Tony Jones, “Inhabiting the Biblical Narrative: How I Learned to Stop Doing Bible Studies and Start Loving the Bible Again” Youthworker (May/Jun 2004, Vol 20, No 5), pages 30-34.

In the midst of serving other people and the details of life, it can be easy to forget that there is one large story of humanity. No other book captures the truth and circumstances of humans better than the Bible. It is the history of the world from family to family to family – the story of the One True God who acted within the timeline of humanity to accomplish His purposes. However, it remains all too easy to concentrate on the minutia of scripture and miss the main story that life is all about.

When you look beyond the rigid study of individual words in the Bible, you come to appreciate how God relates to people. Life is about relationships; living is about people. It really helps to read the Bible with this in mind.

Tony Jones, from tonyj.net

Tony tells us that his adventure into the story of the Bible started when the high school students he discipled did not want to study a Christian pop-culture book. They wanted to really get to know the Bible, even though they feared that, as had happened before, they would fail to grasp the relevance of the Bible for their lives. The students knew that they should be reading and understanding the Bible, and felt guiltily for not making the connection.

Yet, the Bible is the only book that can feed the soul. It is the only book that comforts, that loves, that challenges, that raises questions, and answers the question of why we are here. All of these benefits can be lost when we allow the story that God is telling to stop affecting who we are and what we do.

I’d become a scientist in a lab coat. I’d been taught to take a piece of God’s story and put it in a Petri dish, then to put it under a microscope and get it down to its smallest part, from selection to sentence to phrase to word to syllable. When I read this, I realized the same had been true of me. We forget to think about what culture was like when we read scripture. We forget to think about the smells, the armies, the dress code, the food, and everything else that helps us remember the stories of our ancestors as being real and not a dusty fairy tale wearing a religious mask. Being more serious about the overall narrative will hopefully give us real and vivid images of God’s movement in history to replace the trinkets and bumper stickers that often trivialize the history of God and man.

Bill Hull, “It’s Just Not Working” Leadership (Summer 2005), pages 26-28.

Bill Hull challenges the philosophical foundation upon which many ministries are based. We live today in a world where the church attendance number—that one number—allegedly speaks volumes about that church, its leaders, and its mission. The undue importance of that number should be seriously questioned.

Many pastors today, including myself, struggle with the ideals emphasized by the megachurch movement that has spread over the last two decades. Viewing church size alone as an indicator of success is a deception planted in minds of church leaders by a spiritual being who wishes to see the body of Christ fall.

We were stuck in the same rut that so many churches find themselves in—religious activity without real transformation.

It is refreshing to hear a leader such as Bill openly admit the spiritual struggles facing many church leaders. It is inspiring to listen to his story unfold as he makes commitments to change his philosophy and not go back. That is an example many of us younger pastors need. I applaud Bill Hull for accepting his internal struggle and working through it at a time when many leaders simply rely on the external trappings of success. To embrace the truth and commit to change may bring challenges and uncertainties, but it also transforms.

Bill’s main question to contemporary ministries is why? Why do we do what we do? Why do we do it the way we do? I can personally point to many instances where the church I serve in struggles to make disciples versus administrating programs intended to do just that. Let me give an example. There is a man who I’ll call Bob who has attended church for years with his wife and kids. He is a leader in the church that has served on committees. He and his wife are involved in Sunday worship services and his kids have attended youth programs since birth. And then all of a sudden his wife left him. They are now divorced and their teenage kids are left with a shaky spiritual foundation at best.

How does this happen? How does a family have so many “externals” going for them and yet fail to live like Christ? Bill Hull explains, “I told [my] church that the Great Commission is more about depth than strategy, and being spiritually transformed is the primary and exclusive work of the church. I told them believing the right things is not enough – being a Christian means actually following Jesus.”

We have lost this. The church has traded in the life that Christ calls us to live for an outward image. A family involved in the externals of church service and pew sitting can still lack the life of Christ within. A family that honors Christ is stronger than any other.

Tim Keel, “Naked in the Pulpit: How my preaching became an act of intimacy” Leadership Journal (Winter 2005).

What a scary thought: being vulnerable to your congregation. Yet, this is the approach that Tim Keel suggests we pastors should take—a valuable suggestion indeed. Too often I find myself being more concerned with the passing of information than I am transferring life change to the people I minister to.

I will never forget the story my new boss and Sr. Minister told of the church he had come from. There was a Sunday school teacher who had taught for over a decade at the church who finally came to realize—after a convicting sermon—that his primary role in that class was not the passing of information. Discipleship was about growth, it was about change. This was life transformation using the avenue of information for the greater purpose of being different for and by Jesus Christ.

Keel says, “For me preaching has become an integrated, intimate behavior, far more than just an exercise of transferring information to other people’s heads.”

“Just transferring” information is a common trap for us to fall into as preachers. Perhaps we have set the trap by allowing ourselves to be immersed in our consumer culture. Keel reminds us how to express the information about God and the Christian life in the balance of how we live our lives. “Preaching is an act of intimacy because it is the unfolding publicly of Christ in me.”

A good illustration to help us understand the danger of passing information without being changed by that information is to look at two people groups who spent time with Jesus.

“I have a structured mind, so I tend to think in outlines. But the more I do outlining, the more I find I’m over-killing my sermon. I can crowd out my ability to respond to God or to the people before me.”

The legalism of the Pharisees was the simple but dangerous activity of crowding out their own ability to respond to the God of the universe who was standing before them in tangible form. That happens to us pastors today, too. Too often we are focused on the passing of information and we miss the opportunities ourselves to connect with God, and therefore fail to pass on life change to the very people we minister to.

The Disciples: These guys got it. Well, there were many times they struggled to get it but that is how an authentic relationship works. The disciples experienced Jesus Christ in a fresh way. They ate with him. They talked with him. He rescued them from the scary forces of nature. They believed in him. They performed miracles in His name. They even died for him. What a difference.

Knowledge is scary stuff. “Naked in the Pulpit” is a valuable reminder to us pastors to use the knowledge in the Word to change lives. It is not good enough just to throw knowledge out into the air, like many of the Pharisees, who often cared more about doctrine and appearance.

Too much of an emphasis on information and preparation will keep us from being honest about how God has changed us. The end result is an ineffective Christianity. If we do not practice “Naked in the Pulpit” we will become like those today who, to the letter of the law, can provide exhaustive Scriptural support for whether or not the Trinity really is biblical yet cannot seem to offer anyone a cup of cold water in Jesus name. Knowledge alone is dangerous.

As Keel states knowledge needs to be mixed with the meditating, reflecting, and the living out of God’s Word. Being naked in the pulpit will enable us to do that more effectively. This is simply what the Apostles did throughout the book of Acts. They allowed the Holy Spirit to move them. They had no 3-point sermon. They did not spew fact and law to justify behavior. They talked and lived a public life changed by Jesus Christ. That is what we must do.

Reviewed by John Datema

At the time of this writing, “Naked in the Pulpit” was accessible online: http://www.christianitytoday.com/le/2005/001/1.78.html