Proclaimer Blog
The third minority
Bible preachers have probably always been in a minority. In fact, for a long time they've been in a second minority. Christians (in the most general sense) are themselves a minority in the UK and evangelicals (those who believe in an evangel, a message), a minority within this minority – a second minority, if you like. That has always been hard.
But times are changing and those who hold Bible preaching dear now find themselves in a third minority. This was brought home to me by an account of an evangelical ministers fraternal locally where a paper was presented on the nature of Christian ministry, i.e. what does a minister of the gospel do. The paper's thesis was that a gospel minister "incarnates the presence of Christ in the community" (or something very similar to that). One good man said, "whatever happened to preaching Christ crucified, proclaiming the word of God?" He was shouted down by every other minister except one (leader of the local charismatic church).
It's not that these others churches were not evangelical. If you went to them they would be able to articulate and explain the gospel to you. But they simply didn't see Bible preaching/teaching (in all sorts of contexts) as the core role of the minister. It's not just a UK phenomenon:
American pastors are abandoning their posts, left and right at an alarming rate. They are not leaving churches and getting other jobs.Congregations still pay their salaries. Their names remain on church stationery and they continue to appear in pulpits on Sunday mornings. But they are abandoning their posts, their calling. They have gone whoring after other gods. What they do with their time under the guise of pastoral ministry hasn't the remotest connection with what the church's pastors have done for most of twenty centuries….The pastors of America have transformed into a company of shopkeepers and the shops they keep are churches. They are preoccupied with a shopkeeper's concerns – how to keep the customers happy, how to lure customers away from competitors down the street, how to package the goods so that the customers will lay out more money. Some of them are very good shopkeepers…yet it is still shopkeeping. (Eugene Peterson, Working the Angles)
Increasingly, if you believe in proclamation, in preaching, you will not just be a minority in the country, nor even in the church, but a minority within evangelicalism. A third minority. Beware:
It is to feed the sheep on such truth that men are called to churches and congregations, whatever they may think they are called to do. If you think that you are called to keep a largely worldly organisation, miscalled a church, going, with infinitesimal doses of innocuous sub-Christian drugs or stimulants then the only help I can give you is to advise you to give up the hope of the ministry and go and be a street scavenger; a far healthier and mode godly job, keeping the streets tidy, than cluttering the church with a lot of worldly clap-trap and thinking you are doing a job for God. The pastor is called to feed the sheep, even if the sheep do not want to be fed. He is certainly not to be an entertainer of goats. Let goats entertain goats and let them do it out in goatland. (William Still, The work of the pastor).
Being in a minority is hard. There is always pressure to conform. Being in a minority within a minority has been hard enough for the last few generations. Now, Bible preachers find themselves in a minority within a minority within a minority. Harder still. Be realistic. Be sure. Be certain.
And preach the word of God. Our key text here at the Proclamation Trust has never been so apposite:
Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth (2 Tim 2.15)