Tethering and Unhitching - David H. Lauten

 

There is a crisis in preaching. While books on preaching in every age decry the reverses of proclaiming God’s Word, this present alarm rings true. The current landscape of the evangelical church has changed. At the time of the Reformation many began to look to God’s Word as the primary authority in the Christ’s Church. Today, many affirm the truthfulness of the Scriptures, but question the sufficiency of God’s Word to do God’s work. David Wells, Professor of Gordon-Conwell Seminary reflecting upon the evangelical church’s current relation with the Bible states “while the church was tethering itself to the authority of the Word in belief, it was at the same time unhitching itself from the sufficiency of Scripture in practice.” (The Bleeding of the Evangelical Church).

The 16th century Reformation which brought renewal to the church and genuine spiritual awakening throughoutEurope began with the reformation of the pulpit. The actions of a German monk in Wittenburg marked the beginnings of the Protestant Reformation. When asked about his part in all that took place, Martin Luther famously replied, “I simply taught and preached the Word; otherwise,I did nothing…the Word did it all.” God by his Divine initiative brought a glorious re-discovery of God’s Word in pulpits across Europe. Five hundred years later, there is a need for reformation of the pulpit.  

Over forty years ago, Dr. D. Martyn Lloyd Joneslecturing on preaching at Westminster Theological Seminary stated, “The most urgent need in the Christian Church today is true preaching; and as it is the greatest and most urgent need in the Church, it is the greatest need of the world also” (Preaching and Preachers).  Since Lloyd-Jones spoke these words, the state of preaching in Christ’s Church has declined. Many have since sounded clarion calls to awaken Christ’s Church to the present preaching calamity. In the “Forward” to Steven J. Lawson’s analysis of the contemporary preaching landscape, Famine in the Land, John McArthur summarizes the situation: “a dearth of biblical preaching has left the evangelical movement weak, starving for spiritual truth, and susceptible to the ravages of the enemy.” Lawson writes in Amos-like tones as he describes our present-day famine of the Word of God (Amos 8:11). He cites Old Testament scholar Walter Kaiser, who affirms: “The famine of the Word continues in massive proportions in most places in North America” (Revive Us Again). 

How did the evangelical church drift from largely faithful proclamation of the Good News to preaching significantly untethered from the Scriptures? In his Westminster Lectures, Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones spoke of the early stage of this declension: “A new idea has crept in with regard to preaching…people began to talk about the “address” in the service instead of the sermon. That in itself was indicative of a subtle change…Preaching, of course, is something carnal lacking in spirituality, what is needed is a chat, a fireside chat, quiet talks, and so on!” (Preaching and Preachers). The situation today is much worse than Doctor Lloyd-Jones ever imagines.

When it comes to practically how to “do” church, the evangelicals today have mostly replaced Scriptural authority with other authorities. In “No Place for Truth, Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology,” David Wells cites a study of articles in Christianity Today’s spin-off journal, Christian Leadership, which between 1980, when it began, and 1988 showed “that less than 1 percent made any obvious attempt to root the answers in anything biblical or doctrinal – despite the fact that many of the problems addressed are addressed directly in Scripture. Instead, the answers were taken heavily from the insights of the managerial and therapeutic revolutions.”

Several explanations are put forward to grapple with the growing disconnect between God’s Word authoritative for belief, but not practice.  John McArthur suggests the “legacy of liberalism” as a root cause which deprives moderns of confidence in the Scriptures. As children of spiritual liberalism exposed to text and source criticism, many preachers today feel the need to apologize for the Scriptures.

Looking at the issue from a different angle, R. Albert Mohler, Jr., President of Southern Seminary reasons: “we no longer believe that hearing and responding to the Word of God is a matter of crucial importance...before there was a decline in expository preaching, there was the abandonment of the conviction that the word of God comes as a matter of life and death” (Pulpit Aflame). In Famine in the Land, Lawson gets to the heart of the matter: “The famine in pulpits across the nation reveals a loss of confidence in God’s Word to perform its sacred work. While evangelicals affirm the inerrancy of scripture, many have apparently abandoned their belief in its sufficiency to save and sanctify.” 

The recent writings of David Wells delve into an understanding of more recent trends in the thinking of evangelicals. In The Courage to be Protestant, he explains “Those who have walked away from conscientiously biblical sermons have done so because they really do not believe that these sermons can actually “connect” with their postmodern hearers, that they will be understood, that they will do any good.”  

God’s arm is not short. By his grace, he can rekindle a settled conviction of the adequacy of his Word to accomplish his good work. His Spirit can renew his people today through his chosen means of the faithful preaching of his Word. Let us tether and hitch ourselves to the faithful preaching and hearing of God’s true and all-sufficient Word!