Defining 'preaching of the Word'?

I Cor. 2:4-5...  so how do you recognize the Spirit's power present in a worship service?  I know when I do, and there are times He's pretty powerfully present because He ministers to me with numerous scriptures/statements that are made during the service, insights given during that time, that make total sense for where I'm at, but they might not make sense to anyone else in the same way, because they are at a different place in their walk.  Some services there can be a dozen or more such "insights and coincidences"... So it's the Spirit's anointing on the planning, and on the speaking, and on the hearts of those listening... because sometimes it's words in a song, sometimes it's a scripture used somewhere else in the service, and often it will be several statements made in the main message.   There are other indicators as well, but that's one of the main ones.   Tears are generally a good indicator for me, that the Spirit is doing some deep ministering in my heart as well, and He can do this instantly, it's not through manipulation, or emotionalism.   So it's a dynamic combination of what's going on in the service, as well as where each person is at, that only the Holy Spirit can orchestrate.  So, each person's job is to be obedient with the role they have, and to listen and obey to what the Spirit is putting on their heart to share, choose, read, sing, play, whatever their involvement might be, and give Him the glory!

An example would be as I'm planning an extended worship time for Good Friday, I was working on arranging songs for several 30-60 minute sets, and then for one of the sets, started incorporating a devotional, a Messianic antiphonal reading based on Psalm 22 that I put together over last Lent.  The 2 dovetailed together in a way I could not have orchestrated without pulling my hair out.   I was stunned at how beautifully they flowed together with very little effort, the order of songs (each set has a key theme, and there were about 15 songs in this set).  After I originally selected the songs for the set and put them in an intellectual order, I later re-arranged them somewhat by what key we'd be using, and by how they flowed together as I actually played them.   So, last night as I pulled up the devotional from last year, and realized it was 5 pages long, my original plan to read it straight through at the beginning of the set changed.  As I worked on integrating it into the songs, it was amazing to see how the 2 flowed together.  I would say that was the power of the Spirit helping me, since I hadn't looked at the Psalm 22 devotional in almost a year.   The next thing He helped me with was incorporating the full Isaiah 53 chapter into the devotional and therefore into the worship service as well.  So I'm just amazed, now I have a devotional and a worship set that integrates Ps. 22/Christ's statements He made on the cross/Isaiah 53 and about a dozen worship songs focused on Jesus and His amazing love as we experience it through His sacrifice on the cross.    That wasn't my amazing abilites as writing was not my forte =), so I'm thanking the Spirit for His help.

Now, I have no clue how He'll use this time of worsip next Friday (we're focusing on ministering to the lost and broken over Passover weekend), but I've been encouraged already through planning it and seeing His leading in that.   One testimony we received a few months back when we did a similar extended time of worship, was from a woman in her 40's that had grown up in a very conservative church, and had since shifted to a much more charismatic stream, that the hymns/music we shared brought healing to her because they ministered to her, and reminded her in a positive way of the church she had grown up in, even though there had been lots of struggles and pain related to that.  So, we just be obedient, and trust He is directing our thoughts and choices in ways that only He can do =) to bring Him glory, and through that He often ministers in ways that we have no clue about, and brings healing and through it.

Hope that makes sense in a I Cor. 2  way =)

Preaching the Word, means preaching Christ, since Christ is the Word.  The Word made flesh.  When Christ is missing from the message, then it seems  the word has not really been preached.  But preaching the Word in spirit and in truth is not dependant upon the reception of it.   Jesus said, I am the Way, the Truth and the Life, no one comes to the Father except through me.   The Word is True, the Truth, and Life, whether the listener crucifies Jesus again, or whether he comes on his knees with tears in his eyes.  The Word is the Good News, the gospel to those who believe and accept, but it is a warning to those who do not.

Pete, good to hear from you.  How about this one from the Institutes?

"It now remains to pour into the heart itself what the mind has received.  For the Word of God is not received in faith if it flits about at the top of the brain, but when it takes root in the depth of the heart that it might be an invincible defense to withstand and drive off all the strategems of temptation..."

It's my thought that while our tradition is great at Orthodoxy, and pretty good at Orthopraxis, the area where we really lag is the mediating one of Orthopathy...right emotion, right affection, right passion.  By this I mean not passing feelings so much as stable defining affections and passions, modelled after Gods own heart,  defined by the gospel, which motivate us into orthopraxis.  (Orthopathy, I would further say, is the domain of spiritual formation)  This issue of Orthopathy is one which our denomination has often struggled with, often minimizing the role of affectivity in the Christian life.  I also think it was a tangential but  unspoken element in our recent debates concerning third wave pentecostalism. 

