Last Shot

If I say, “I will not mention him, or speak any more in his name,” there is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot.
- Jeremiah 20:9 ESV

2012 is the year of the Dragon

So it’s like fire in my bones

And I’m about to let it go

Truth so hot

That it’s got your boy spittin’ flames

And let the Word of God

Get “@you” like a Twitter name

I wasn’t tailored to snatch the mic

Swiftly like ‘Ye did

I’m bangin’ out life sentences

Like a Rikers bid

So follow me to be freed

From your life of crime

Catch it if you can

Before you’re out of time

 

He took me from sin-sick

And made me even ill-er

Went from a stone cold murderer

To a natural born killer

Gave me a clean heart

With a dangerous mind

And a Canon full of bullets

To put in every line

Pumpin’ hot 16’s into my voice stream

Hit everything within earshot – never missin’

Take your crooked lines, pull the trigger

Time to lay ‘em straight

Just like your heartbeat…

‘Cause it's death today

 

Taking aim on dead men

Like it’s the Walking Dead

But they need shots to the heart

Not holes in the head

Minds darkened;

Kick-started from the brain stem

Couldn’t find their way out with a flashlight

(Or even two of ‘em)

So I light 'em up in the chest

‘Cause their vests are defective

Self-righteous pride can’t save you

From the heat that I’m packin’

And if you pull your piece

Then peace be still and just let it happen

I’ll be at peace with my Maker

When that choppers’s clappin’

 

So let me clear my throat

And speak a little louder

‘Cause I don’t think you can hear me

Over all of that firepower

Lord, make my narrow straight

And may my shots stay true

He’s got you in the Cross…

And God is still good

For if I preach the gospel, that gives me no ground for boasting. For necessity is laid upon me. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!
- 1 Corinthians 9:16 ESV

Soli Deo Gloria,
Shon

Posted via email from THE CENTER (ROOM 116)

Black & Blue: Francis Grimke’ on the Afro-American Pulpit and Race Elevation

Hard to believe that this sermon is from around 1896...

What you will see below is an excerpt from the book, The Faithful Preacher. It is a sermon by an African-American minister, Francis Grimke’, where he deals with the issues that plague the African-American religious experience in terms of Christianity. Amazingly (as well as unfortunately), this message is extremely prophetic and timely. It appears as though the pastor’s warnings have gone largely unheeded by our community, with the rise various forms of religious ideologies that seem to have more traction in the present day climate of Christianity (i.e. Prosperity Gospel, Black Liberation Theology, etc.). I post this with the hope and prayer that all will be challenged and convicted by what they read here, regardless of color or status…

Soli Deo Gloria,

Shon 

If we turn now and examine carefully the character of the ministrations of the Afro-American pulpit, its three leading characteristics will be found to be emotionalism, levity or frivolity, and a greed for money.

First, it is emotion. The aim seems to be to get up an excitement, to arouse the feelings, to create an audible outburst or emotion, or, in the popular phraseology, to get up a shout to make people “happy.” In many churches where this result is not realized, where the minister is unable by sheer force of lung power and strength of imagination to produce this state of commotion, he is looked upon as a failure. Even where there is an attempt to instruct, in the great majority of cases this idea is almost sure to assert itself and become the dominant one...

 The second characteristic of the Afro-American pulpit is levity, frivolity, a lack of seriousness. There is entirely too much place given to making fun, to joking, to exciting laughter. The minister too often becomes a jester, a buffoon, a clown. Thus all solemnity is destroyed, and the House of God in many cases becomes a mere playhouse for the entertainment or amusement of the people. This has become so prevalent in many of our churches that the people have come to expect it with the same regularity as they expect to hear preaching. If the minister after he has preached before closing does not make a fool of himself and set the people grinning, a sense of disappointment and incompleteness is felt. Again and again I have sat in churches and have been saddened and disgusted by what I have seen in this direction. And the most serious part of it all is that this levity comes at the very time when it is most baneful. If it came before preaching, it would not be quite so bad, though even then it would be a thing to be regretted. But coming as it does after the sermon, the effect is to entirely obliterate whatever good impression has been made and thus to defeat the very purpose for which the church has been organized. Sometimes I have said, what is the use of preaching—why not introduce the buffoon, the clown, at once, and when he is through bring the service to a close? 

The third characteristic of the Afro-American pulpit is a greed for money. Everything seems to be arranged with reference to the collection. The great objective point seems to be to reach the pocketbooks of the people. Here is where the greatest amount of interest is manifested; here is where there is the greatest concentration of energy. However tame the services may be up to this point, here everybody seems to wake up, and new life seems to be infused into everything, as if to say, “Now is the time when the real business for which we have met will begin.” There is no harm, of course, in raising money. The church cannot get along without it. Its just debts must be paid; its obligations must be met. The complaint is not against raising money but against the abuse of this, against the undue prominence that is given to it in the Afro-American pulpit. It overshadows every other interest. The ability to raise money is more highly esteemed than the ability to preach the Word effectively. The greatest financier, the most successful money gatherer, receives the best place and is most highly esteemed by those in authority. The result is, the church is rapidly becoming a mere institution for raising money, with preaching, singing, and praying being only incidental, and the ministry is rapidly degenerating into a mere agency for begging. The perceived problem is not how to elevate the people, how to bring them into the Kingdom of Christ, how to save them from their sins and sanctify them, but how to get their money.

