I believe that two crucial ingredients need to be present in any local church that wants to thrive. These are prayer and Bible study/teaching. Both are important because they are signs of hunger to know God more and more.
Having said that, sometimes it can feel like hard work to encourage these things. Why? Well, one of the reasons is that many of us have seen these things modelled badly and so something good has become something negative. We’ve heard people dominate a prayer time or even descend into gossip under the cover of “praying for others.” I’ve also head people comment that too often they’ve seen the Bible used to beat others up, to cause division and to promote personal agendas.
I’m going to focus on the Bible study/teaching side of things here. How do we cultivate it and grow people’s appetites for God’s Word? Well one way in which we can do this is by giving time to both explaining why and modelling how God’s Word is there as something positive and helpful. We need to show that it is practical and relevant.
This means also that we might want to overtly turn to Scripture at leaders’ and members’ meetings as well as on pastoral visits. It also means, that we take time to teach on the very Bible passages that may have been misused or be seen as divisive.
For example, if I’m preaching on Ephesians 1 or Romans 8 then words like “election” and “predestination” may come up. I may be tempted to gloss over these and find easier stuff to talk about from the passage. Instead, I prefer to lean into those words. I might say something along these lines.
“This word ‘election’ might be one you feel uncomfortable with. Perhaps you associate it with heavy academic theology and wonder what it has to do with you. Worse still, you might even have mainly seen It used in debates to cause arguments and even seen churches divided by it. But that’s not why Paul used the word. He is not seeking to be philosophical or argumentative here, rather he is being pastoral. This word is meant to be a warm, pastoral and practical word. Paul is saying that despite everything about us, God has chosen to love you and he has done that from eternity. Now, that might raise some further questions about quite how free will and human responsibility fit in. We can talk more about that in time but the big thing we all need to know is that the great, sovereign, God has chosen to love us, to pour out his grace on us and draw us into his family.”
What I’m doing is making sure that we don’t back off from the importance of scripture or of doctrine but that we are helping the church family to see why this is important, why it is practical and why it is good news.
Faithroots 