Does Your Church Believe in the Clarity of Scripture?

I’ve noticed in recent years that, although we can make good and well-intentioned ministry decisions, when combined with other good ministry decisions, these decisions produce a poisonous gas that threatens the wellbeing of our churches. In other words, the way we’ve chosen to work out the implications of our theological commitments can come at the expense of other theological commitments.

The question I’d humbly like you to ask is this: if you are involved as an elder of your church, do you believe in the clarity of Scripture? Or, for the rest of us, does your church believe in the clarity of Scripture? I don’t mean this in an “I’ve read the Westminster Confession” (or, at least, the first chapter, anyway) kind of way; I mean it in a James 2 “belief is evidenced in its fruit” kind of way.

Let me give a fairly common scenario. I want you to imagine a church where the following happens:

• The majority of preaching is done by theologically educated people. They might occasionally relax this a little and let student ministers preach.
• In the few times in the year when they don’t preach, the person preaching is usually ‘training for ministry’. Regardless of this, they generally preach during the holidays when there are a lot less people at church.
• The New Testament reading is the passage that the preacher is preaching on.
• The Old Testament reading is a passage that is alluded to or referenced by the New Testament passage. (This is assuming that the church in mind still does two Bible readings; I know many that now only do one).
• Because liturgy has been replaced by ‘informal liturgy’, other sentences or passages from Scripture are rarely read.
• The two Bible readings take four to five minutes to read in total.
• The sermon usually goes for 30-35 minutes.
• During the week, Bible study groups study the passage that the sermon is on.
• The minister preaching the series writes the Bible studies for the Bible study groups.
• Back in church, the preacher has the habit of praying before his sermon. Because of this, the service leader drops the habit (if it ever existed) of praying before the Bible is read. That is, the prayer for us to understand God’s word happens after the Bible is read, but before the sermon.

Don’t mishear me; some of these things are really good things to do, and some are good to do for a time. Some would be great if done a little differently.

Does this sound like your church at all? If so, my question for you is this: can we really say that this way of doing church really believes in the clarity of Scripture? The teaching office ought not to be set over and against the reading of Scripture—of course not—but my suggestion is that a church like this is in danger of doing precisely that. The minister’s sermon is driving nearly everything about the church’s Bible reading. We end up producing anaemic congregations—congregations who are dependent on their ministers for the word, and congregations who see so little of the word because the minister has narrowed their communal Bible reading to 10-15 verses a week.

Here are three starter suggestions for a way forward:

• Recover Bible reading in church. Can we really only find five minutes in a 90-minute service to hear the Bible read?
• If you write Bible studies for your congregation, only do it for a time—one or two terms a year.
• Stop praying at the beginning of sermons, and have someone pray before the Bible readings.

I have some other ideas, but what are your thoughts?

This article was originally published in The Briefing.