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The Church, as well as the airways, is becoming more and more filled with bad, false teaching from faulty models of biblical interpretation! At the same time, more and more Christians are not delving into the Bible for their spiritual nourishment, rather swapping it for “feel good” books that do not properly instruct and/or turning on the TV for the false teacher crowd—or else doing nothing at all for their spiritual growth. Bible studies, Bible based small groups where God’s Word is sought, delved into, discussed and used as challenge and talking points for a life that is transformed are shrinking and/or missing from most lives of Christians and absent from most church programs and happenings. Endeavors that remain are being attended less and are lacking value and promotion. Additionally, we have the problem of busyness; church leaders—even pastors—are too busy to bother with Bible reading, thus leading from pride and presumption. The people in the pew are so overwhelmed in life, work, family life, and even at church that the Bible, which could solve their problems by showing them their call and God’s precepts, is the last place examined. In many American churches, we have lost our instruction book to the detriment of the Christian community’s spiritual formation, as well as the ability to know and model Christ to the community and world at large, leaving the people in the pew spiritually bankrupt and the neighborhoods with bad models of Christ and thus unreached. 

When we do not garner our spiritual nourishment from God’s Word, the Bible, and instead trade it for our whims and mind-sets, we cheat ourselves and weaken our churches, holding back Christ’s work in us and our church’s life; we neuter God’s potential work to those around us too. 

Thus, we swap what is good, legal tender for that which is counterfeit and thus leave nothing in our spiritual wallets but confederate notes that are worthless and thus of no spiritual or fruitful value to spend for life and ministry. To counteract these evils and stop Bible illiteracy, we must feed from God’s glorious and wondrous buffet of precepts for our faith and knowledge. 

This is actually easy; just take the time to read it through. It just takes minutes a day, less than half of a half-hour TV sitcom, to know our Lord and grow in Him for an effectual, transforming life and to dig out what He plainly and abundantly has for us so we have His spiritual spending power. Our reading of the Bible is not meant to merely learn its trivia; rather, we are to be rehabbed in Christ, be changed, renewed, and transformed. We must take this remarkable currency of His remarkable and astounding precepts and spend it for our spiritual improvement and then for kingdom building. But, what gets in the way of our good buffet and spiritual currency? Simply ignoring God by ignoring or misusing His Word. 

What does Bible illiteracy give us? A failed church and a meaningless life! 

As our churches give what they think are eloquent and edifying discourses, they are, in fact,  delivering empty words and the image of a divine bell hop, not the Holy LORD whom we worship, lean on, and learn from and with whom we discourse. So, shallowness and pretentiousness have taken our churches hostage, leaving our pews filled with ignorant, hurt, disconnected children of God who do not know His love or His ways and who make pathetic faith decisions and bad life choices, creating more dysfunction and stress in their lives and homes, and a church that is inept, dysfunctional, and impotent, with an incapacity to know and glorify the very Lord we are to be all about.

Filed under: Leadership Issues | Tagged: anti-intellectualism, arrogant, Bible, Bible Illiteracy, Bible teacher, Biblical Illiteracy, biblical interpretation, Christian growth, churches, discipline, effectual teaching, false teaching, God’s Word, Illiteracy, pew sitters, problems, scholarly, seeker, sermonettes, shallow, transformed | Leave a comment »

            These words may be strong, but they are true: From our research and experiences, we have discovered big problems in our churches, the sheepfold of God’s chosen and precious creation. The sheep are skinny and dumb! And, many of the shepherds tend to be merely puffed-up, directionless idiots leading their flock away from the prime pasturelands of our Lord rather to feed on the garbage plies of the world and in turn crafting obtuse sheep with bad nourishment and a lack of proper care. They are ignoring our great Shepherd and instead relying on the way of the wolf and not on the way of our Lord (Heb. 3:12-13.; 4:1-2; 5:11-6:3; James 1:22-25)! 

We are seeking anti-intellectualism at one end of our church spectrum and shallow seeker-ness at the other. We are becoming overly scholarly to the determent of any impact from God’s Word, totally ignoring His precepts and replacing them with ours. 

Both spectrums give mere “sermonettes” that have no substance or effectual teaching. They give no kind of challenge or discipline that is necessary for authentic Christian growth, thus creating small-minded pew sitters who can’t even find their way around the Bible or even know the difference between John the Baptist and John the Disciple. While other churches may say they are Bible and conservative orientated, they too have moved away from the Bible with a fixation on business and consumer models for ministry, seeking a consumer approach to church, relying on strategies for growth instead of the pursuit of love, trust, and obedience to our Lord. Or, they are, as James tells us, merely reading the Word, not doing as it says (James 1:22).

We are seeking anti-intellectualism at one end of our church spectrum and shallow seeker-ness at the other. We are becoming overly scholarly to the determent of any impact from God’s Word, totally ignoring His precepts and replacing them with ours. Both spectrums give mere “sermonettes” that have no substance or effectual teaching. They give no kind of challenge or discipline that is necessary for authentic Christian growth, thus creating small-minded pew sitters who can’t even find their way around the Bible or even know the difference between John the Baptist and John the Disciple. While other churches may say they are Bible and conservative orientated, they too have moved away from the Bible with a fixation on business and consumer models for ministry, seeking a consumer approach to church, relying on strategies for growth instead of the pursuit of love, trust, and obedience to our Lord. Or, they are, as James tells us, merely reading the Word, not doing as it says (James 1:22). 

What does Bible illiteracy give us? A failed church and a meaningless life! It creates shallow Christians and pretentious, incompetent leaders. This is not about knowing Bible trivia, rather applying God precepts to our lives and church!

 The result? Shallow people and a faithless church, moving away from the Bible and embracing anything but Him and His Word. I am not talking about liberalism, although this is a problem too. Rather, I allude to conservative and Reformed churches moving away from the centrality of Scripture and the disciplines to learn and grow, substituting cheap stories without substance, shallow messages without challenge, and pride replacing love and fruit to be the icing on the cake of pretentiousness.

As our churches give what they think are eloquent and edifying discourses, they are, in fact, delivering empty words and the image of a divine bell hop, not the Holy LORD whom we worship, lean on, and learn from and with whom we discourse. So, shallowness and pretentiousness have taken our churches hostage, leaving our pews filled with ignorant, hurt, disconnected children of God who do not know His love or His ways and who make pathetic faith decisions and bad life choices, creating more dysfunction and stress in their lives and homes, and a church that is inept, dysfunctional, and impotent, with an incapacity to know and glorify the very Lord we are to be all about.

Filed under: Leadership Issues | Tagged: anti-intellectualism, arrogant, Bible, Bible Illiteracy, Bible teacher, Biblical Illiteracy, biblical interpretation, Christian growth, churches, discipline, effectual teaching, false teaching, God’s Word, Illiteracy, pew sitters, problems, scholarly, seeker, sermonettes, shallow, transformed | Leave a comment »