Why are there so many people sitting in church services Sunday after Sunday who never, or rarely, read (hear, listen, connect), reflect, remember, and respond to God’s Word?
In another article, Unleashing the Bible in the Church, three obstacles to Bible engagement were identified – pastors who don’t get it, people who don’t want it, and principalities who oppose it. Since writing that article, I’ve been thinking about another significant obstacle to Bible engagement …
I used to be a pastor in a local church. Despite my best efforts, I simply couldn’t get everyone into God’s Word. With the advantage of hindsight, I now realize I was part of the problem. What made me part of the problem was that I did most of the preaching and teaching. When the pastor mainly interprets and comments on the Word, it sends the message that only professionals should handle it.
When someone knows better or is more competent with something, we tend to let them get on with it. It’s unsurprising that so many people hand off the responsibility for reading/listening and interpreting the Bible to those with seminary degrees or denominational ordination.
Here’s the problem. When one person talks about the Bible nearly every week, instead of everyone talking about it, it subtly conditions people not to read it for themselves.
Changing the paradigm.
To address this stumbling block, we’ve got to change the paradigm. We require a more organic form of church meetings. Preaching and teaching the Word shouldn’t primarily be tied to a pulpit. We should invite and encourage every Christian to participate in church services. Every Christian should function as a priest (cf. 1 Peter 2:9). To make this happen adequately, we need liberation from a clergy-dominated and professionally oriented system that, in part, has taken the Word captive.
Francis Chan, an ex-megachurch pastor who re-evaluated his theology and practice of church gatherings and started We Are Church, says, “For us, we want to devote ourselves to thinking deeply not about the pastor’s words but the inspired Word of God – that is how we devote ourselves to the apostles’ teaching. We don’t want to draw people to how we explain Scripture. Rather, we double down on the belief that if you have the Spirit of God in you, you can read Scripture yourself, and as a body, we can wrestle with Scripture together.”
“Wrestle with Scripture together.” That’s brilliant! Imagine what might happen to the spiritual temperature in your local church if everyone got to grapple with the Word.
Everyone grappling with the Word.
For those committed to the program-driven routine of “churchianity,” the thought of everyone grappling with the Word is sacrilegious. They’re right. The idea that every Christian can “wrestle with Scripture together” isn’t religious, BUT it is biblical! (cf. 1 Corinthians 14:26, 29-32, Ephesians 5:19, Colossians 3:16, Hebrews 10:24-25).
No precedent exists in the New Testament for a church meeting exclusively controlled by a pastor. Nor is there any biblical support for the modern-day pulpit and pulpiteers who dominate many churches today. Instead, congregational participation should be the norm. In fact, the major thrust in the Scriptures centers on every person in the church being actively involved in reading and reflecting on God’s Word (cf. 1 Corinthians 14:26).
Mennonite theologian and ethicist John Howard Yoder says, “There are few more reliable constants running through all human society than the special place every human community makes for the professional religionist … But if we were to ask whether any of the N. T. literature makes the assumption listed … then the answer from the biblical material is a resounding negation …”
Stepping on sacred corns.
Forgive me for stepping on sacred corns. But if the right practice is going to emerge from error, we must be honest enough to confront the truth. If the Bible is the sole rule for our faith and practice, surely we must ask whether or not the Scriptures have been manipulated to support clerical professionalism in its present form (mainly one person interpreting the Bible and preaching to a passive audience). And if the Scriptures have been manipulated, then as author Frank Viola suggests, “The brittle wineskin of church practice and the tattered garment of ecclesiastical forms needs to be changed, not just modified.”
Do you agree or disagree? From the preponderance of biblical evidence, it seems to me that if Bible engagement is going to take off, one of the things we need to do is desacralize the preaching and teaching of God’s Word in the local church by inviting and including a broader segment of God’s people (those gifted in preaching, teaching, sharing words of wisdom/knowledge, or prophecy) to share a word from the Word when we meet together.
What are your thoughts about professionalism and Bible engagement?
Recommended
Mark Frees – Is the One-Pastor System Scriptural, Truth According to Scripture.
Related Articles
Unleashing the Bible in the Church
Improving Bible Engagement in the Church
Summary
Professionalism and Bible engagement. Many people in church services fail to read, reflect on, or respond to God’s Word because the church system often centralizes Bible interpretation and preaching to pastors. This practice discourages individual Bible engagement and diminishes the responsibility of every Christian to actively participate in the Word. To address this, we must shift to a more organic, participatory model that encourages all Christians to engage with and share the Word during services. By liberating the church from a clergy-dominated structure, we can empower believers to read, reflect, and respond to Scripture together, fostering a more vibrant and communal approach to Bible engagement.
© Scripture Union Canada
