The Third Discourseman
As a way of covering my own back, I’d like to state at the outset that the ideas in this post are ones I’ve only considered recently. I think they have enough merit to be considered, but I certainly wouldn’t die on any of the hills I’m about to make a stand on. So please, if you can spot any major flaws with what I’m saying, let me know!
With that out of the way, I am now going to take on the slightly strange task of trying to convince you (and myself) that there is spiritual danger lurking for the one who spends hours upon hours prepping a Bible study or talk or workshop or homegroup.
I should preface this by saying I would certainly affirm the converse; without a doubt it is possible to be under-prepared for a sermon or home group or Sunday school lesson. And while sometimes this is inevitable (we find ourselves in one of those weeks/months/years where everything feels chaotic and overwhelming, and nothing feels like it gets done to a satisfying standard), there are obvious underlying causes for concern if someone persistently makes little effort in preparing to teach God’s word, even when they have enough time to make it more of a priority.
After all, if someone really important, like your boss or prime minister or monarch gave you some instructions, I imagine you’d read them carefully, to make sure you interpret their instructions rightly (i.e. according to what the author actually wants of you) and carry them out properly. Likewise if someone really beloved, like your spouse or parent or closest friend sent you a heartfelt letter, again I imagine you wouldn’t skim read it. You’d look over it closely, savour every word, perhaps keep it so that you can read it again and again. And if you were tasked with relaying said instructions or words to someone else, you’d think about how to get things across clearly. So when we’re careless with God’s word, spending little time thinking about it and little time thinking about how we’re going to get what it says across to others, this has to be indicative of an underlying lack of love for, or fear of, God.
But surely there’s also an equal and opposite danger? I guess I’m not mainly thinking about time spent reading/meditating on a passage, praying it over etc. That is probably something you want to spend as much time as you can on. I’m thinking more about time spent writing the sermon after you’ve done this- you know what the passage says and now you’re working on getting the headings, the illustrations, the phrases just right. Or the time spent writing the Bible study, working on the right incisive questions in the right order that will split open both the passage and the study members, leaving both laid out before you, fully exposed. If you don’t spend a lot of time thinking about these things, then maybe you should and this blog is probably not for you. But there are some, admittedly small, circles where (I think thankfully) people do put a lot of time and effort into these sorts of things. I would not urge these people to spend less time on their word ministry, but I would urge them to consider what lies beneath their keenness, whether there might be a trap lurking for so-called ‘Bible-centred’ churches.
My reasoning as to why this might be dangerous is that we could be looking for the power to change hearts in the wrong place. Do we really think it is God, working by his Spirit through the Word, that changes people? Or do we side-line God, thinking that ultimately the killer blow will come from us delivering the right questions in the right order, or making the right points under the right headings with the right tone? I guess at the heart of what I’m wondering is whether when we say ‘We take the Bible seriously’, too often we actually mean ‘We take ourselves seriously’- whether really what we’ve done is promote our own brains, our own strategies, our own mechanisms and techniques for writing engaging talks/studies above the simple belief that the people we’re talking to (at least the ones that will listen well) are Christians, with the Spirit of God dwelling in them, who will hear Jesus’ voice when he calls to them.
As always, it is probably not so much a question of ‘how many hours’, but of ‘what sort of attitude’. But a good time-based diagnostic tool is to consider how the amount of time you spend writing the study/sermon compares to the amount of time you spend praying for it, and the people who will receive it. Or whether you spent more time rereading your talk than you did rereading the passage. This is a good indicator of what we think is really important, who we think is really behind the change- God or us. Don’t mishear me as saying we should definitely spend more time praying- I think the time praying probably should still be less than the time preparing, because we can keep our prayers short and to the point (Matthew 6:7-13). But it should still be there, and perhaps for you it should take up a higher percentage of your prep time than it currently does. Perhaps some of that time spent restructuring your talk for the tenth time could have been better spent reading the passage for the tenth time, or praying for the tenth time. Perhaps not- I guess that’s for you to work out…
The Four Discoursemen 