This past week I learned from a brother of this Twitter thread by Mike Leake challenging preaching and the pulpit as the center of church gatherings: I’ve often heard something akin to this: “preaching is the most important thing that happens on a Sunday morning. That is why the pulpit is guarded, that is why it is central in our architecture, etc.” I’m not convinced of this… + https://t.co/CrlK2dtSol — Mike Leake (@mikeleake) August 25, 2021 This thread and the conversation it triggered with this brother reminded me of the following letter I wrote a couple of years ago to the home church I was gathering with at the time. In the letter, using 1 Corinthians 14 as my main frame of reference, I push back (similar to Leake in the Twitter thread above) on our traditional evangelical tendency to center our gatherings on teaching. The bottom line is this: while our modern evangelical expectation of a church gathering is more akin to going to a sit-down restaurant where a professional ...
As the people of God, we must hold to apostolic tradition (2 Thessalonians 2:15, 3:6) but reject human tradition (Colossians 2:8). Jesus criticized the religious leaders of His day for making void the word of God for the sake of their tradition (Matthew 15:6). And He said they did this in many ways (Mark 7:13b). We are not immune to this error today. This blog exists to test (1 Thessalonians 5:21) our modern Christian traditions against Scripture to discern where we might have done the same.