A ministry whose chief characteristics are emotionalism, frivolity, and greed for money is not a ministry to inspire hope and is not a source of strength but of weakness. And this is the charge I make against the Afro-American pulpit today. It is not living up to its opportunities; it is not doing the work that it ought to do. It is not putting the emphasis where it ought to be put. It is frittering away its energies upon things of minor importance, to the neglect of those things that are fundamental and without which we cannot hope for any permanent prosperity. And this is why as a people we have made so little progress morally. The fault is due very largely to the character of our pulpit ministrations. If there had been less effort made at emotional effects and less jesting and less prominence given to finances and more time and attention given to the great fundamental principles of religion and morality (the bedrock upon which character is built) and to the patient, painstaking instruction of the people in the practical duties of life, the outlook would be very much brighter than it is today. The moral plane upon which the masses of our people move is confessedly not very high and in view of their past antecedents could not be expected to be high. But if they had had the proper kind of instruction from the pulpit, there is every reason to believe that they would stand very much higher today than they do. The thing most to be deplored in our condition today is not our poverty, nor our ignorance, but our moral deficiencies, and for these deficiencies the Afro-American pulpit is in a very large measure responsible. The very fact that our people have had a long schooling in slavery, the tendency of which has been to blunt the moral sensibilities and to degrade the whole moral nature, makes it all the more important that special attention should be given to their development in this direction and renders the character of much of our pulpit ministration all the more reprehensible.

In palliation of this it has been said, I know, that the people prefer the noise and excitement that come from ranting and bluster. There may be some truth in this, but the mission of the pulpit is not to cater to the vitiated tastes of the people and is not to give them what they want but what they ought to have—to lift up a standard for them, to set before them right and wrong, whether it accords with their tastes or not. The plea that the people prefer a certain thing can never be an excuse or justification for giving them that thing unless it is good in itself, unless it would be beneficial to them. The problem that the Afro-American pulpit has to solve is not what will be most congenial to the people but what will be most helpful to them; not what kind of preaching they like best but what kind of preaching will be the most effective in developing in them a true manhood and womanhood, in making them good fathers and mothers, good husbands and wives, good citizens and neighbors, what kind of preaching will yield the largest returns in purity, honesty, sobriety, sweetness, gentleness. And the pulpit that has the wisdom to answer this question intelligently and the courage to act out its convictions is the pulpit that we need and that we must have if “on steppingstones of our dead selves” we are “to rise to higher things” [Booker T. Washington].

Posted via email from THE CENTER (ROOM 116)

 

How to Kill and Be Killed 101: Teach the Gospel, Save the World!

"The fact of sin in Christ's scheme of redemption is fundamental and must be kept to the front. Men must not be allowed to forget the fact that they are sinners and that the wages of sin is death. This is a doctrine that men don't like to hear about. They know that they are sinners, but they try to forget it. This is why often they plunge into all kinds of frivolities in order to get away from the serious thought of sin and its fatal consequences. This is why, unfortunately, in order to comply with or not to offend that kind of sentiment, many pulpits have little or nothing to say about sin.

One thing we may be sure of: as this aspect of man's condition drops out of our preaching, things will steadily grow worse, and men will become more and more set in their evil ways. For if there is no such thing as sin, or no evil consequences to follow, then there is no reason why we shouldn't open all the floodgates of passions and evil inclinations and desires and let things go at full speed, no reason why we should not adopt as our philosophy of life the motto, 'Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.' It is to save men from that stupid, foolish delusion that Christ makes imperative in His plan of rescue the necessity of stressing, and stressing with ever-increasing emphasis, the fact of sin as man's most serious problem...

And here we are directed not only to teach but what we are to teach...

In this campaign for saving a lost world, for bettering conditions, the contents of this Book [the bible] must be carefully studied and taught, line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little, in season and out of season. Thus we should understand and see that careful provision is made, under compotent teachers, for the study of the Word of God...and yet how often we find men in our pulpits searching heaven and earth for something new to preach about, while this treasure-house of wisdom and knowledge, of things necessary to salvation, is neglected, passed by, and overlooked...They have preached on almost everything except Jesus Christ as the Lamb of God whose blood alone cleanses from sin. The thought of sin, from which we need to be saved, has largely dropped out of most of our preaching...

People attend the churches, but rarely are their consciences pricked. They attend the churches but hear little about their sins and shortcomings. They attend the churches, but their self-complacency is never disturbed by what they hear, or at least rarely. They hear and go away feeling no sense of lack on their part and no wish or desire to live more worthily than they are living. Divine unrest rarely stirs within them; no welling up of great and ennobling desires is awakened within them. The people listen and go away to gossip, to tattle, to keep on in their evil ways...

