One point of disagreement with the article, seemingly small
but actually very large.
“The Bible says that God’s word was given to transform our
lives, not simply
to inform our lives,” he tells viewers. “It wasn’t given to
increase our knowledge,
but to change our lives."
This is NOT Either / Or , it is Both / And
Faith based on less than accurate knowledge is flawed
faith,
just as faith that makes no difference in life is flawed
faith.
Knowledge is foundational to faith or else just what do you
have ?
Does faith based on ignorance make any sense ?
You need both. And both are essential, like two wings,
or else a bird does not fly.
Billy
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Christian Post >
Church
& Ministries|Thu, Dec. 29 2011
09:36 AM EDT
Rick Warren to Tackle Biblical Illiteracy With '40 Days
in the Word'
Wel-known for starting
Bible
study campaigns that often become staples for churches around
the world, Pastor
Rick
Warren announced that Saddleback Church in Orange County
will begin a "40 Days in the Word"
study
next month to tackle biblical illiteracy.
Warren, whose bestselling book The Purpose Driven Life was
a accompanied by a “40 Days of Purpose” study for small groups, said in a video
introducing the new campaign that he has three goals for
“our entire church family.”
“First, I want you to learn to love the Word more than
anything else in your life, that you love it like you’ve
never loved it before. Then, learn the Word in a way that
you’ve never learned it before. And I want you to live the
word like you’ve never lived it before,” said Warren in the
short video on the church’s website.
“The Bible says that God’s word was given to transform our
lives, not simply to inform our lives,” he tells viewers.
“It wasn’t given to increase our knowledge, but to change
our lives.”
Warren said that when asked about which translation of the
Bible is best, he once told a man, “The best translation is
when you translate it into your life.” When he was told by
the man that he had a Living Bible translation, Warren
replied, “You ought to be a living Bible.”
He went on to say, “We are either testimonies for God or we
are testimonies for the evil one.”
"God says he want His word to dwell in our hearts. It’s a
journey that you are going to be glad that you came with me
on,” he concludes in the video.
Explaining the motivation behind the project, Warren
lamented on Wednesday during a year-end webcast that one of
the convictions he got this past year “is that Americans are
biblically illiterate.”
“They just don't know the Word of God ... Our parents'
generation knew the Word of God pretty well. My generation
knew a little bit. The next generation knows none of it.”
Warren is not without controversy for his purpose-driven
preaching methods, even within the Christian community. His
“life application” style of teaching has some pastors
saying Warren’s method is not biblically correct.
However, Warren recently explained his teaching methods in
an interview with Preaching Magazine. In the
interview discussing the 40 Days in the Word campaign, he
was asked about his approach to preaching, which most times
includes having every point of his sermon outline being a
statement of application.
Warren told the interviewer that “the deepest kind of
preaching is really life application preaching. I know
people say, ‘Well that's shallow preaching.’ Actually it's
much deeper. It's quite easy simply to do an exposition of a
book. I've done it. I once preached through the Book of
Romans; it took me two and a half years.
“I preached through many of the books of the Bible verse by
verse. That's actually the easiest kind of preaching there
is. I pull some commentaries off the shelf. I look at the
text; I explain the text; I apply the text; and that's
it...”
Warren continued in the interview: “Life application
preaching is not shallow; otherwise the Sermon on the Mount
is the shallowest sermon ever done, because it's 100 percent
life application preaching.
“Jesus started out by saying: Let Me tell you eight ways to
be happy. Blessed are you if you do this; blessed are you if
you do this. He says: Let Me give you six reasons to not
worry; and He goes into the six reasons to not worry. Then
He says: Let Me tell you about divorce: Don't do it. Let Me
tell you about anger: Don't do it. One life application
after another. Then He gets to the end and says: If you do
this, you're smart and you're wise. If you don't, you're
dumb.”
While some pastors say verse-by-verse teaching is the only
way to give sermons, Warren explained in the interview that
the opposite is true.
“Ecclesiastes 12:9-11 is, in my understanding, the clearest
explanation of a preaching style found in Scripture. You
certainly don't find anybody telling you how to do
verse-by-verse or book-by-book preaching in Scripture. It's not there. None
of the apostles were verse-by-verse preachers. Jesus wasn't,
Peter, Paul – nobody was,” he said.
Ecclesiastes 12:9-11 (NIV)
Not only was the Teacher wise, but he also imparted
knowledge to the people. He pondered and searched out and
set in order many proverbs. The Teacher searched to find
just the right words, and what he wrote was upright and
true. The words of the wise are like goads, their
collected sayings like firmly embedded nails-given by one
shepherd.
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...the sayings of the wise are sharp as goads, like
nails driven home...
New English Bible
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