Pastoral ministry – Page 54

Category: Pastoral ministry

Eating the flesh of Joseph Prince

27 November 2009 blogpastor 15 Comments

(This post is re-published so that other citations made elsewhere in the web in reference to this post can be read in its full and proper context. I have also added related posts that I think are helpful for further reading.)

Y Joeph Prince preaching es I have descended to the tabloid sewers for the title of this post. No this is not a post about new covenant cannibalism. But would you have taken a second look if the title were, “Dear pastors and preachers….” or “what pastors and preachers can learn from Joseph Prince”? Make no bones about it, I took this from the cliched analogy of eating the flesh and leaving the bones aside, when people are advised not to throw away the whole package just because of something they are doubtful about, but to take what is edible and edifying and discard what is personally indigestible.

Joseph Prince’s “Destined to reign”

Dr Gordon Wong who is the Bishop William F Oldham Professor of Old Testament at Trinity Theological College and an ordained minister of the Methodist Church in Singapore, had written a review of Joseph Prince’s book. On the whole it was positive though there were a few concerns he had. But he had gracious and good things to say about Joseph Prince’s teaching on grace. To read his whole review, go HERE. Each pastor and preacher has to discern for himself what he can “eat” of Joseph Prince’s teaching on grace and law.

Joseph Prince’s preaching

But it is in methodology, not theology, that is the focus of my post, in particular, preaching and teaching the Word. Many would agree with me that the magnetic attraction of New Creation Church is Joseph Prince and his preaching. Every Sunday can be a hassle because of the parking; and the queueing and the overflow video rooms, and yet people turn up in droves. The worship and music is equal to many other megachurches. My conclusion is that what stands out is his anointed, interesting and liberating preaching of grace.

More indicatives and much less imperatives

There are at least two things we can learn from JP as pastors and preachers. I think the first is that we need to preach more sermons in the indicatives and less in the imperatives. Too many sermons in our pulpits focus on the ‘what we must do’ (imperatives) rather than ‘who Christ is and what he has done for us’(indicatives). We assume that the foundations of understanding of the gospel have already been laid and that people see how those liberating truths are linked with our everyday struggles and temptations. But this is such a fatal assumption. We do not need to preach on these, we think, so we concentrate on the imperatives: the what, whys, and especially the hows of all the demands and commands of the word of God. So people get an overdose of what is required of them, and constant reminders of what they often fail to do and live up to. End result: sense of defeat, failure, feeling hypocritical, discouragement, and frustration about living out the faith.

The tragedy is that in some quarters they like it when the preaching is tough on the hearer and brings him to deep remorse and self-loathe. Yes give it to us preacher, we deserve a good forty minus one scourging! Such an approach is just self-defeating and unknowingly pastors and preachers are creating a performance and failure mentality in the congregation. The members constantly feel joyless, defeated, frustrated, disillusioned and the happy Christian life seems a mirage in a spiritual desert, because they are reminded every week that they are not up to God’s standard.

We can eat the flesh of Joseph Prince and preach more sermons that exalt who God is and what he has done for us, and what we have and are as a result of our faith in Him. How about three messages a month that is predominantly ‘indicative’ and one that is ‘imperative’; more promises and less commands? Do this to redress old imbalances slanted towards ‘imperatives’. To get more clarity about the indicatives and imperatives of preaching read an extract from the professor of preaching from Fuller Seminary, Ian Pitt Watson. Go HERE to a previous post I wrote in Jan 2008 and re-published recently.

Inspire faith, hope and love

The second thing we can do is to deliberately seek to inspire faith, hope and love in our preaching. Joseph Prince knows the audience well and he is keenly aware of what they need. I remember a few pastors asking one of our friends husband why he attends New Creation Church, and he gave us an lightning bolt of an answer. He said, “I’ll be frank with you guys, so don’t get offended. Do you know how torturous it is sit through the sermons you all preach. Every time I hear a sermon, I feel the worse for it, more discouraged and defeated and a failure. I work through the week and am so stressed and discouraged and worried over my job challenges and instead of getting encouraged, you guys give me greater discouragement. When I go to NCC, every week I get uplifted, inspired and more hopeful.”

Jesus himself understood the multitudes and he too often preached to inspire hope and faith. His toughest messages were reserved for the people steeped in hypocrisy, but when he speaks to the common man, he preached hope, solutions, encouragement of a kingdom and God of forgiveness, unconditional fatherly love, provision, kindness, peace and joy.

Eat the flesh of Joseph Prince and go and do likewise: go inspire faith and hope in God especially in these times of bleak, dismal future. One way we can catch the essence is to read and listen to his stuff with an eye to his methodology. Read his daily devotional which gives that constant reminder of what is needed for the congregation in terms of its encouraging slant. Too many of us are too analytical and major on analyzing the problems and focus too little on the Great Solution, the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, the indicatives of preaching.

Be yourself but do not ignore underlying principles

Of course each preacher is unique and has his own style, substance and strengths. There is only one Rony Tan; one Lawrence Khong; one Kong Hee and one Joseph Prince. And there is only one unique YOU. What we can do is to see the underlying principles at work in this transformational model of preaching and apply them diligently and discerningly, and serve out the Word in our own differing capacities, styles and strengths.