The question is often asked, what is to be the future of Christianity as it comes into competition with other religions and with Communism, Nationalism, Capitalism, and all antagonistic forces? To my mind there is absolutely no need to worry about that matter...The only thing that we need to be concerned about is to see that we carry out faithfully the instructions of our Lord; that we be true to the solemn trust committed to us; that we go on teaching His word, line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little, in season and out of season, and give ourselves no concern about its future. Its future is assured. God is behind it. It cannot fail. 

Let us stop worrying about the future of Christianity and get down to the hard work in carrying out the instructions of our Lord."

(Mark 16:15; 1 Peter 1:18-19; Romans 8:3-4; 1 Corinthians 1:17-24; Matthew 16:18; Revelation 1:17-18, 6:2; Zechariah 4:6-7; Daniel 2:34-35)

 Excerpts from Francis Grimke`, Christ's Program for the Saving of the World (February 28, 1936)

 

Soli Deo Gloria,

Shon

Posted via web from THE CENTER (ROOM 116)

How Will They Hear Without a Preacher?

 

Preaching has fallen on hard times. So suggests a report out of Durham University's College of Preachers. The British university's CODEC research center, which aims to explore "the interfaces between the Bible, the digital environment and contemporary culture," conducted the study to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the College of Preachers. The report is not very encouraging.
As Ruth Gledhill of The Times [London] reports, "Sermons, history shows, can be among the most revolutionary forms of human speech. From John Calvin to Billy Graham, preaching has had the power to topple princes, to set nation against nation, to inspire campaigners to change the world and impel people to begin life anew."
Indeed, preaching is the central act of Christian worship, but its great aim reaches far above merely changing the world. The preaching of the Word of God is the chief means by which God conforms Christians to the image of Christ. Rightly understood, true Christian preaching is not aimed only at this earthly life, but is the means whereby God prepares his people for eternity.
Yet, you wouldn't know this if you judged the importance of preaching by its place in many of today's congregations. Gledhill observes, "In many churches this most vibrant of moments has withered to little more than 20 minutes of tired droning that serves only to pad out the gap between hymns and lunch."
The withering of preaching is not uniform in all congregations and denominations. Evangelicals were most enthusiastic about preaching, while others registered less appreciation for the preached Word. Interestingly, Gledhill reports that "Baptists and Catholics were also more enthusiastic about the Bible being mentioned in sermons than were Anglicans and Methodists."
The Anglicans also expressed a desire to be entertained, rather then educated. The Rev. Kate Bruce, Fellow in Preaching and Communication at the CODEC center, said that "in a culture which values entertainment and likes stand-up, over a quarter [of respondents] said they want preaching to be entertaining, too."
Well, they will have to be quick about the entertainment. Many Anglicans indicated that they wanted the sermon to be less than ten minutes long. As Gledhill remarks, they might be willing to allow up to twenty minutes "if there was no 'waffle.'"
Perhaps the biggest question raised by the report is why so many British churchgoers (96.6%) said they "look forward" to the sermon. Ruth Gledhill comments:
In their report the Durham researchers admit to puzzlement that so many people looked forward to the sermons, and confess that more work was needed to find out why.
The report questions whether people look forward to the sermon so much for the content, the engagement, the entertainment, the theology or simply that it gives them time to switch off.
Time to switch off? According to the report, Britain has only 3.6 million "regular churchgoers" out of a population of over 60 million. That is, only about five percent of Britons even attend church services on any regular basis. Evidently, many of those who do attend "look forward" to a very short message from a preacher that entertains them.
England, of course, is the nation that once gave us preachers the likes of Charles Simeon, Charles Spurgeon, and Martyn Lloyd-Jones. Now, with the rare and blessed exception of some faithful evangelical churches, preaching has fallen on desperate times.
Some observers of British life now estimate that in any given week Muslim attendance at mosques outnumbers Christian attendance at churches. That means that there are probably now in Britain more people who listen to imams than to preachers.
This raises an interesting question: Is the marginalization of biblical preaching in so many churches a cause or a result of the nation's retreat from Christianity? In truth, it must be both cause and effect. In any event, there is no hope for a recovery of biblical Christianity without a preceding recovery of biblical preaching. That means preaching that is expository, textual, evangelistic, and doctrinal. In other words, preaching that will take a lot longer than ten minutes and will not masquerade as a form of entertainment.
Time and time again, God's people have been rescued by a recovery of biblical teaching and preaching. The right preaching of the Word of God is the first essential mark of the church. As the Reformers made clear, where that mark is absent, there is no church at all.
The study conducted for the College of Preachers is interesting, if also frightening. But little is gained from asking confused people what kind of preaching they want. The faithful preacher takes as his first and most sacred responsibility the charge to give the congregation the preaching it needs.

How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!” But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?” So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.   - Romans 10:14-17


Soli Deo Gloria,
Shon

Posted via web from THE CENTER (ROOM 116)