How does a missional approach to Scripture influence preaching/teaching? Here are some of my thoughts:
Birthed in prayer from beginning to end.
Prayer is indispensable. Apart from the God’s work through the person
of the Holy Spirit, preaching is in vain.
It is never simply an exercise in human rhetoric and persuasive techniques. It the Holy Spirit who helps the missional
preacher to shape her or his message. It
is the Holy Spirit who unleashes the creative word from the preacher in the
delivery of the message. It is the Holy
Spirit who opens the ears and heart of those who receive the message. Pray, "Lord, astonish me anew with the richness of your word so that through my words others may likewise be astonished. Amen."
Rooted deeply in the biblical text.
Scripture is the fuel for
missional preaching. The story of the
Scriptures must be the content of the message. Scripture is the basis and the boundaries for the message. The Church and World deserve a message that
permeates with the heartbeat of the biblical text.
Delivered from the borderlands.
The communicator in missional
preaching stands between the Church and World. This is the point of missional engagement. The God of mission is always moving toward
the world on mission. It is only in the
borderlands that the Word is truly unleashed for both insiders and outsiders. The Word calls from the borderland to the
people of God to draw them toward the borderland in order to participate fully
in God’s mission. The Word calls to the
World to draw them toward the people of God in order to find their true
humanity as part of God’s missional community as it seeks to embody and reflect
God’s character to and for the World.
Text becomes an access point to the world that God
desires for humanity to inhabit.
Missional preachers are not
worried about being relevant as much
as they are interested in allowing the biblical text to come alive in its
portrayal of the world that God is calling all people to inhabit. In other words, it is not enough for
preachers to apply the text to
contemporary situations. Rather, the
text itself must be permitted to describe a New World. It’s story must become my story, your story, and
our story.
Theologian Robert Jensen observes:
Scripture’s
story is not part of some larger narrative; it is itself the larger narrative
of which all other true narratives are parts.
Biblical exegesis is reading sides and prop lists and so forth for the
drama that God and his universe are now living together. Do not when reading Scripture try to figure
out how what you are reading fits into some larger story; for there is no
larger story.[1]
Call to conversion
Missional preaching centers
around God’s call to insiders to
realign themselves to the ways of God and God’s call to outsiders (seekers) to align themselves to the ways of God. In other words, the outcome of missional
preaching is conversion. The Bible seeks to convert women and men to
God’s mission. This involves the triad
of mission, holiness, and community.
I have heard different
communicators describe this conversion in different ways. Bill Hybels argues that every message ought
to involve a call to think and/or act in ways consonant with the text. Erwin Raphael McManus suggests that the biblical
text calls us to shift what we care about. I would insist that the call of the text may
even be deeper. It is a call to total
devotion. God created humanity to serve
as a missional community that reflected his character to/for/in Creation. In the post-Gen 3-11 reality in which we
live, God calls his people to recapture the essence of their humanity in terms
of mission, character (holiness), and community. Missional preaching thus calls people home to
a life of total devotion. Here are key
questions to help in delineating a text's call to conversion:
1) Mission:
Insider: How
does this text envision God’s work in the world? Where do God’s people fit into this
mission? How do God’s people need to
change to participate more effectively with God’s work?
Seeker: What
sort of world is this text inviting me to spend my life working to create? What would my life look like if I joined this
mission?
2) Character:
Insider:
What does this text tell us about the character or ethos of God’s people? What are God’s people supposed to
become? How do God’s people need to
change in order to more profoundly reflect the character of God?
Seeker:
What sort of lifestyle/character is this text inviting me to embody? How would my life be enriched by aligning my
character with Jesus’?
3) Community:
Insider: How does this text envision the corporate life
of God’s people? How do God’s people need to change in order to embody the
portrait of community assumed by this text?
Seeker: How is this text inviting me to participate
in a community that exists for something greater than my own wants and desires?
What do you think?
© 2015 Brian D. Russell
© 2015 Brian D. Russell
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