were the stories of Genesis as retold by the Scribes. Only late in history we find reference to the book of Deuteronomy. Compared to the centuries in which the Torah, the Prophets and the Writings were part of a commentating, criticizing and arguing culture, the life span of the 'original' bible was very short indeed.

So what is my point?

That the story if Dinah is about justice that is raped. That the conduct of the sons of Jacob is depicted as despicable, because Israel - the later name of Jacob - is supposed to act differently from other nations. Because only from the whole context of the Bible and the motives and context of its insertion into the national culture, can it be read properly. If you decide to forget all of that, you wind up indeed with a messy text - the text of a book that never functioned in the ay we are reading it. Fragments of a culture that may have given rise to the text, but did not give rise to the book. Messy text indeed, but that is not valid for the book and its original community of readers. In fact, it is an invitation for a social self-reflecting community, that cannot simply set its traditions aside, but is empowered through commentary to make the changes in the law that really count for daily life.

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Genesis 12:1 in Hebrew - Translation and Grammar - Advanced Biblical Hebrew

2010-06-28T13:47:00.001+02:00

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This is the first (experimental) post on Biblical Hebrew. My intention is to put a complete source on this site. For the time being just an explanation andtranslation of Genesis 12:1.

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Word and Person – Why there Has to Be a Connection

2010-06-22T11:53:00.003+02:00

Especially in Europe, the connection between the Gospel and theology on the one hand and the biography of the student is severed. The reason is, that theology has become an academic discipline, keen on proving itself to be a science among others. Because of this yearning for respectability no student is asked to show his existential connection to the message he will be preaching.
In such cases the power of the Word remains distant, becomes abstract theory and reflection. Among my fellow students there were two extremes. There were those to whom theology was an interesting academic discipline just as interesting as any professional training. But the academic study of theology was to them simply that: a required stage of preparation of doing a job.
And there were those who, because of their rootedness in Church life, saw everything theoretical as a danger. Any critique of former theological wisdom seemed to them a temptation by Satan only to be overcome by shutting it out. There was much deafness in my class.
It is like studying to be a doctor and nobody questions your motives. Would you like to be treated by a doctor who studied medicine because he liked to become rich? Or would you like one who really wanted to help people?
It’s up to students to make the connection between the Gospel as a message of salvation and their own biography. Because they are never challenged during their academic training, most of them will not succeed in doing that. They will be academically trained, they know how to speak the language of the Church, will know all the new trends in theology and will use it to defend their specific brand of theology – which more often than not turns out to be a compromise with prevailing atheism or other modernist currents.Something you can live with while you do the job and act like a believer.
If you want to have ministers that really make the connection between their faith and academic study, you need teachers that can do that. Do they still exist? I taught at the Free University of Amsterdam. I was a member of the small Seminary of the Dutch Mennonites. We once had a meeting with Baptist colleagues that were considering moving their Seminary to the Free University as well. I was there with the rector of the Mennonite Seminary, and my other colleague who was our professor of Mennonite History.
And then the rector said: ‘Well, I have lost my faith some ten years ago, but I still think that I can serve the Church.’ And the Professor of history said: ‘Well, I never believed anyway, but I like my topic very much and I think it is important to tell Dutch Mennonites about their history.’ And then they pointed at me: ‘but he still believes.’
What kind of message was that toward our Baptist brethren?

Christian Religion or Gospel of Christ?

2010-06-10T12:36:00.002+02:00

"How is the Christian religion different from all the other world religions?"

Someone on the web answered that question like this - you can find it at GotQuestions.org

"Religion is the practice of faith; that is, religion is the external or ceremonial observance of a set of beliefs. Technically, there is a difference between faith (the internal attitude) and religion (the external works), but for the sake of this article, we will define “Christian religion” broadly as “the faithful observance of the teachings of Jesus Christ and His apostles."

'For the sake of this article'? That sounds pleasant. "We will discuss the Christian faith as if it were a religion, and then we will compare it to others and say it's the best religion."

That might even be true, if you accept the premise, that Christianity is a religion. And of course it is. But there is no reason to presuppose that as a religion, it is any better than others.
Well, you might say, if you're an atheist that contemporary Christianity, e.g. in Europe has a more pleasant image of God. He is loving and caring and doesn't control our lives, and doesn't interfere with our daily practices so much and that's a huge step forward when compared to the past or to Islam.

