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Well we’ve finished up all the classes on Eleuthera for our Fall 2010 semester. Last night we closed up our last night of Church History in Rock Sound, and two weeks prior we finished our Preaching 101 course in James Cistern.
The class in JC was team taught by Dave Hawkins covering the majority of the content and then myself finishing up with the preaching labs during the second week. The students did a fantastic job, some of the best sermons that I’ve heard come out of our classes.
The primary goal is to help the preacher develop their entire message “from the text,” and not from their own opinions, cultural agendas, or preferences. This is the skill of Expository Preaching, and everyone in the class got an A for developing their message from the text. Although there is still work to be done on growing their preaching skills, they conquered one of the most difficult problems in modern preaching by standing on God’s Word alone.
The Church History course in Rock Sound went very well also. This course is more heavily weighted towards lecture, however I always seek to frame the events of church history around what Scripture teaches, so that as we track through the various happenings down through the ages, we can evaluate them from the Bible says and teaches.
Ultimately, the final challenge to the students is to begin developing a working definition to their “Christian” terms, by asking themselves, “What do I believe, about what I believe?” I also emphasize the need for modern/postmodern Christians to place Scripture as their primary authority with the traditions of the church helping guide interpretation, followed by the faculties of human reason and personal subjective experience.
Whether it is preaching, teaching, or pastoral ministry, Christians need to stand on the firm foundation of the Word of God. Yet we must accomplish that only through the humility of community involved interpretation that values that which Jesus handed down to the disciples; Christianity has a rich legacy that deserves our critical attention.