Proclaimer Blog
How preaching Christ can damage your people
Latest thoughts from David Helm at our younger ministers' conference: it's a sobering thought, Mr Preacher, that it's quite possible to preach Christ and damage your people. That statement requires some clarification, of course.
We all know we want to preach Christ. But there is a way to do it that actually ends up being destructive rather than faithful. This is the kind of preaching in the Old Testament which has little or no connection with the historicity of the text but sees a reminder or something that looks like it might be about Jesus and then runs with this. OK, you might think: not brilliant. But damaging?
Surely. For if we disconnect from the historicity of the text to proclaim Jesus, how do we connect with the historicity of any text? What next? The resurrection, disconnected? If we bypass the hard work of exegesis and theological reflection, there is always a danger we will be disconnected from the text. And we will, within a generation, empty churches of those who are convinced about the historicity of the gospel and the incarnation, death, resurrection and ascension of the God who became man.
Sobering. And, if we didn't have enough reasons, cause for the hard work of preaching the gospel faithfully. You can read more in David's new IX Marks book Expositional Preaching.