Simple Church Minute--on preaching (program 2007)

 On today's "Simple Church Minute" program, I said that the transcript of today's program is located at June 12, 2011, but I have come to realize that, according to the way this blog is programmmed, it would be easier for anyone who might come here to find it under this day's post. 

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2007--preach

My name is Tom; this is Simple Church Minute. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary Online, the definition of “preach” is 1) to deliver a sermon, 2) to urge acceptance or abandonment of an idea or course of action; specifically: to exhort in an officious or tiresome manner. These definitions truly indicate the modern understanding of the word “preach” and also, to a degree, the negative attitude a significant segment of our society has towards what we call preaching. Is that what the Bible means by the word? I know—for me to bring this up implies that I’m going to say “no”, and that is correct. Somewhere after the recording of the Scriptures, preaching became a Christian form of the equivalent of Roman oratory, a one-way form of communication. Interestingly, if one looks at pieces of speaking in the Book of Acts and later, one can find that a speech is preceded by words like “said” or “speak”, and not preach. This does, though, vary by translation.

The Bible tells us Jesus preached. What did he do? His style of speaking was like that of the style common to Jewish culture, in that it was two-way communication. We are fully well aware that Jesus had to tell the disciples that it was ok for children to be around him, John 3 and 4 tells of Jesus speaking one-on-one to two extremely different persons with regard to their spirits. The Jewish religious leaders overtly came up to him to ask him tricky questions. It was the style the rabbis had taught the people with.

In Acts and following, we see that preaching was sporadic, unplanned, without rhetorical structure, delivered on special occasions to deal with special problems, and was dialogue, not monologue. A word found in the original Koine Greek that is sometimes translated preaching is dialegomai, which is obviously where we get the word dialogue from. In the early days of the New Covenant, ministry came from all believers, and worship in the early church included teaching, exhortation, prophecy, singing, admonishment, speaking was conversational and even the teaching of local elders was normally impromptu.

For many years, it was something I noticed, but didn’t understand, that all the times that it seemed that the Spirit taught me the most significant things about following Jesus came through situations that were not what we in our western Christian culture consider regular worship services. I must now say that the reason for this is that those informal gatherings of believers, whether we call it a home or cell group, Bible study, prayer meeting, or maybe even no meeting, but just believers living and working together, outside the building walls, are more congruent with what the books of the New Covenant, that is, Acts to the end of the Bible, showed as being church than what we call church in our culture. Conversely, our ritualistic services, and any regular way of a service that is always or almost always the same way is ritualistic, is not taught in the Word. A regular order of worship is common for most beliefs in the world, and the Roman Empire forced buildings, paid leaders, and official structures into the church, and those structures have morphed over and over again over the centuries, An unbeliever can understand that structure, as a strong head person structure is used in government, military, and business, but God gave us, the true church, the Holy Spirit for us to follow where He wills. When we don’t do that, we get messed up. If there is any official titular office in the New Covenant church, it is in Colossians 1 verse 18 and Ephesians 5 verse 23, which mentions what could be a title, head of the church, which is filled by Jesus. I believe a further indication of God’s blessing upon living informally and meeting informally as the proper way to honor Jesus in our lives is how we see the church throughout history in persecuted areas see the blessing of growth, where the organizational church in the West has forgotten the Great Commission for centuries and has tied itself up in its bureaucratic complexity, and has not seen such growth.

You can contact me at simplechurchminute@yahoo.com or by phone at 757-735-3639. If you wish to review what I just said, a transcript is posted at my blog, tevyebird.blogspot.com, at the entry dated June 12, 2011. You can find out more about being church without corporate structure in this area at www.hrscn.org.

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Almost all of what I said here comes from Frank Viola and George Barna’s book, “Pagan Christianity” page 88. That, in turn, has seven footnotes for the person looking to verify the historicity of what I said. As most bookstores in this area, Christian and secular, will not have this book on the shelf, one can obtain it quickest from www.frankviola.com or www.amazon.com.

For reference, the Greek word dialegomai appears in Acts 17:2, 17:17, 18:4, 18:19, 19:8-9, 20:7, 20:9, 24:25. None of the other words translated “preach” imply a speech, oration, or rhetoric, either.