If you still want to believe in an Invisible man in the Sky, you better do it like that. You won't bother other people too much. That's the gist of what Hirsi Ali had to say about Christianity, that it should give the Islam in Europe more competition. Atheism according to her was the better worldview - more open to science and the Enlightenment than anything else.

But Christianity, even though it has to be a religion to some degree, isn't about being religious. It cannot be the 'best' in a class of religions. It has no claim for itself whatsoever. That it has to be a religion is jsut a fact of life. Culture does make its contribution, people are responsible for the institutions of the Church, we invent religious practices.
But the only reason we have a Church in the first place is the revelation of God in Christ, God became flesh and shared our life in Jesus Christ in order to take our misery and sin upon Himself. Christianity is the religious outgrowth of a message of redemption. That message is the only thing that counts. That Redeemer is the only Peron that counts.
For the sake of this article I will asume the writer on GotQuestions.org knew that, technically. But he forgot to say it.

Christ is the only standard for our faith and preaching. He is the Truth, the Way and the Life. Even if, which I think is the case, our Christian religion is one of the worst religions ever.

Being Responsible in Preaching

2010-06-08T14:49:00.001+02:00

Or:

Why Ministers Should Learn Hebrew and Greek in Order to Preach the Truth

There is a wonderful proposition by E. Rosenstock-Hussey:

Only someone who allows what he says to speak against him, can truly speak.

No animal and no child is able to do that. In every word I speak, I take up a position in this world. I promise, I guarantee, I show, I plead, I claim. When I say: the sun rises and it doesn’t happen, right then and there, my speech is false. It is not important whether I mean it to be a falsehood. It doesn’t matter whether it was true yesterday, or whether I reserved within myself the right just to express myself poetically. Whenever I say: the sun is rising, or it rains, I assume a position. If it isn’t true, the words I just spoke, testify against me. I have lied, I have not just erred – of course that happens too, but that is an evaluation afterwards – I LIED. I brought falsehood into this world. My words and therefore my person were not dependable.

So then what I said speaks out against myself. My words prove me a liar, show my true stature. My words become a self-accusation. Because that happens, I have to be responsible in my speech. Think before I speak. That’s just the least I need to to do.

The Minister Carries the Burden of Truth

There is no situation where lying, speaking falsehoods, is such an important thing as in the pulpit. Of all places this is the one where truth should reside. Yet, it is also the place where my words are directed against me. It is the place where what I say is truly directed against me, as if I am the first listener.

Only an adult can speak like this. Can speak truthfully, by accepting the burden and responsibility of speech. And the burden is quite heavy. Like the rabbi’s said: who speaks a falsehood takes away a life.

So, one needs to preach the truth, and one needs to speak it against oneself.

Why is that? Because the words that I speak are not the words I chose to express myself, but the words that were given to me. A minister of the word can only repeat what he was told. He reiterates words. He acts like a dummy in a way. He is not to direct attention to himself, his wonderful life as a preacher, how hard he struggled with the word, how wonderful his experiences were and whom he has met during the week. He is NOT important. Even though we live in an age of Images which makes the personality of the preacher an important thing. One should resist the inner vanity that is addressed by the prevailing culture. A preacher is a suffering and poor servant of his Lord.

And I, when I came to you, brethren, came not in excellence of words, or wisdom, announcing to you the testimony of God. For I did not judge it well to know anything among you save Jesus Christ, and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling; and my word and my preaching, not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power; that your faith might not stand in men's wisdom, but in God's power.

If he himself did not have an encounter with the Word, his speech is a falsehood, even if he says all the ‘right things.’ He can only convey the power of the Word, if it has touched him. There has to be an encounter with the Word, with Scripture. Weakness and fear and trembling precludes the attempt to impress one’s own personality upon the listeners. It is vanity and idolatry.

This is where most of the sermons I heard and most of the preachers go astray. They show no signs of being touched by the Word. They just reiterate words, that have been spoken by others. They don’t repeat the word that was given to them, but choose the words they think will be expressive of what they believe and think. They impress their personality upon others and try to lure them into following them, not their Lord.

There is a sterility in many sermons, especially the ones that are called ‘expository’, where a minister stops preaching and in stead becomes a teacher. Line by line he will call attention to a word here and there, amplify what is stated, interrupt himself to tell an anecdote. It’s sterile. Particularly if the pastor in question has no idea what he is doing. Exegesis is not to be entrusted to people who don’t read Hebrew and Greek, are not used to spending hours engrossed in an ancient text and immersing themselves in the word. There is no easy way out here. Exegesis is the first craft to be learned here and knowing the languages is the first requirement.

