Well, I managed to stand at the front for 25 minutes or so and talk; Katrina said afterwards that it had a beginning, a middle and an end, and only one of each, so that was pretty good. In the end we had Philippians 1:12-18 as the reading, with the talk focussing on v18. I talked about why Paul had written this - the first time he was in Philippi he'd only been in jail a few hours before being supernaturally sprung, yet here he is under house arrest in Rome, and has been a prisoner for (probably) two years. In any event, Paul sees good coming out of this and rejoices to see Christ being preached. I emphasised that Paul is happy that Christ is preached, even by those with wrong motives, not that he is prepared to put up with false teaching. Then I talked about how easy it is for us to be consumers of church, picking and choosing among denominations and styles, and how this gets in the way of us rejoicing that Christ is being preached in so many different ways. Then I finished by saying that we are all church, so we should all be preaching Christ through our words, actions and attitudes, but that often we tend to preach a cuddly best-friend Christ, not a stumbling block Christ, or to preach about ourselves and our changed lives, rather than preaching the Gospel that changes other people's lives, or to preach the church that we belong to, or to preach morality and how we think people should behave; all of these things are important, but none of them are preaching Christ, and it is when Christ is preached that we can rejoice.
Anyway, that's the gist of it. I was meant to record it but I forgot to press the button on the CD recorder as I was getting up. A couple of people prayed afterwards and told me that it had challenged them to think about the way they do evangelism, so I hope that God was able to use what I said to do something helpful with them.
No comments:
Post a Comment