The Truth and Reconciliation Act in South Africa was a complex approach by South Africa to move beyond Apartheid.[1]
My purpose in this blog is not to critique South Africa’s strategy with the Truth and Reconciliation Act. Rather, I would like to raise a question about a comment made by one of the Christian participants in the hearings.
The book of Judges teaches that when God’s people become like the world around them, the consequences are devastating.
No sane person wants to sit under preaching that is boring. So, whenever we encourage people to value expository preaching, we ought to also explain to them why, by definition, expository preaching should not be irrelevant and dull.
In a sentence, expository preaching should not be boring because it is about showing how God’s timeless truth intersects with life today. If a particular sermon is just a survey of technical details and a lecture about the Ancient Near East, then that is not expository preaching.
How about a True or False question? See if you can get this one right.True or False, God can do anything but fail?
Arguably, the most strategic decision that a local church makes is calling a preaching pastor. When a local church calls a lead or senior pastor, they almost always want a pastor who will preach with excellence. Yet, often pastoral search committees do not know how to go about achieving that goal.
Unfortunately, there are essentially no resources available designed to help pastoral search committees / pulpit nominating committees succeed in calling an excellent preaching pastor.
Books and resources designed for pastoral search committees / pulpit nominating committees focus on areas other than preaching, and these areas are important. Yet preaching is the center of what their next pastor will do, and there is nothing available to help churches call a pastor who will preach with excellence.
You can read the below excerpt from my doctoral thesis which focused on developing a resource that will help local churches call a pastor who will preach with excellence. . . This is the introduction to my entire thesis – – it introduces the problem. So, it is written in a technical way – – It is not a portion of the manual I developed.
I am praying that the manual/resource I developed might serve a local church looking for their next preaching pastor.