2010--comparing apples to apples

            This is another five minute commentary for radio, as are most of my posts.  This one, at this time, I feel is kind of special.  I feel that I need an introduction commentary, as is #28 in the two minute commentaries I posted in December, 2010.  With this one, I began by thinking that, as I have examined the critique the ideas behind organic church, that most come down to the misunderstanding rampant in the western world as to what the words “church, pastor, preach, tithe, and communion” mean.  Below, I tie this to an experience I had as a teen, which years later, I realized spoke to a general principle going on in institutional churches today.

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2010—comparing apples to apples

            My name is Tom; this is Simple Church Minute.  When we make a choice in the world, a reasonable person would like to make an apples to apples comparison.  When we go to a grocery store, there are a number of dish detergents on the shelf.  We might choose one by price, or color, or fragrance, or how the package looks on your shelf, or how it affects one’s hands or if they give a nickel to a favored charity, or you could have ordered some via Amway a couple of weeks ago, or bought a book on chemistry and made it yourself.  All these choices have pluses and minuses.  In making comparisons in the real world, as opposed to, say, politics, one needs to compare apples to apples.  Some of those companies wish to make the comparison as easy as possible, particularly with the strategy of offering the lowest price.  The company offering the product at the highest price is attempting to do something to differentiate themselves such that whatever that unique thing is will make you ignore the high price.  In autos, for instance, the companies wish to put so many optional features on a car that you can’t find two identical cars to compare to.

            The reason I bring this up is to present the following question.  Think of the following words:  church, pastor, preach, tithe, communion.  When you hear that word, or read that word or read about that concept in the Bible, are you thinking of the same thing that the writer of scripture was talking about when he was writing it?  Now some might say that that is an unfair question, in that we know that to some minor degree, according to our experiences, we all see the words we use everyday in a very slightly different nuance.  I’m not talking about that.  I’m asking, do we understand these words apples to apples similar or apples to pineapples different?  When Paul wrote the Koine Greek word ekklesia, how similar is that word in how the original receivers of his letters understand it in comparison to our modern English word church, which also includes aspects you have picked up from your experience that you’ve never heard said.

            Let me give you an example from my life.  My parents were honest, moral people, if you asked them, they would have said they believed in God, but I doubt ever really thought through what that meant.  When I was 8, they started having me go to Sunday School at a church a couple of miles away (I lived in a rural area).  When I was 15, I came to faith in Jesus, just a few weeks after the elderly pastor of that church passed away.  About a year later, the new pastor also came to teach the high school class I was in, and asked how many people believed doctrine X, which that church held one view of, and most churches held an opposite view of.  I’d never considered the idea one way or another, and wasn’t sure, although I knew the church’s stand, so, in a show of hands, I stuck my hand out sideways and waved by wrist to indicate that I wasn’t sure.  I was sitting in a front row, and later learned that no one else raised their hand, where raising their hand indicated agreement with the official position.  Given that, the pastor taught about this doctrine for four weeks, and then asked that question again.  This time, no one, including myself, raised their hand.  What was the pastor to do—now no one agrees with that denomination’s position?  You can’t toss everyone out—you need a salary.  The answer is:  don’t talk about it one way or another.

            The thing I am getting at is that what Paul and the other writers of the New Testament, and the apostles taught during the days of the early church, when faith in Jesus spread like wildfire, and also what we have seen in parts of the world where the government or a social group is overtly attempting to persecute faith in Jesus, but faith has been spreading like wildfire, was connected to what Jesus taught the disciples, who in turn taught the early church.  We, here in the West, with all of our money and marketing ideas and media teaching are not seeing people come to faith in Jesus in an exceptional way, and may even be seeing a harvest of criticism and mockery from unbelievers that aren’t always undeserved.  I am suggesting that some of these key words in the Bible have, sometimes unintentionally, sometimes intentionally by both well meaning persons and those who were not, have morphed in meaning so significantly that we are not reading our Bibles correctly, that is, we are reading the correct word, insofar as translating the word from Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic to English, but we are connecting an incorrect definition to it, as various people in history have leaned on society in ways that have changed how we understand a word, and we’ve added and deleted to the word by what we’ve seen but no one has ever overtly explained.  My time today is done, but this series is looking at a variety of specific instances.

