Since retiring from the active pastorate a few years ago, I have had the privilege of preaching in many churches. There are all kinds of churches out there. We have the larger ones and many middle-sized fellowships, but the majority of the churches that make up the Southern Baptist Convention are those which have fewer than 100 in church on a given Sunday.
Most people don’t know that fact because those small churches, which are the heart of the SBC, are not talked about very much in the press, whether secular or religious. The larger congregations, which have all the resources they could ever possibly need and who have the numbers which are often bragged about, are really few in number, but they get all the attention.
Most of the country churches are family churches which faithfully function Sunday after Sunday and don’t expect someone to write about them. Therefore, hardly anyone knows much about these small, rural churches which have occupied their place in the community for many, many years. They used to be larger (but not huge) when the farmers had large families in order to take care of the farm. Kids started working on the farm at an early age out of necessity and many didn’t get to finish school. Several of my friends in junior high school in Tifton, Ga. fell into this category.
As time progressed and our country became more urban, things began to change for these small country churches as the farm equipment became more sophisticated and fewer of the children had to work on the farm in order to get the work done. The result was that smaller families affected the church attendance, and as farming became more mechanized, the children who used to stay in the community left for higher paying jobs in the more urban areas.
So, on Sunday the churches began to have fewer and fewer people in the pews. These churches were family churches, and as the families began to decrease in size, the attendance in church decreased also. Not much can be done about the effect the changing of society has had on these smaller churches, but there is one thing that can be done to keep these smaller country churches from degenerating so rapidly. Feed them the right food in the proper way.
There is a lack of solid, Biblical expository preaching in our churches today. People in all size churches are being fed the pablum that this modern society wants to consume. In Hebrews 5:11-6:3, the writer of that great book (I think Paul wrote Hebrews), tells us that we should not continue to preach and teach the elemental doctrines as much, but that we should go on to deeper things.
He says that people who continue to drink “milk” are unskillful in the Word, and they will remain so until they are taken deeper and fed the “meat” of the Word. The people in our church pews will never go any deeper into doctrine and theology than the pastor leads them to go. God has put His preachers in place to enable His people to learn more about Him so they can serve Him more skillfully. One’s spiritual senses will only grow stronger with exercise and Paul is trying to get that point across in Hebrews 5:11-14.
Any church, large or smaller, will be spiritually empty and vapid in their ability to discern things unless the preacher of that flock devotes the proper amount of time to the study of God’s Word so that he can instruct the people and feed them strong meat, which will enable them to grow spiritually and serve God properly.
Too many of the preachers of today are happy to play around in the “baby pool” with a bunch of spiritual babies to whom he has fed nothing but milk because he doesn’t spend the time to learn the deeper truth himself. Soon he will begin to think that the pablum he feeds his people each time he speaks is the real meat of the Word. Many of our younger men today download sermons to preach for their church. It has not come from his own heart, but from the heart of another.
The Holy Spirit has had nothing much to do with what the preacher fed his people, and the sermons reflect the shallowness of what happens when humans do what they, themselves can do. The Holy Spirit is suppose to inspire a God-called man to preach on a certain passage in order to deal with what God considers important for them at that time. The impetus comes from the Holy Spirit to a man called to deliver the Word.
Then, that man, being inspired by the Spirit, writes a sermon that expresses what God wants expressed at that time. Finally, the man stands before God’s people and delivers God’s message as delivered to him by the Holy Spirit. It did not come from the mind of man, but from the mind of God who implanted the message in the heart of the preacher to be delivered to His people. Any other method will produce pablum and not strong meat.
Too many men in the pulpits of today are preaching shallow sermons designed to be performed rather than preached. Very little scripture is used, and the Gospel is all but ignored. I heard a “preacher” on television recently who was telling his people how to download a certain dieting app in order to discipline themselves so they can achieve the results they want from their diet. I kid you not! And, those dear people thought it was wonderful.
The preachers of the Bible were not popular. They warned the people of impending doom, and they pointed out and condemned the things in society that dishonored God and which will bring His judgment. The same is true today. Anyone warning the people and encouraging righteous living is looked upon as harsh and mean.
In the past, the pastors were the ones who warned their people of sin and kept them informed about destructive things in society. The people were more able to discern what was going on in their world and do something about it. Satan has shifted the focus from righteous living and salvation, to making sure that the people aren’t offended because they might not come on Sunday unless they can hear about an app for dieters, money, friends, success and a myriad of other things that people want to hear today.
And, the preachers think they have done a great job if someone passes by at the door and says something like, “preacher, you are the best! I have never enjoyed sermons more than I enjoy yours.” Preachers, don’t be fooled by that sort of verbiage. Satan will use such conversation to keep you in shallow waters thinking all the time that you are “really shucking the corn.”
I encourage you rather to take your example from men in the Bible. God has not changed, and His message is set in stone forever. It has not changed and He wants that message delivered, not in some sermonette that will make no one upset, instruct no one in the deeper verities of the scripture and virtually leave Jesus and the Gospel out.
Yes, the babies need the milk, but they should not stay there. If they do, the preacher has failed them, the church and God. As people are able to handle stronger food, then feed it to them. Just make sure that the food you feed them is from God, by the Holy Spirt, to a preacher and then presented to the people.
That is the only thing that will keep a church strong and on the right track: solid, expository preaching of the Biblical text which brings God’s message to His People for the saving of souls and righteous living. Yes, what we need today more than ever it seems, is Biblical, expository preaching. It will bring clarity to the message delivered and it will instruct God’s People in how to be saved and live for Him.
