Opus 2024-028: Focus or Sloth

I have been giving Pastor the benefit of the doubt because he is an evangelist at heart.  All of the sermons have a predominantly evangelistic thrust.  That is good.  That is a quality to be desired.  But I’m noticing also a tendency to refuse to look any deeper.  And I’m wondering if evangelism is a fallback for someone who doesn’t want to do any studying, meditating, or contemplating on the great truths of God.

Sunday the text was Romans 12.  In case that doesn’t ring a bell it starts off,

(Rom 12:1-2 KJV)  I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.  And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.

From there it goes on to the body of Christ and one of the listings of the gifts of the Spirit and finishes up with some very important directions on living the Christian life.  There is a wealth of teaching here.  Is it necessary to become a Christian first?  Of course but if you have been around the church long you know there is more a problem with people maturing and staying in the faith than getting them converted.

The sermon lasted half an hour.  Twenty-five minutes involved jumping all around the Bible finding reasons for people to get saved.  Each spot he went to could have generated a full sermon.  There was no coherent thought, there was no chain of evidence, there was no deeper contemplation, and the beginning and primary points of Romans chapter 12 where ignored.  I will admit the last three or four minutes he quickly went through the first two verses and had some things to say but he missed the whole point.

So is it focus and priority or sloth and unwillingness to put in the time?

I have visited a lot of churches in my life.  There are two big problems in the preaching.  One is to teach worldly philosophy instead of the Bible.  The other is to recycle all the paragraphs about evangelism that you learned in Bible college.  I remember one church I visited.  I could have worshiped there every week if that Sunday was an example.  The sermon was, “You need to get saved.”  I felt like the pastor would preach the same sermon next week with no thought except to rearrange the paragraphs.

Sloth, incompetence, ignorance, unsaved?  I don’t know but I pray that the pastors will learn to convey the deeper issues without giving up their drive to evangelism.

homo unius libri