An encounter with the Word requires knowledge of Hebrew and Greek.

There is no excuse for a minister for not having learned Hebrew and Greek, well enough to truly read, nay, really HEAR the Word that has come to us. It is that word that is entrusted to him– not the King James version with easy comments that is passed on by a Church tradition or the Amplified Bible that merely paraphrases the regular translation. It is that word, and that word alone, that is inspired by the Holy Spirit.

Sure, one should preach in any language known to man to tell the world the mighty deeds of God. But that is the gospel in many languages, not the Word. Christ, who spoke Hebrew and Greek, is the incarnated Word, not King James. Only by reading the word in the original language can there be an encounter with the Word, that enables a man to preach the gospel from the pulpit and tell the truth.

And by now you will have guessed why. Only when confronting the text with the respect it deserves, as a ‘strange’ text, and not as the easy listening modernized text it becomes by reading a translation, can there be an encounter. The foreign character of the Hebrew and Greek language demands a degree of respect and attention, that no translation gives us.

Only then can our speech as ministers be responsible, because we are able to speak against ourselves: against our human prejudices, against our dogmatic assumptions, against our lazy expectations of what the Word should say, but actually does not.

Why a Minister is not a Therapist nor a Manager

2010-06-04T16:43:00.000+02:00

A minister is different. His vocation is different. His job is not an amalgam of two other jobs: psychotherapy and management. Even though he shares the importance of words with the both of these.

Of course, he should comfort, advise, encourage. He can do that through his sermons as well as in face to face encounters with members of his congregation. He can try to mediate in external conflicts, to help alleviate inner conflicts and to restore relationships that have fallen under the weight of misunderstandings and neglect. But that is an effect of what he does, it is not his job description. He cannot heal and he should not try. That aspect of life is covered by people who have the expertise and the vocation to do so.

One of the major things to understand and one of the most painful lessons for a minister, is the lesson contained in the words of Paul:

But we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God, that we may know the things which have been freely given to us of God: which also we speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, communicating spiritual things by spiritual means . (1 Cor. 2:12, 13)

"Not in words taught by human wisdom" is the crucial line here. The first thing that follows from this, that the words of the minister are - seem - powerless in the normal sense of the word. There is no direct effect to what a minister says. Explaining the word of God, teaching the basic tenets of faith, does not change the world. It is not supposed to do that. The language of the minister may not even be the same as people ordinarily use for every day purposes. It is a language that in many ways presupposes a different identity, that does not belong to the 'spirit of the world' but to the Kingdom of God, the Spirit of God. The powerlessness of the words of the minister is a precondition even of his being an effective minister. Whenever he tries to use the words that he is supposed to convey to others, the message that is delivered to him, those words become empty gestures and vain promises. What the minister says can be true according to Scripture and doctrine, and yet will not have the effect of being a fitting word in the situation, it might not be healing or comforting. It might be the truth and it might be of some importance, but the effect of the words can not be ascertained immediately nor can its success be measured.

If a therapist does not alleviate the symptoms of his client or when a manager does not achieve his preset goals, both might loose their job as a consequence. Their words are measured by their effectiveness. The words of the minister however have no such criterion of success. His responsibility is no less, than those of his modern competitors, but his responsibility does not lie in the realm of measurable results.

Two things might happen that create a crisis out of this situation. The one is, that a congregation expects their minister to be successful in measurable terms - the degree of satisfaction his clients will report, or the observable progress in membership or donations. In that case the minister will be again enticed to revalue his job in terms of his expert colleagues and try to be the amateur therapist and manager.

Or, the congregation does not really know what to expect, and now the crisis can be of a more internal nature. The minister will assess his own value by looking at these results. Am I effective in preaching? Only if the membership grows and people reassure me that they like my sermons. Am I effective as a counselor? Only if people do change and are healed. Am I effective as a manager? Only if my authority is recognized and our common goals are finally met. But deep within there will always be the nagging counter-voice that will ask whether the preaching, teaching, counseling and managing will be Gods work and a true service of the Gospel.

How the Minister Liberates Himself from his Competitors

2010-06-03T16:42:00.000+02:00

Therapists create healing, managers organize companies. Both of them need words to do so. They are not productive agencies in the world, they are simply manufacturers of persuasion, direction, self-awareness. The power of the word is fully there in both these forms of communication. And here knowledge is power. One of the things the reformation did, was to make the Word accessible to everyone. One should learn to read the Bible for yourself, because faith was something you had on your own, It was not only a collective thing, it was highly personal. As was the Word that became flesh itself.

