What a busy past couple of days, but good Preaching Lectures
The past couple of days have been the annual preaching lectures at Covenant Theological Seminary, and combined with 13 hours of coursework and 25-30 hours a week of working, and it makes a busy week.
A few good things though. I got to see my good friend and mentor Carter, from Oklahoma, and it was just an excellent time to catch up on life and share what's going on in both of our families and how good God has been to us.
The lectures were great this year despite the fact that Allistar Begg was unable to attend due to illness. If there was a theme, I guess it would be contextualization of preaching and how preaching should engage the culture around us.
This morning though, Dr. Tim Keller of Redeemer Church in New York City, gave a most excellent message from 1 Corinthians 3:1-23 about divisions in the church and basically broke it down to the local church level and the broader church level.
The most striking thing he said on the local level was this, when Paul is discussing the various parties within the Corinthian church, Paul, Apollos, Cephas, etc, what that stemmed from is likely the people within the church who were affected by the respective ministries, so they were loyal to those people like we are today when in a church you have people who are still loyal to the pastor who passed away 15 years ago, and you have people who were brought in under the man after him and so on and so on. What Dr. Keller said was that the Corinthian church had layers, like our churches sometimes do, and this is a result of the church being influenced by the culture and not the church influencing the culture. Why? Because secular society follows this model. You are typically loyal to those who made an impact in your life and you value them more than other people who may not have impacted you as much. But here's the rub, Paul tells them in verse 21 that all things are yours, and then lists the names of the influential leaders again. Why? Because Paul, Appolos, Cephas, and so on, all their ministries belonged to the Corinthian church because of the Gospel. The Gospel isn't about status, it's about what Christ did.
It just blew me away as I was sitting in chapel and I hope that I will be able to remember this in the future.
Book of the day is Christ and Culture by H. Richard Neibuhr
A few good things though. I got to see my good friend and mentor Carter, from Oklahoma, and it was just an excellent time to catch up on life and share what's going on in both of our families and how good God has been to us.
The lectures were great this year despite the fact that Allistar Begg was unable to attend due to illness. If there was a theme, I guess it would be contextualization of preaching and how preaching should engage the culture around us.
This morning though, Dr. Tim Keller of Redeemer Church in New York City, gave a most excellent message from 1 Corinthians 3:1-23 about divisions in the church and basically broke it down to the local church level and the broader church level.
The most striking thing he said on the local level was this, when Paul is discussing the various parties within the Corinthian church, Paul, Apollos, Cephas, etc, what that stemmed from is likely the people within the church who were affected by the respective ministries, so they were loyal to those people like we are today when in a church you have people who are still loyal to the pastor who passed away 15 years ago, and you have people who were brought in under the man after him and so on and so on. What Dr. Keller said was that the Corinthian church had layers, like our churches sometimes do, and this is a result of the church being influenced by the culture and not the church influencing the culture. Why? Because secular society follows this model. You are typically loyal to those who made an impact in your life and you value them more than other people who may not have impacted you as much. But here's the rub, Paul tells them in verse 21 that all things are yours, and then lists the names of the influential leaders again. Why? Because Paul, Appolos, Cephas, and so on, all their ministries belonged to the Corinthian church because of the Gospel. The Gospel isn't about status, it's about what Christ did.
It just blew me away as I was sitting in chapel and I hope that I will be able to remember this in the future.
Book of the day is Christ and Culture by H. Richard Neibuhr
posted by Bobby's blog at 4:30 PM
1 Comments:
Hey, great blog.
I go up to St. Louis a good bit and I wouldn't mind asking you a bajillion or so questions about Covenant sometime.
Seeya around
By-the-Way, I found this blog via the Derek Webb Board - I'm a regular there.
Trevor
ofkirkandale.com
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