          You can contact me at simplechurchminute@yahoo.com  or 757-735-xxxx.  Hearing a talk goes really quickly; if you would like to see a transcript of what I just said, I have it posted on my blog, tevyebird.blogspot.com, dated September 1, 2011.  For more information about organic worship in this area, visit www.hrscn.org.

            Almost nothing that I say in these commentaries are my original ideas, but I am putting out in the public because these are ideas spoken of in some evangelical seminaries, and among certain groups of believers in Jesus, but are quite invisible to many believers who are sincerely desiring to follow Jesus, and who are plugged into what is being said and sung in Christian pop culture.  Two books which are an excellent introduction to what will be said in these commentaries are:

George Barna & Frank Viola, Pagan Christianity.

Wolfgang Simson, Houses that Change the World

Many Christian bookstores will not have these in stock.  Many authors sell their works on their websites, and I have not had any problem finding anything I have been looking for on amazon.com.

2063--preaching as oratory

            For anyone stumbling across this blog for the first time, the original idea of it was to post a group of two minute commentaries about simple worship of Jesus, with most of the commentaries based on the points with regard to this subject made by George Barna and Frank Viola in their book, Pagan Christianity and Wolfgang Simson in his 15 Theses for the Re-Incarnation of Church.  Those appear in a group of blogs I posted in December, 2010.  They were written for radio, but so far, I have not had the money to broadcast them.  Additionally, either one minute or five minutes are time frames more amenable to stations in my area, so I am rewriting some of the major thoughts expressed in the December postings to fit both the smaller and larger time frame.  What is below is part of this project.  The commentary below is written for a five minute time frame, and is a mixture of the commentaries numbered 55 and 63 back in December.

            My name is Tom; this is Simple Church Minute.  According to the National Teaching Laboratories in Bethel, Maine:  we retain 5% of what we hear in a lecture, 10% of what we read, 50% of what we discuss with others, and 90% of what we teach others. I think the exact percentages of that statement would be impossible to prove, but the general idea is clear—the more involved we are, the more we learn.  If that is the case, why do traditional churches rely so heavily on lecture? Particularly, when First Thessalonians chapter 5 verse 11 tells us to edify, or build up, one another, and that’s next to impossible with only one or two persons doing the lion’s share of the communication.

            In the days of the Old Covenant, prophets spoke intermittently.  False prophets also spoke.  The people were involved, and were able to interrupt and ask questions.  In many cases, the people did not accept the true prophets, and accepted the false prophets.  Since the people of Israel was an ethnicity, there was degree to which the king was also a spiritual leader, in addition to the priests and prophets, sometimes for good, more often for ill.  Prophets and priests did not speak from a script, but spoke from the burden of their heart.  Rarely, the prophet acted out his message.  There was no regular preaching in the synagogue that was like the modern sermon.

            When Jesus announced his being the fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah 61, as recorded in Luke 4, his being allowed to speak was because it was a tradition that all Jewish males were allowed to take a turn at speaking.  When Jesus began his ministry, he also did not speak regularly to the same audience, although he taught in various ways the disciples that were with him those three years, and probably taught, to a lesser degree, the seventy who he sent out in Luke 10.  His teaching took many forms, but what we have recorded is sporatic, spontaneous, informal, and oftentimes in the form of back and forth dialogue, even the trick questions of the religious leaders.  It was consistent with the tradition of the day, except that Jesus allowed women to listen to what he said, which the rabbis did not.  When one looks at the book of Acts, we see teaching that was sporatic, a dialogue, allowing for interruption and feedback, unplanned, without rhetorical structure, and delivered on special occasions to deal with special problems.  Romans 12 and 15, Colossians 3, and First Corinthians 12 and 14 indicate that ministry was by all the church for all the church.  History shows that in that day what Paul and others meant by preaching was dialogue, and monologues, as exemplified by Roman-style oratory, was referred to the Bible by “speaking” or “spoke.”

            After the Roman Emperor’s quote unquote conversion, by the economic power of the Empire, the pagan tradition of speechmaking solidified as a practice in the church.  Many persons, male only, as it was a male dominated society, some with an honest desire to serve God, and probably a few not so much, as the government whether intentionally or not created regular gigs for orators, prompted the tradition. 