By using the techniques of management and therapy the minister strives again to be an expert. Of course he knows he will be an amateur in both these area's and that will make his adoption of methods a matter of chance, more than choice. He has no time to fully appreciate the range of methods in psychotherapy and he is not trained enough to apply them. Not even when is subjected to all sorts of extra teaching, that will help him develop his pastoral skills and teach him to reflect on 'the role of his personality within the confines of his job understanding' or other courses like that.

By adopting these methods, he will require a knowledge that is not open to everyone, that in a way only works when the client is not aware of them. The practice of pastoral care and church management becomes a labor of the expert. The knowledge that is applied is not shared nor is it possible to share it.

Even the sermons, ostensibly a demonstration of a general power of reading a book and applying it to every day life on the basis of faith, becomes an expert exercise. In the old days the expertise expected was the minister's ability to read Hebrew and Greek and the capability to extract from the ancient words their effective meaning for today. Now it is enough that a minister finds a suitable illustration for his Sunday address.

But by understanding that therapists and managers use highly specialized forms of knowledge, that need to be secret in order to be effective, a minister gets the chance to liberate himself from his competition. He can now say to himself:

I do not need to find words that effect healing on the short term
I do not need to be the manager of the congregation in order to get it financially healthy
I do not need to develop my pastoral skills by becoming an amateur psychotherapist

I do not need all of this, because my vocation is not in being this therapeutic manager, but to be a preacher, a witness to the reality of the Word.

The Power of the Word

2010-06-02T16:40:00.000+02:00

Because a minster is just like any other Christian, he might have lost his faith in the power of the Word. That does not mean he has no faith in words. He might accept the words of Sigmund Freud who wrote:

"We will not despise the word. It is a powerful instrument, it is the means by which we communicate our feelings, the path to influencing others. Words can do good without measure and hurt terribly. Certainly, in the beginning was an act, the word is always later, but it was a significant cultural progress when the deed modified itself into a word. Yet the word used to be a marvel, an act of magic, and it still has retained much of its old power."

The word is no longer act and violence. In fact it has replaced violence in many ways. And yet the word is till powerful. It does something in this world. Freud at least can confirm that the words of the minister who has no authority to prescribe medication and is not competent to act as a medical doctor, that his word are still important. Words can heal, can comfort, can bring people with depression out of their solitude and loneliness.

Nevertheless, that would mean that a minister focuses all of his attention on Healing and not on Salvation. Healing, wholeness of body and soul, is the object of health care. The therapist creates healing, but shouldn't the minister convey the possibility of Salvation? Salvation is the wholeness of the human being, body, soul and spirit. It is about the life hereafter or eternal life. That is the theology that every minister is brought up with. Nevertheless, if the effectiveness of words is a criterion, on what will he focus? Salvation is not a thing to be grasped easily. One cannot detect it, unless a person has reached the certainty of faith. And that certainty of my salvation is not something I can be taught by someone else. It is an issue - in Protestant theology at last - of such depth and importance that one has to decide for oneself. This individual approach was also one of the fruits of the protestant Reformation. I can know it, or I can feel desperate for not having it. Words may entice me in one or the other way. But they do not bring it about. Salvation is deeply an issue between a human being and the Creator. So what can a minister do but be focused on the remedies of depression and frustrations and anxieties of every day life? In short, in stead of focusing on the eternal salvation he needs to be focused on health - and maybe even prosperity. I know some ministers who run fairly lucrative economic agencies. They provide short term management services or advise.

What has happened here? The minister of the Word has now become

an amateur psychotherapeutic manager.

The Words of the Minister as Healing and Management

2010-06-01T16:38:00.000+02:00

A minister is by default a Protestant minister. The Reformation is all about the Word and therefore about words. The whole theology of Protestantism is theology of words, in Hebrew, the devarim, the words and deeds of God. Something happened at the end of the Middle Ages when people came to realize that religious communication should proceed in words and no longer in images alone. Sacred rituals, locations, the effigies of saints, are no longer the repositories of the Holy. Language becomes the medium of preference and it is not just about the means of communication. The word that one speaks is the act that entices another man to believe. Being a witness to the world is witnessing by preaching the Word. There are not even sacred formulas that one can use to change the nature of reality - there is just words. When we enter the age of Images, we enter the world of words and language.

