HAROLD SAIN
A dangerous trend among Churches of Christ is to lift the preacher above the gospel. Here’s proof of what I mean. A congregation held the opening service in their new building. Their advertisement of the occasion told of the speakers, etc., and included this sentence: “A number of dignitaries have been invited.” The trend today is to make a play on the “dignitaries” that will be present. Why not say that a number of common folk plan to attend (or speak)? Many of the dignitaries are “soft” preachers.
We have entirely too much of this backslapping, ear-tickling, men-pleasing, sugar-coated, honey-dripping, lovey-dovey kind of preaching—usually coming from the “dignitaries.” We need more preachers like Jesus Christ, Peter, Paul, and Stephen!
The most unheroic figure in the community is the timid preacher who lurks back in his theological shell and cries, “peace, peace” when he ought to be on the battle line of sin and error-blasting!
There has been a growing tendency among churches of Christ to lose sight of the fundamental importance of teaching and to emphasize more and more the social characteristics of “friendliness,” “hospitality,” “good fellowship,” etc. Such has been for the attention of the public. Stemming from this point of view have come a whole flock of troubles within the church, chief of which perhaps has been the clamor of the churches for that type of individual in their pulpits who would best fit into their scheme of things; who would have made a better Good Will Ambassador, President of a Chamber of Commerce or greeter in some Social Club or Night Spot. He is described by certain women in the congregation with such phrases as, “Our preacher is jus’ the sweetes’ man,” “He’s jus’ the most social-minded person you evah saw….ev’rybody jus’ loves him to death.” “You know he’s jus’ always on the go; why I bet not even the meter reader makes more calls than he does! And in the pulpit he jus’ nevah hurts anybody’s feelings!”
The reason the preacher himself specializes in these things is because he knows the brethren who hired him expect it of him, and that if he is to hold his job, he had better comply. And so, like the gadget seller from the department store, he leaves his books and his Bible behind and takes to the town, street by street, knocking on doors as he comes to them, having forgotten that Paul said, “For do I now persuade men, or God? Or do I seek to please men? For if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ.” (Gal. 1:10.)
People who are “converted” under the operation of this sort of fellow do not become Christians, they only “join the church,” and so far as their salvation is concerned, they might as well have joined the Kiwanis Club. The Lord said teaching precedes discipleship and is the means by which such an end is accomplished. Leave off the teaching and substitute admiration for the preacher, and you do not make disciples of Christ, but just plain, ordinary sectarians, with no convictions, and who continue to live about as they have in the past.
The only hope of the world in general and the churches in particular is faithful gospel preaching and teaching. Elders and churches, therefore, ought to desire and require of their preachers that their chief qualifications be the ability to preach and teach the gospel effectively. And then, realizing that such requires time, try not to load them down with such trifling, time-stealing, and fruitless tasks as gadding for gadding’s sake.
The Jerusalem church had something that we have little of—preaching that produced conviction. It was not through a spirit of vengeance, nor for the novelty of making men mad, but to convict them of sin. It worked. Such success has never been duplicated. It produced persecution. Many lives were lost, but many souls were saved.
The minds of men were filled with error then. Some of those errors concerned Judaism and some concerned heathenism. But the most deceptive and destructive error is the one that contains a lot of truth itself. That is why it takes so much preaching today. That is why plain and forceful preaching is needed today. That is why we must have negative preaching.
One might as well try to fill a barrel with water that is already filled with hardened concrete as to present the gospel positively to a man whose heart is filled with the fixed errors of denominationalism. The apostles began hammering the concrete. What if they did ruin a few barrels? They could not possibly be serviceable as containers of the gospel until the concrete of error was removed. Why worry about the “feelings” of a man who is asleep in a burning building? It is better to dump him out of bed than leave him there to perish in the flames.
Let me plead with my preaching brethren to “preach the word, be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long-suffering and doctrine.” For the time has come when men will not endure sound doctrine. Read 2 Tim. 4:2-5.
—The Informer, Vol. 22, No. 36
June 22, 1969