I'm getting a bit tired of all the modern and fresh preachers and speakers who are heralded as ambassadors of change yet who really aren't saying anything new. Rob Bell echoes Brennan Manning who echoes Lewis who echoed MacDonald... Mark Driscoll echoes Rich Mullins who echoed Francis of Asissi... Rick Warren echoes Dietrich Bonhoeffer who echoed Luther, etc. And at the root of all this is someone who chose to simply accept scripture for what it is and thus echo and announce God's truth. Maybe the Bible is just old fashioned and way out of style now? But maybe if we were more willing to just open our it and read/listen a bit (not just the token 15 minutes so we can say we did) we would see these "revolutionary" and "fresh" ideas and messages are thousands of years old and that the Holy Spirit is waiting to lead us into "discovering" them personally if we'd just take the time to search a bit? Is that something reasonable to suggest?
To illustrate this, here's a story I remember a good friend of mine and fairly well traveled speaker shared. He was speaking at a large Christian music festival and didn't know what he should speak on. He prayed and felt that he ought to simply read "The Sermon on the Mount" from Matthew's Gospel. The response was overwhelming- people praying and praising and crying at the beauty of the simple manifesto Christ gave His followers. After the message. He shared that many people, not just one or two, came to him and said that was one of the best sermons they'd ever heard and wanted to know what inspired it and how they could get a copy. He was stunned. They owened Bibles, but never read them. It's like claiming to have never been to the other side of town for lack of a ride while there's a gassed up, mechanically sound car sitting in the driveway.
Biblical illiteracy has a solution- it's called intentionality and prayer.
To illustrate this, here's a story I remember a good friend of mine and fairly well traveled speaker shared. He was speaking at a large Christian music festival and didn't know what he should speak on. He prayed and felt that he ought to simply read "The Sermon on the Mount" from Matthew's Gospel. The response was overwhelming- people praying and praising and crying at the beauty of the simple manifesto Christ gave His followers. After the message. He shared that many people, not just one or two, came to him and said that was one of the best sermons they'd ever heard and wanted to know what inspired it and how they could get a copy. He was stunned. They owened Bibles, but never read them. It's like claiming to have never been to the other side of town for lack of a ride while there's a gassed up, mechanically sound car sitting in the driveway.
Biblical illiteracy has a solution- it's called intentionality and prayer.
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