Enough Armchair Quarterbacking Already!

A pastor of mine used to make fun of football fans. He is a football fan, but he thought it was funny to see mid-aged, overweight men yelling at the screen when a young, strong, in shape player made a bad judgment call. Like they could have done any better in the same situation. Of course, who cares about all of the good plays they had also accomplished up until then.

I get pretty discouraged reading Christian blogs. All they seem to be able to focus on is something that some church somewhere is doing wrong. Usually, the blogger attended one service or listened to one sermon online and concluded that the whole church is not preaching the gospel, or preaching the "correct" style, or whatever - based on that one sermon.

The whole thought that there is only one correct preaching style (expository, topical, parables, etc) that is absolutely the one best way to preach in all situations is pretty ludicrous. Jesus himself used all types pretty equally, so to say that expository preaching is the best way to preach is pretty anti-Biblical to me.

Of course, how can we even tell how the preaching is at one church from just one or two sermons? If they are really following the example of Jesus, what if it is just that week that they decided to teach in parables and life application (like Jesus frequently did)?

And to clear the record, "Gospel" is not a category of message in the Bible. Gospel is just the way we translate a Biblical word that really means "good news," not a category called "Good News." If someone found a sheep that they had lost, that was "good news" also - the same word would be used. ANYTHING that could be considered "good" could be considered "Gospel" by the Biblical use of the word. Jesus told us to preach the good news of the Kingdom of God. Paul would later just use "good news" when writing letters to people that he knew would know what "good news" he was talking about.

But, really, you go to a church and claim that they don't preach what you call "the Gospel" ever based on one sermon?

I find it funny that so many Christians today would probably go call Jesus a bad preacher that doesn't preach correctly if they went to see one of His sermons.

I would love to just see a blog post about what some church did right somewhere, not the constant doom and gloom of every church every where is always getting it wrong drum beat that we see on so many blogs today. I've got a few ideas of what I could post on this area about my church, so I will get to posting that in the future.