"when it takes root in the depth of the heart."...A key goal in preaching is changed affections...which also means that the preacher's own affections must be deeply engaged.  I don't mean simple bombast, but a heart that is touched and moved by the beauty of Christ.  Pathos matters.  The puritan William Ames said "Next to the Scriptures, nothing makes a sermon more to pierce, then when it comes out of the inward affection of the heart without any affectation."  In other words, if our preaching is not pathetic in one sense, it will be pathetic in another sense.

Is a graceless Christ still Christ?   Christ is full-bodied, perfectly obedient, complete sacrifice, true God and true man.   Preaching grace without obedience is not preaching Christ.   Preaching obedience without grace is not preaching Christ. 

Different methods of preaching (the "how") are appropriate for different audiences, different circumstances, different times.  And they are effective in appropriate circumstances.   We may say sometimes, "well, I heard the word.. but I didn't like it... he made it sound pretty unattractive..."    or, we may say sometimes the converse, "what a speaker!   what stories!  what alliteration and humor!... but I had a hard time seeing Jesus in the message..."  or, "What a gospel!   What a Christ!  What a life to live!  and what a believer who presented it!!   I pray God I would die for it!" 

Bombast (Depending on how you define "bombast".)    may have been appropriate for some of the prophets, ie. Jeremiah, Elijah, Paul, at some times.   But underneath it, if you look for it, is the grace to accept the repentance which is called for.   We live in an age of "process" and  method (the how instead of the what), and often content and substance suffers as a result.  

Paul said he tried to be all things to all men, in order to bring them to Christ.   Some people find a circuitous subtle approach more appealing, and others find a straight-up blunt approach more appealing.   And sometimes we don't know which will be more effective, since the Lord works in mysterious ways.   In any case, the essential content and substance of the Word should not suffer, because otherwise the method won't matter.  And it all needs to be undergirded with faith and trust in God and his ways. 

Shucks, I forgot about Jonah.   I bet he was bombastic.   Didn't even want to preach to the people of Nineveh.   Hoped they wouldn't listen.   Can you imagine???   but God worked his miracle, and they repented.   Probably a subtle, friendly, apologetic preacher would not have worked;  it was not what God wanted.    We need to over methodolize less, and trust God more. 

Ortho (right) pathy (suffering)  affections, sickness.   But in this context, we might call it a right attitude of the heart.   In a sense though, what we really mean is being born again.... which means having a new heart, a heart which belongs to God,  a heart which desires to do God's will, to follow Him, to love Him, to love our neighbor.  

Orthodoxy - right beliefs  ... reformers often seem to indicate this comes first.

Orthopraxis - right living  ....  George Macdonald the author and CS Lewis hero hinted that sometimes this comes first.

Orthopathy - right attitude.  ....  born again?  

thanks Jeff...  our inner man =) our inner being =), the eyes of our hearts...the spiritual senses,  good stuff...  hmmm... i'm going to keep reflecting on the nuances between emotions, passions, feelings and affections...  as there tends to be disdain for these types of sentiments, and the intellect aka the cerebral per Pete,  is instead highly regarded, and almost idolized...  so, theoretically, should there be a balance?  

very confirming as John mentioned our new heart, and I've been wrestling w. our (reformed tradition) over emphasis of Jer. 17:9 (wicked heart)  and Is. 64:6 (deeds are filthy rags), instead of emphasizing that we are new creations in Christ, and we have been given a new, good heart.   That Jesus purifies our acts and makes them beautiful, clean, fine bright linen worthy of the wedding garment for His Bride.  and as I'm re-reading Richard Foster's book "Celebration of Discipline"..

But, Jeff, I would be interested in further explanation of why you think orthopathy was a tangential, yet unspoken element regarding the 3rd wave pentecostal discussion/report...  what do you mean by that?

again, thx. for taking the time and sharing your perspectives on this =)

Last night we were at an event which celebrated "friends" who are people with special needs, four in wheel chairs, and others with severe communication problems, cerebral palsy, brain damage, etc.   They all participated in putting on a Palm Sunday program, along with their mentors, who are their friends.  At the beginning, one individual not necessarily special needs, indicated he had been born again 15 years ago, but had been walking with one foot in Christ's will and one foot in the "world".  Six months ago, he had a renewal, which I would call a sanctification awakening.   And he was pretty happy!   It changed his perspective!   He now believed in healing.   In the overwhelming work of the Spirit!  

Bev, What I meant by that was just that the CRC, at least historically, has been not just a theological community or an ethnic community, but also what I guess you could call an "emotional community".  We have a particular emotional stamp, and Pentecostalism tends to have a much different emotional stamp.  I think that we have struggled with the movement not only because of specific theological issues but more generally on this basic emotional/emotive level, as it plays itself out in worship, etc...that's all.

John, praise God for what he's doing in your friend!

