part 2

Apparently, for me, "I'll blog tomorrow" means give me a few days. If that. My apologies.

Hopefully that last post made sense. Re-reading it I feel maybe I failed a bit at explaining my ideas, and the writing was a bit poor. Regardless, I'm moving on; my major objection for non-exegetical sermons (sermons that do not study, in depth, a particular passage of scripture):

My understanding of Sunday morning messages is that they are to teach. They are to mentor, or disciple, the attendees in the ways of faithfulness and Godliness. They are als to be wise in the way they do this.

Most messages these days are essentially pep-talks, or simple exhortations. By simple exhortation I mean a basic piece of advice. The pastor has essentially one point and then he rambles for 25-30 minutes about it:

"We should read our Bibles! Look at 2 Timothy 3:16 - The Word is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training.... Let's read our Bibles! If you have been struggling with reading your Bible lately, repent now and come to the altar. Today can be the day you change. Ok now, with every head bowed and eye closed... who here could use more Bible reading in their lives?"

Messages like this have one point, in this case to read your Bible. Why not just say it and move on?

Here's my problem. Why? Because the pastor gave me one random verse I'm supposed to just jump in? Besides, I have no idea how to read my Bible. Where do I begin? What about when struggles come? What are good resources? Why is it important?

I'm rehashing that I hate being told what to do; and to be honest I have a general distrust in a great deal of pastors these days. I've failed to move to my point I think, here is attempt number two.

A pastor's role, and I believe the role of the church, should be to grow the congregation. Seeker friendly churches and stuff like that just seem a bit off to me. The church should be about teaching and growing it's members, not watering things down so that the messages come in catchy topics. Bring the meat! Non-exegetical sermons fail to bring the meat. Pastors that do this fail horribly at equipping the congregation in it's knowledge and skill in using the Bible, and deciphering true and health exegesis. They are just dumbing things down to simple nuggets. No wonder we are so apathetic to things of God; it's for unintelligent robots that like being told what to do.

The outreach should be left to the members of the church, not for Sunday mornings. Let's leave the analogies and the catchy word-plays to the members of the church trying to reach the people that need such things (the unchurched). Let's bring the depth of knowledge and meat to those members of Sundays.