That is connected to another change that the Reformation brought with it. Now it is not about the effectiveness of grace through acts and objects, but it's all about faith. The world changed during the reformation, culture changed. People were no longer occupied with images and things, but with their inner experience, their beliefs and their faith. The word became the means of conveying grace . And the word became the number 1 means of expressing myself. Language became a vehicle both for my self-expression as an individual and for entering the world of faith. When the theology of the reformation began saying, that the acceptance of the Word, of the gospel was the means to salvation it could do so, because people saw their inner experiences as the center of their lives already. That is why a minister is always a minister of the Word by default. His preaching elicited the response of faith, his words explained the meaning of the Word of God, his teachings educated a person in the contents of faith.

That has changed as well. Many other professions discovered the power of the word. In our day and age the minister has competition from the side of psychotherapists and managers whose main tools are words as well. Their effectiveness is also enticing for a minister who wants to organize the life of his congregation by using words to divide the labor, set the goals, in short 'manage' his congregation. And in pastoral conversations he would like to use the techniques of indirect communication, learn how to asses the mood and emotions of his clients, to say the words that liberate people to discover for themselves who they are. The healing that is expected from psychotherapeutical practices and the efficiency that is expected from the managerial use of words, can be applied to preaching as well. One must go with the times, preach the gospel in a modern way - and that implies being effective in healing and management. Nevertheless, the minister is an amateur in both these areas. He has never learned to manage and he has never learned to be a proper psychotherapist. He dabbles in those areas but he has no choice. Other words are no longer expected of him. Client-centered pastoral care and public addresses of comfort and solace are one of his avenues. The other being the firm language of practicalities and the build up of lively and financially stable churches that require managerial skills.

Only these two practices might be acceptable to his contemporaries. If a minister can be client-oriented, alleviate suffering, show practical solutions and run his congregation like a company, his words do what people expect. But what about the Word? Christ was no psychotherapist nor a manager.

Is our contemporary minster still preaching the Gospel?

The Minister of the Word Has to Speak

2010-05-31T16:33:00.003+02:00

It's a weird thing that a pastor focusses on sermons using words to preach the Word in an age where the Image dominates every communication. There are too many words, and besides, images can tell us more than words. They communicate feelings more effectively and they influence better more directly. But ministers have no choice because they serve the Word - the Word that has become flesh, Christ in the first place.

A pastor even has to speak where silence might be a more reasonable response, let's say at the side of a grave or next to a deathbed. Others will feel the weight of the moment and become silent. Everybody knows that this the moment where one has to be careful with words. Many burial services are now filled with music, paintings, flowers, drawings - one needs to express oneself, one needs to 'say' goodbye, but the preferred method of communication is no longer words. Yet, a minister still preaches a sermon on those occasions.

That sets him or her apart from everyone else. Words and sermons are his trade and vocation. A pastor has to speak. He is called upon to speak where others fear words - and still, whatever he says, people will judge him not on his words, but on the atmosphere, the emotional imagery, the expression of sentiment that he was capable of.

That puts a minister - on normal Sundays and on those special occasions - in a tight spot. He has to speak where everyone knows that words are insufficient, and he has to speak not because he must express what other people feel, but - that's his vocation - what the Word tells him to say. He has to say something other than what people expect and might be able to say themselves. He has to speak quite literally 'in the name of God.'

That turns a minister a troubled man or woman. And often he or she will succumb under the pressure and will try to hide the words by drawing word-pictures, stories that address the imagination, that paint a picture in words, that will be easily remembered. The message is something else.

Often it will happen that a pastor hears from his congregation that his sermons are so wonderful. "What a lovely story did you tell in your sermon!" What the pastor thought was just an illustration, an accompaniment of his words, has now turned into the message that people remember. "You told that great story about the horse that had to go to Haarlem, right?" And then the minister asks: "Do you also remember what that Sermon was about?" - Not the foggiest idea. If you don't use images, your sermon will get bad reviews. (Boring, intellectual, doctrinal.) but if you do, you don't convey your message. ("Nice story, but no idea what you intended to say with that. I can't remember.")

How to escape from this dilemma? How to preach the gospel in an age of Images? How to be a pastor that effective preaches the Gospel in his sermons?
To reflect on that and to provide examples of what I think is good preaching, I have setup this site.

Biblical Preaching