Monday 16 April 2012

Teacher/Speaker; Do you feel the weight?

1
Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. James 3:1


I recently heard a local guy saying that he'd "just finished an amazing god talk." Its brilliant that this guy was speaking about Jesus to a group/gathering, and by no means do i wish to be a discouragement . . . But here's the 'but'. But 'god talk'? really? Is that the best way to describe what we do when we open the Bible to speak?

Years ago while helping at an organization a social was organized, at the end the musicians gathered upstairs while the 'frontman' gave an epilogue. Keeping an eye on things upstairs i overheard what the band said; "lets chill while [leave name blank] does his wee god spot." To these guys the music was serious - they were serious musicians after all, but the 'god spot' was just something that had to be tapped on at the end. 

Things like this really annoy me. I don't know whether i'm getting old & grumpy or just past it, or perhaps it's to do with the reformed, fundamentalist pond i swim in; but i always have an uncomfortable feeling that opening God's Word to teach is a very weighty and serious thing. Not something to be taken lightly or flippantly. I could be wrong, and hope i am, but often this way of speaking about preaching/teaching wreaks of immaturity & seems a bit too light hearted about something that is of eternal importance & places unspeakable responsibility upon our shoulders.

I'd point you towards a sobering post by Tony Reinke in which he points to & quotes from John Newton in regards to the weight of preaching. 


Author Image

About Boaly
Gary has been involved in printing the Scriptures for 20 years, enjoys photography and rambling online

1 comment:

Tim Millen said...

Actually read this verse yesterday morning myself. Kind of scared me a bit as I thought about all the sermons I preached and all the times I have acted contrary to those messages.