Whether one is right or wrong, for many of us it feels good to have others just stop everything and listen to us.  This works even more if they are friendly people, who won’t criticize us in public, or at all, without regard to how off track we get, and we all make mistakes.  Every person needs another person to speak words of correction in one’s life, which we know is doing so for our benefit.  That is what dictators do not do; only God is right all the time.  In our culture, many sermons do not get above new believer level.  Lastly, edifying each other works only when a group is far smaller than our culture’s traditional churches, many of which are so big no one knows everyone’s name, much less actually know all the other people.

  To contact me, you can email me at simplechurchminute@yahoo.com or phone me at 757-735-xxxx.  To read a transcript of what I just said, my blog is tevyebird.blogspot.com, and this appears as the post of July 30, 2011.  For more info about simple worship in this area, visit www.hrscn.org.

2007--on the word preach

     Back in December, 2010, I wrote one hundred two minute commentaries, entitled "Simple Church Minute."  At this time, I am anticipating that when the opportunity is open to air messages, I will have a five, not two, minute time limitation, which gives the opportunity to develop some ideas more thoroughly.  To that effect, below is one on the word "preach", a word whose definition today is unlike what it meant to the persons in the first century church.

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2007--preach

  My name is Tom; this is Simple Church Minute.  According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary Online, the definition of “preach” is 1) to deliver a sermon, 2) to urge acceptance or abandonment of an idea or course of action; specifically: to exhort in an officious or tiresome manner.  These definitions truly indicate the modern understanding of the word “preach” and also, to a degree, the negative attitude a significant segment of our society has towards what we call preaching.  Is that what the Bible means by the word?  I know—for me to bring this up implies that I’m going to say “no”, and that is correct.  Somewhere after the recording of the Scriptures, preaching became a Christian form of the equivalent of Roman oratory, a one-way form of communication.  Interestingly, if one looks at pieces of speaking in the Book of Acts and later, one can find that a speech is preceded by words like “said” or “speak”, and not preach.   This does, though, vary by translation.

          The Bible tells us Jesus preached.  What did he do?  His style of speaking was like that of the style common to Jewish culture, in that it was two-way communication.  We are fully well aware that Jesus had to tell the disciples that it was ok for children to be around him, John 3 and 4 tells of Jesus speaking one-on-one to two extremely different persons with regard to their spirits.  The Jewish religious leaders overtly came up to him to ask him tricky questions.  It was the style the rabbis had taught the people with. 

          In Acts and following, we see that preaching was sporadic, unplanned, without rhetorical structure, delivered on special occasions to deal with special problems, and was dialogue, not monologue.  A word found in the original Koine Greek that is sometimes translated preaching is dialegomai, which is obviously where we get the word dialogue from.  In the early days of the New Covenant, ministry came from all believers, and worship in the early church included teaching, exhortation, prophecy, singing, admonishment, speaking was conversational and even the teaching of local elders was normally impromptu. 

          For many years, it was something I noticed, but didn’t understand, that all the times that it seemed that the Spirit taught me the most significant things about following Jesus came through situations that were not what we in our western Christian culture consider regular worship services.  I must now say that the reason for this is that those informal gatherings of believers, whether we call it a home or cell group, Bible study, prayer meeting, or maybe even no meeting, but just believers living and working together,  outside the building walls, are more congruent with what the books of the New Covenant, that is, Acts to the end of the Bible, showed as being church than what we call church in our culture.  Conversely, our ritualistic services, and any regular way of a service that is always or almost always the same way is ritualistic, is not taught in the Word.  A regular order of worship is common for most beliefs in the world, and the Roman Empire forced buildings, paid leaders, and official structures into the church, and those structures have morphed over and over again over the centuries, An unbeliever can understand that structure, as a strong head person structure is used in government, military, and business, but God gave us, the true church, the Holy Spirit for us to follow where He wills.  When we don’t do that, we get messed up.  If there is any official titular office in the New Covenant church, it is in Colossians 1 verse 18 and Ephesians 5 verse 23, which mentions what could be a title, head of the church, which is filled by Jesus.  I believe a further indication of God’s blessing upon living informally and meeting informally as the proper way to honor Jesus in our lives is how we see the church throughout history in persecuted areas see the blessing of growth, where the organizational church in the West has forgotten the Great Commission for centuries and has tied itself up in its bureaucratic complexity, and has not seen such growth.

