You know the feeling of reading something and wishing you wrote it? You kind of hear yourself saying “I wish I wrote that. It says exactly what I want to say only far better than I could say it.”
This article about preaching gives me that feeling. T. David Gordon writes about preaching and relevance. Any preacher who cares about the people who are listening to him wants what he says to be relevant. He wants to reach them where they are at. He has no desire to bore them or waste their time. But this is not merely question of communication technique. It is a question of theology.
Here is an abbreviated version of the article:
The preacher is not so much responsible to learn from his hearers “where they are” as he is responsible to declare to his hearers “where they are,” and indeed to correct their misapprehensions of that matter.
“Where they are” is this: Our hearers are law-breaking rebels who have revolted against the majesty of God (both in Adam and in themselves), and who therefore justly have fallen under his judgment and curse. This judgment and curse are not merely the source of the other “where they are” circumstances; they are those circumstances.
People may indeed be lonely, because of Genesis 3; they may be depressed; they may be dysfunctional; they may be neurotic, or anxious, or a host of other things. But none of these things constitutes “where they are.” Where they are is under God’s judgment and curse: “And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account” (Heb. 4:13). Our universal circumstance is this: We must give an account to God. Outside of Christ, we, like Adam and Eve, are “naked and exposed” to God’s all-perceiving sight; only in Christ are we clothed with a redemptive covering.
Apostolic preaching did not discern “where they are”; apostolic preaching declared“where they are.”
Paul did not ask the Romans, or survey the Romans, to discover whether they regarded themselves as God-seekers or good; he declared to them, “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one” (Rom. 3:10–12).
Apostolic proclamation assumed no burden of discovering people’s misperceptions of “where they are.” Apostolic proclamation assumed, rather, that people’s perceptions of “where they are” were wrong and needed to be corrected. Part of the blindness that constitutes sin is blindness as to our true condition. Like the patient who tells his physician he has congestion, and therefore a “chest cold,” when in fact he has pneumonia, the sinner often perceives the consequences or symptoms of his sin and rebellion (and God’s consequent judgment and curse), but misunderstands or misconstrues the true cause thereof.
Several years ago, I informed my physician that, based on some symptoms I noticed, I probably had some sort of stomach ulcer and might need to change my diet or take Maalox. My physician, with the help of some tests and other physicians, informed me that in fact I had colo-rectal cancer and would need to undergo surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy treatments.
Our hearers, whether individually or corporately, do not necessarily have any clue at all about how to explain their symptoms; they may know no more about their condition than I did about my cancer. The duty of the preacher is to tell them what their condition is, and therefore, why Christ’s redemptive work is the only solution.
The alternative to this is chaotic, fruitless, often heretical, and at times, laughable. Chaos ensues because of the comprehensiveness of the curse of Genesis 3. Virtually everything is now wrong with the created order. Any attempt, therefore, to be “relevant” by discovering people’s perceptions of what is wrong, is analogous to a physician attempting to locate every individual leukemia cell in a patient’s bloodstream. And since people suffer under the curse of Genesis 3 differently, such attempts at being “relevant” inevitably become irrelevant to many hearers, whose experience differs from that of others.
Our universal predicament, and therefore the only truly relevant problem to address in Christian proclamation is this: “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ” (2 Cor. 5:10). Where we all “are” is here: in a waiting room, but we await not a dentist, an optometrist, or a physician; we await the coming judgment of God’s holy Son.
Individuals or entire cultures may or may not approve our telling them this, and they may or may not fill our churches if we do so. But we as preachers are no more at liberty to permit our hearers to diagnose their own condition than physicians are to permit their patients to diagnose theirs. We do not “make the gospel relevant” to misperceptions of what is wrong or needed; we declare what is wrong and needed, and the gospel as the only solution to what is wrong and needed. Effectively, we declare the irrelevancy of all false relevancies and the folly of all false wisdoms.
http://touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=22-01-014-v