Pete,To bring the conversation back around to preaching, I think that our own  responses kind of reflect the "appreciative inquiry" mode of reflection.  There's really two questions...what true preaching of the word is, and what it does, or should do.  In one sense pure preaching of the word would probably be defined by the confessions as emphasizing the doctrines of grace, and we could simply add to that careful exegesis, understanding of where it falls in redemptive history, etc...and yet I've sometimes preached sermons like that and they seem to have "fallen from the pulpit like a wingless duck" as one person puts it...so on the other hand preaching is an event that involves speakers and listeners and the whole spiritual circuit board has to be considered.   Is your question what it is in itself, or what its desired outcome is?

Pete,

Dovetailing on what you've posted, the fact that emotions and feelings can be false or misguided is one basic reason why people say "see, we can't trust them", neglecting the fact that thinking processes can also be false or misguided. 

Part of it, I think goes back to the question if emotions and feelings are cognitive or non-cognitive, if they are just nonrational biochemical firings that happen to us, or if they are actually a form of thought.  Matthew Elliot has a great book called "Faithful Feelings: Rethinking Emotion in the New Testament" where he analyzes the state of the debate and shows that the older view, that emotions are contrary to thought, does not hold up all that well and that many emotion theorists see emotion as cognitive.  W Jay Wood who has taught at Calvin, says it this way "emotions and moral virtues are to our cognitive life what rudders are to an airplane...they are part of the thinking apparatus itself.  if they don't function properly, our cognitive life doesn't function properly.  So whether or not we function intellectually in as complete a way as we generally think desirable hinges on whether our emotional and moral natures are mature."

Rather than putting emotions and feelings above questioning, a cognitive view of emotion does the very opposite.  Emotions and feelings can and should be "quizzed", just like any other idea that pops into our heads, to see if they are valid or not.  On the flip side, though, they can also be valued and not simply discounted. 

Bev,

It is a question of what "kind" of Christ we are presenting, but do you think that it's equally about the *kind of knowledge* of this Christ that we are after?  What, after all, is a Biblical view of knowing?  It isn't just an abstract knowledge, but a wholistic knowing that engages the whole person.  James 2...James writes "you believe that there is one God...Good!  Even the demons believe that and shudder".

I think of two sermons of Jonathan Edwards where he talks about the distinction between types of knowing.  In the one "True Grace Distinguished from the Experience of Devils", on this verse, he notes that the devil has a very extensive knowledge of the subject of theology, becuase he was educated in the best theological seminary in the universe, the seventh heaven.  As one writer puts it "he is well aware of Jesus in his capacity as the savior of humankind and thus aqauinted with the whole plan of redemption.  He is well informed of the affairs of the world beyond and a remarkable exegete of the Holy Scriptures"  Edwards is riffing here, but he makes his point.  "the devil is orthodox, he belives in the true scheme of doctrine, he is no Deist, Socinian, Arian, Pelagian or Antinomian, the articles of his faith are all sound, and in them he is throughly established."  But this knowledge burns him, he hates it and is opposed to it. 

Contrast this with the other type of knowing that Edwards talks about in "A Divine and Supernatural Light" and a few other places.  He says "there is a difference between having an opinion that God is holy and gracious, and having a sense of the loviness and beauty of that holiness and grace.  There is a difference between having a rational judgement that honey is sweet, and having a sense of its sweetness.  A man may have the former that knows not how honey tastes, but a man  can't have the latter unless he has an idea of the taste of honey in his mind...there are two kinds of knowledge of the things of divinity, speculative and practical, or in other terms, natural and spiritual.  The former remains only in the head.  No other facutly but the understanding is concerned in it.  It consists in having a rational knowledge of the things of religion, without any special illumination of the Spirit of God.  The latter rests not entirely in the head, or in the speculative ideas of things, but the heart is concerned in it, and it principally consists in the "sense of the heart".  The mere intellect, without the heart, the will or the inclination is not the seat of it.  And it may be called not only seeing, but feeling or tasting."

Dane Ortlund, commenting on Edwards sermon says "HIs point is that objective, factual, informattion based head knowledge is to be sure vitally necessary for true Christian living and experience.  It cannot be ignored.  Yet it is inadequate of itself.  Christian faith that consists only of facts and not of enjoyment of those facts is not Christian faith.  The divine light is an utterly new pleasure in God.  It is a matter of the affections, which today we would probably call the emotions, though we must be discerning as we do so."  Perhaps this connects to what you say about the "spiritual senses", which Edwards would call "the sense of the heart".

Here's my question...can we just teach orthodoxy and assume that orthopathy (or orthopraxis) will happen (which has been our default mode), or do we have to go beyond that and specifically talk about orthopathy?  How do we do this without alienating people or reducing the concept to mere "warm fuzzies"?