Epigram Pte Ltd: creativity and generosity

25 November 2009 blogpastor 6 Comments

Lord thank you for your provision

It was a chance meeting at my mum’s funeral. It was something like Ruth in Boaz’s fields: “As it turned out, she Lord, thanks for Edmund Wee found herself working in a field belonging to Boaz..” (Ruth 2:3). Edmund Wee, founder and owner of design company Epigram Pte Ltd was there to offer condolences. His family and my wife’s were next door neighbours and family friends for decades. He had just won the prestigious President’s Design Award for 2008, and I knew he published annual reports for companies. But I did not know how well the company was doing until I checked out his website after he offered to do pro bono design work for the church. I was blown over and very impressed.

When I shared with the leadership they too were pleased. Edmund is known for his generosity but I never knew he was creative too. When the designs came, I liked the originality and creativity of the logo idea that they proposed to us. Our old logo was the winner of a church competition and it has served its time. Now its time for the new one to mark a new chapter in the church’s life. The new look was unique, clean-cut and elegant. I loved it staightaway. They did designs for stationery and signage and other stuff as shown above.

The new church logo had many doves in flight, forming an 8, a significant number in our church’s history, because at its first baptism 8 were baptized on the 8th of August (eighth month) on the 8th anniversary of Singapore’s independence. In the Bible the number 8 symbolizes salvation and new beginnings and resurrection. It all fits and makes sense.

Indicatives and imperatives of the gospel

19 November 2009 blogpastor 3 Comments

Understanding the indicatives and the imperatives will help anyone identify what is effective and empowering preaching and teaching of the gospel. This is something many believers and preachers miss. Their criteria of good preaching hinges too much on peripheral issues of structure and style. What is crucial is the content. It distinguishes us from the professional motivational speakers, religious gurus and politicians.

Nowadays there are a great deal of “How to…” messages which give instructional, moralistic, practical, Readers Digest type advice albeit with a Christian makeover. While I admit there is a place for this, the diet of God’s people has to be balanced with apostle Paul ’s order of indicatives(what God has done for us) before imperatives(what we therefore ought to do in response).

Most churches in Singapore preach the imperatives and the result is that Christians may mistakenly or subconsciously think that Christianity is another set of do’s and don’ts like Buddhism, or Islam: a moralistic religion with pragmatic, adaptable and logical rules and advice for living.

One of the more insightful succinct books I have read on preaching is “A Primer for Preachers” by Ian Pitt-Watson, a Professor of Preaching at Fuller Theological Seminary. I particularly like his emphasis that preaching the Good News is founded on, and driven by the ‘indicatives’ (who God is and what He has done). Here is an extract:

What is preaching? It is procalmation, not just moralizing. It is Good News, not just good advice; it is gospel, not just law. Supremely, it is about God and what he has done, not just about us and about what we ought to do. Logically and theologically(though by no means always chronologically) preaching is about God before it is about us; it is about what God has done before it is about what we ought to do. Our self-understanding must flow from our understanding of God. When we speak of what we ought to do(as of course we must, our moral imperatives must issue from our knowledge of what God has done. Otherwise our imperatives are no more than pious moralizings that refuse to face the facts of life: “When I want to do the right, only the wrong is within my reach”(Rom 7:21). Or else, if the moral exhortations are seriously intended and seriously attempted, the consequence is simply to compound in our hearers their burden of guilt when, inevitably, they make the same desolating discovery that Paul made: “The good which I want to do, I fail to do; but what I do is the wrong which is against my will”(Rom 7:19). Only through what God is and has done can I be what I ought to be and do what I ought to do. What I cannot do for myself, “what the law could never do, because [my] lower nature robbed it of all potency, God has done.” At heart, preaching is about what “God has done: by sending his own Son in a form like that of our own sinful nature”(Rom 8:3). That is the gospel.

The practical consequences of these theological conclusions are of immense importance to the preacher. Now that the “what?” question has been faced, the “how do you dos” of preaching can be answered with more confidence. If preaching is to be proclamation and not mere moralizing, then the ethics of our preaching must be rooted in the theology of our preaching. We cannot make sense of who we are and what we ought to do until first we know who God is and what he has done in Jesus Christ. The Christian ethic, severed from its theological roots, is no more than a new law, more demanding and therefore more burdensome than the old. That is why it is always so clear in the letters of Paul that the ethic flows out of the theology. We can be what we ought to be and do what we ought to do only because of what God is and has done. The theology empowers the ethic; it does not just accompany it with an encouraging, heavenly-father pat on the back. For every imperative of the Christian ethic there is an empowering indicative of Christian theology. In the Sermon on the Mount the imperatives are indeed there and inescapable in their demand. But they are more than imperatives; they are descriptions of life in the kingdom of God, indicatives of that kingdom. Perhaps that is why the Sermon begins, not in the imperative mood speaking of how things ought to be, but in the indicative mood speaking of how things are. “How blest are those who know their need of God; the kingdom of heaven is theirs”(Matt, 5:3). This is how things are in the kingdom that in Christ is already in our midst. People are happy(makarios) with the special kind of happiness that comes from God alone. The most surprising people are happy in the most surprising circumstances. They are not told to be happy or trying to be happy. They just are happy. The blessed indicative of the Beatitudes precedes and empowers the demanding imperatives of the kingdom that are to follow.

“Don’t preach!” means “Don’t just tell me what to do; help me to do it.” That is precisely what authentic biblical preaching is all about. It is about action enabled by insight, imperatives empowered by indicatives, ethics rooted in theology, “what we ought to do” made possible by what God has done. (p21,22)