Category Archives: Preaching

Modern Christians typically downplay or outright rejects the importance of public worship on the Lord’s Day. The most common variety justifies this rejection based on the “just me and Jesus” sort of thinking. This theology is nothing more than the Christianization of Western individualism. It cannot be squared with the intensely communal nature of biblical Christianity and therefore must be tossed on the heresy trash heap. The other, slightly rarer, variety downplays public worship in the name of organic Christianity. They will say, “The church is the people, not the steeple” or “we don’t go to church, we are the church!”  They are definitely onto something. The church isn’t merely a series of event but a family of believers under the spiritual discipline of elders. That being said, every family has routine events that strengthen the familial bonds and provide context for loving correction. Events and family go hand in hand. It isn’t an either/or sort of situation. Living under such a false dilemma will rob Christians of a myriad spiritual blessings that are normally the byproduct of the public ministry on the Lord’s Day. David Clarkson, a Puritan preacher, explains this in a very helpful sermon entitled, “Public Worship to Be Preferred Before Private.” Clarkson explains: Continue reading →

“It is a palpable error in those ministers that make such disproportion between their preaching and their living, that they will study hard to preach exactly and study little or not at all to live exactly. All the week long is little enough to study how to speak two hours; and yet one seems too much to study how to live all week…We must study as hard how to live well as how to preach well.” – Richard Baxter