I Know I am late to this discussion but when I read Bev's comment 

" when i share on something that is in the orthopathy realm ie the emotions, spiritual gifts of prophecy, visions, dreams, praying in tongues, high praise, in the conservative tradtion, I get slammed, the responses often astound me (just letting you know, it doesn't go over very well) .   It is resisted, it is viewed as pagan, from the enemy, it is viewed with disdain, scoffed at, terms such as "scary" "dangerous" "weird" are used, and it's almost considered heresy.  I wish I could say I was joking, but I'm not." 

I thought how true. we have cut ourselves off from so much of the work of the Spirit. 

Several years ago I met a young man who told me he was a prophet. At the time my silent response was "no you are not, God does not do that anymore" Now there was true arrogance on my part, as though I could tell God what he does and does not do. The young man told me he does not tell very many people that he is a prophet because of the response he gets. He also said it is a gift that must be handled carefully because the Devil will try to emulate the Spirit and give false messages.

In the next few months I felt God calling me to write a sermon on Jonah. I looked at my calendar and saw no need to write that message. I did not need it. I planned to write it sometime I just pushed it off. Later I had what could best be called an interesting week where a number of very strange things had happened in my life. That Sunday I met that young man again. He looked at me and smiled, then asked "is God doing anything in your life lately?" OK he had my attention I had just come through one of the strangest weeks in my life. Being the sceptic my answer was "define lately."

He said, " In the last few days." I answered "maybe."

"I have a message from God for you" he said, "You need to be a minister"

At this point I need to explain that I have a liscense to exhort, but am a far cry from a pastor. I said to him "No, God does not want me to be a minister every time I have moved in that direction the door has been firmly slammed shut."

He tilted his head to one side and I could see he was upset that I did not think he had a message for me from God. Then he said "It has something to do with Jonah."

Ah, Jonah, the unwritten sermon. That was an eye opening experience. I had not listened to God telling me he wanted a message written and God actually sent a prophet to tell me you have your priorities wrong here and when I want a message written, write it.

The young man made one more statement that puzzled me for the next five years. I will not quote it in an open forum, but just the other day it came to me in a flash. He told me the congregation the message on Jonah was for but I never was called to preach there. God found someone else to do what I did not do.

This forum is on preaching and I tell this story because true preaching is bringing the message that God gives in the place where God calls it to be given. As a denomination we have become too cerebral and are missing the empowering work of the Spirit.

Communal worship is different than individual....   I like almost everything, in its context, and in a good proportion.   I like clapping with some songs, although I tend not to do it myself-I don't mind if others do it, but clapping would often be better if people learned to clap on the off-beat so that we can still hear the words of the songs.   I don't mind people raising their hands, and I don't mind people assenting to certain statements and prayers with an "Amen" or clapping of praise agreement, but I have also sometimes found it distracting, and sometimes disturbing or removing the train of thought.   When you get more used to it, it is less distracting.  I love the various instruments, but sometimes the brass drowns out the words too much, and even sometimes drums and electric guitars are too loud, and thus destroy the worship and the message of the song.  These are mere outward things, and sometimes the Spirit simply moves people in ways they cannot really control, but in other situations these outward vibrant actions and sounds simply become part of the cultural norm of a church worship, at times  better, and at times worse than a more reserved quiet intense participation.  

When clapping, and dancing, and bands, and "Amens" become part of the normal church culture, will they retain the joy and purpose they originally had? 

As you hinted, reverence is also important... how we maintain a joyful, exhuberant, vibrant reverence....   witness to God, not first of all to ourselves.... God gave us His Spirit, and our emotional capacity... which should witness to God, to his grace, to his commands, to his awesomeness.  Sometimes that means to let go, other times to hold back.   

We should not limit what God does not limit. 

One person's joy is sometimes another person's sorrow....   One person rejoices in a new birth, which reminds the next person of a recent death and loss....  

Consider also family worship time as a time to "let go"!   A time when there will be less conflict of emotions, and more control of distractions... more opportunity to demonstrate joy and sorrow. 

Is there a place in worship for destroying the "four hundred prophets of Baal"?   (as elijah did?) 

Back to preaching the word.   There seems to be a formal aspect to it, and an informal aspect.   We think of preaching the word formally  on sundays in a church group setting.   But we can also think of the preaching that goes on between members of the body of christ, the preaching of the gospel by missionaries wherever they might be, or the preaching of parents to their children, (and occassionally of children to their parents...).   

I think of this:  "Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in[a] the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”  

"

Galatians 1:8
But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned!
 Galatians 1:9
As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned!
  Galatians 1:11
  I want you to know, brothers, that the gospel I preached is not something that man made up.

Acts 8:4
 Those who had been scattered preached the word wherever they went.