What are you babbling about! The prophets spoke to Israel -- believers in God! Jesus first came solely for His people. Yes the Gospel eventually came for all but only after Israel rejected their Messiah. Nowhere does the New Testament suggest that the church is meant for unbelievers. In fact, it says the opposite in Acts 2. It matters not because the lost need the same things that the saved need -- the Gospel. If the preacher sticks to his call then the preached word will feed his sheep and allow the conviction of the Holy Spirit to reach the unsaved. Romans teaches us that only the Gospel can save someone. What Carey is proposing here guarantees that the unsaved stay lost. I once had a similar thought that there were two types of messages -- one for spiritual maturity and the other more Gospel-centric. My pastor cut me quick on that and said any message that cannot be brought back to the cross of Jesus Christ is not worth preaching. Amen. Neiuwhof's story about preaching aliens is asinine! The shepherd decides what to preach from God's holy word. We need not look to hot topics, the summer blockbuster movies or any other purely carnal topic. That is most definitely NOT the job. What is the job? Preach the Gospel.
"3. THE END OF EASY ANSWERS (CAREY). Decades ago, the local preacher was essentially the source for everything about the scriptures, Christianity and faith. Sure, an avid Christian might read a few books, listen to other talks or attend a conference. But information was scarce and cost money. You had to buy a book, attend a conference or order a CD. That meant that what a preacher said carried a lot of weight, and people by default accepted it. For too long, preachers got away with easy answers. Fast forward today, and it could hardly be more different. Just assume everyone hearing your message, especially non-Christians investigating faith, know as much or more about a subject than you do. And even though they may not, they can easily Google anything you say. And they will. Don't get me wrong, there's a ton of misinformation and bad information online. But that doesn't stop people from researching. Add to that the reality that we live in an age of opinions that are strongly held and weakly formed, and the easy assumption that what you say as a preacher will carry to the day is gone. Post-modernism isn't the end of answers, it's the end of easy answers. It's also the end of answering questions your audience doesn't care about. One of the key tasks, as Mark points out in point #2 above, is that wise preachers figure out the questions their audience is asking, and answer that. Admittedly, aliens is a weird one. But what Mark is doing and what I've done many times as well is not just exegete the biblical text, but exegete the audience and culture. The future belongs to preachers who exegete the culture and audience as well as they exegete the text. It's the only way you can understand what your audience is thinking." -- Carey Nieuwhof
Yes beloved, you just read that right. Carey Nieuwhof and the NAR machine thinks the next big trend in preachers will be people who can exegete the culture. That does not even make sense grammatically, let alone biblically. This is so sad because these are the people that church leaders today listen to. The pastor does not need to know nor figure out what the congregation is thinking. He does not need to care about what burning questions they might have. Sure it is wise to learn apologetics for the times when you are having conversation with people but Sunday is not the time for debates and conferences. It is not question and answer time. The creator of the entire universe has given us a sliver of His thinking in what we call the bible. He has also given us people with a calling to interpret the bible so as to feed His people with what God says. You may want to sit down for this -- it is not about you. It is all about Him. Carey and the NAR think it is the job of the church to cater to the lost in the world and nothing could be farther from the truth. You present the entire Gospel and let God be God. If they stay we rejoice and if they leave we preach the word again the following week. Maybe the planted seed with be harvested one day and maybe it will not. There is nothing a preacher can do to convince someone to be saved. No schemes or plots. Just preach the Gospel.
"4. PREACHING TO THE HEART/AFFECTIONS (MARK). One of Jonathan Edwards' great fears during the awakening that happened around his preaching was that the conversions of thousands of people to Christ weren't real. That they were surface level, even counterfeit. His desire was that the gospel would change someone from the inside-out vs. the outside-in (through Religious Guilt or Cognitive Teaching, etc.,). He knew what Augustine said was true: that we are what we love, that the most powerful part about us wasn't our thinking, but our feeling, our gut, and that true and effective preaching thus must have as its goal to change not what we do (often the core message of modern preaching) but what we want to do. To do that we as preachers need to go after not just what people think, but what they feel. As one writer put it, our audience is not asking only whether Christianity is true but whether it works. The thing is that many preachers think this means we need to preach only pragmatically. Tactically telling people "here is what to do, go and do it." But that is not what is meant. We show the world that Christianity works by applying it and talking about how ideas and theology are applied to real-life -- of course! -- but bigger than that we show people that it works because the gospel fundamentally changes what we love from one thing to another. It changes us so that we move from a love of power, or money, or romance, to a God who transcends all those things. It speaks to a soul and that souls longings and shows them where to find true fulfillment, namely Jesus himself, and the life of the Spirit his death and resurrection offers the world. A kind of joy that doesn't settle for the things the world offers, and an unredeemed heart thinks is ultimate." -- Carey Nieuwhof
Wow. Edwards was the guy who preached the renowned sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of An Angry God!" If he was worried about counterfeit conversion, how much more so should people like Carey Nieuwhof who doesn't even preach the Gospel? Yet the solution from Carey sounds noble and pious but is still off by a mile. He still is thinking that he has some say in whether the listeners get saved. He does not. I do not. We are not God. Only God is God. He decides how many and who gets added to the church number each day. It does not matter how they feel when they walk in your church only that they feel convicted after hearing you preach the Gospel. It is only that conviction that can bring them to the foot of the cross. It is not about preaching pragmatically, although you can make pragmatic points. It is not about the application of theological constructs, although we can guide people in the area as well. We do not speak to the soul beloved -- God does. His Gospel transforms. We just have to preach it.
Carey's final point was about using new media and technology better and I do not necessarily disagree as long as it does not compromise the Gospel. He thinks a sermon can be downsized I think it should be longer but these are personal differences. The larger point here is that Carey Nieuwhof represents the church growth industry platform of the NAR Purpose Driven Industrial Complex. Countless numbers of pastors listen to him and pay him for this pure, straight up carnal advice on how to meaninglessly grow their church at the cost of the Gospel and the kingdom. You see it in ever response he makes here. The things of God remain foolishness to him. Spiritual matters can only be discerned spiritually. Do not turn to the world preacher! You have one task regarding the pulpit God has given you and in case you missed that message -- preach the Gospel.
Reverend Anthony Wade -- January 30, 2020
