The (Now Here) Evangelical Crisis Cont'd

I was listening to a White Horse Inn interview between Michael Horton and Carl Trueman which they entitled "The Wages of Sin." Listen to it here.

It contained the following exchange:

We have massively downplayed the idea of the corporate worship in the church. We have emphasized the whole of life as worship, and I don’t have any problem with the whole of life as worship. But then they have relative-ized the corporate gathering of the saints which has become nothing more than to “have the Bible explained to us” rather than to understand the worship service as God speaking to us through His Word, speaking through His preacher, and the people responding in words of prayer and words of praise. I think the loss of the theology of the worship service has done a lot of harm in evangelical circles.

Do you think that is one of the reasons why there is such a reaction against preaching among some younger Christians? You know, “let’s just drop the preaching”…?

I think rubbish preaching has a lot to answer for. I also think that there is a loss of understanding of what is going on when the preacher preaches….when the preacher preaches, God is speaking in and through Him. Too many go to church thinking that what is going on is a one man Bible study – somebody standing up front explaining to me what this passage means. I don’t think preaching is ever less than that, but I do think it is more, it is much more than that. I think the Old Testament prophets are the analogy of the modern preacher. They are declaring the Word of God and when the Word of God goes out, Isaiah 55, it will not return to God empty. We don’t go to church expecting the Word of God to go forth with power any more. I think for too many people it is just a transfer of information, not a confrontation with the living covenant God.