          You can contact me at simplechurchminute@yahoo.com or by phone at 757-735-xxxx.  If you wish to review what I just said, a transcript is posted at my blog, tevyebird.blogspot.com, at the entry dated June 12, 2011.  You can find out more about being church without corporate structure in this area at www.hrscn.org.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

          Almost all of what I said here comes from Frank Viola and George Barna’s book, “Pagan Christianity” page 88.   That, in turn, has seven footnotes for the person looking to verify the historicity of what I said.  As most bookstores in this area, Christian and secular, will not have this book on the shelf, one can obtain it quickest from www.frankviola.com or www.amazon.com.

For reference, the Greek word dialegomai appears in Acts 17:2, 17:17, 18:4, 18:19, 19:8-9, 20:7, 20:9, 24:25.  None of the other words translated “preach” imply a speech, oration, or rhetoric, either.

Simple Church Minute 63--humans do not learn well from lectures

63—humans do not learn well from lectures

My name is Tom; this is Simple Church Minute

            According to the National Teaching Laboratories in Bethel, Maine:  We retain 5% of what we hear in a lecture, 10% of what we read, 50% of what we discuss with others, and 90%  of what we teach others.  I think that the exact percentages of that statement would be impossible to prove, but the general idea is clear—the more involved we are, the more we learn.  Why do churches rely so heavily on teaching by lecture?  Particularly, given that First Thessalonians chapter 5 verse 11 tells us, “edify (or build up) one another.”

            Here’s an idea, even though it might not make some people feel good.  History shows that what Paul and others meant by the word “preaching” is close to what we now mean by the word “witnessing.”   It was directed toward not-yet-Christians, it was impromptu, and there was room for dialogue.

            After the Roman Emperor’s quote-unquote conversion, by the economic power of the Empire, the pagan tradition of speechmaking solidified as a practice in the church.  Many persons, male, some with an honest desire to serve God, and probably a few not so much, prompted the tradition.  Whether one is right or wrong, for many of us it feels good to have others just stop everything and listen to us.  This works more if they are friendly people, who won’t criticize us in public, or at all, without regard to how off-track we get, and we all make mistakes.  Every person needs another person to speak words of correction in one’s life, which we know is doing so for our benefit.  That is what dictators do not do; only God is right all the time.  In our culture, many sermons do not get above new believer level. Edifying each other works only when a group is far smaller than our culture’s traditional churches.

            You can email me at simplechurchminute@gmail.com.  For more info on organic church*, visit http://www.simplechurch.com/ or locally at (local website).

On the recording, at this time, it says, “house churches.”  While that phrasing is OK, to say “organic church” is better.  I comment on that in blip 94.

Simple Church Minute 55--preaching from Old Testament to New Testament

55-preaching from OT to NT

My name is Tom; this is Simple Church Minute

            What was preaching like in the Old Testament?  One might wonder why I am bringing up this question, given that these talks are about what scripture indicates as being correct practice for the New Covenant chosen people.  The reason:  What were people familiar with when Jesus was on earth?

            Through history, prophets spoke at intermittent times.  False prophets also spoke.  The people were involved, and were able to interrupt and ask questions.  In many cases, the people of Israel was an ethnicity, there was a degree to which the king was a spiritual leader, in addition to priests and prophets, sometimes for good, more often for ill.  Prophets and priests did not speak from a script, but spoke from the burden of their heart.  Rarely, the prophet acted out his message. There was no regular preaching in the synagogue.  None of it was like a modern sermon.

            When Jesus began his ministry, he also did not speak regularly to the same audience, although he taught in various ways the disciples that were with him those three years, and probably taught, to a lesser degree, the 70.  His teaching took many forms, but what we have recorded is sporadic, spontaneous, and informal. When one looks at the book of Acts, we see teaching that was sporadic, a dialogue, allowing for interruption and feedback, unplanned, without rhetorical structure, and delivered on special occasions and to deal with special problems. Romans 12 and 15, Colossians 3, and First Corinthians 12 and 14 indicate that ministry was by all the church for all the church.  The way it is done in most places now has no biblical precedent.

            You can email me at simplechurchminute@gmail.com.  For more info on organic church*, visit http://www.simplechurch.com/ or locally at (local website).

On the recording, at this time, it says, “house churches.”  While that phrasing is OK, to say “organic church” is better.  I comment on that in blip 94.