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What’s your plan?

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chris polskiOur 2017 preaching theme is “He restores our souls (Ps 23:4).” But how will the Lord do it? Will he send a bolt of lightning from heaven? All things are possible with God, but this isn’t probably the means that He will use to sharpen each one of us spiritually.  More likely, if there is going to be substantial spiritual growth in 2017 for any of us, it is going to occur in that mysterious place where God’s sovereignty and human responsibility meet.

Now I don’t mean to suggest that God’s sovereignty and human responsibility are two utterly separate things…they are not.  They are intimately interwoven, like the threads in a tapestry. On the one side you see the beauty of God’s overarching plan and on the other the seemingly chaotic intermingled and intertwined multicolored threads.  We human beings are normally confined to seeing that chaotic underside while only God is privy to the masterpiece on the other.

So, when I speak of the mysterious place where divine sovereignty and human responsibility meet, I am speaking of the moments in which God reveals to us what He wills (most often by His word) and in which we must correspondingly act.

One great example of this is in the book of Joshua where in several places we see God laying out the plan for Joshua, but Joshua still needing to put together the details of how his army will accomplish it (i.e. Joshua 8:1-29).

With that background in mind, I want to ask you, “What’s your plan for 2017?”  Even more specifically, “What’s your plan for spiritual refreshment in 2017?” That God desires us to each have a deep and intimate relationship with Him is undeniable.  That God is at work weaving a tapestry to accomplish this is also indisputable. But the fact remains, we each are called to pursue a plan toward this end.

I like the way that A.W. Tozer says it in the book that we will all be reading (Lord willing) this year. He says…

“What God in His sovereignty may yet do on a world scale I do not claim to know: but what He will do for the plain man or woman who seeks His face I believe I do know and can tell others. Let any man turn to God in earnest, let him begin to exercise himself unto godliness, let him seek to develop his powers of spiritual receptivity by trust and obedience and humility, and the results will exceed anything he may have hoped in his leaner and weaker days.” A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God

So, “what’s your plan?” Will you read through the bible? Will you re-commit yourself to praying regularly, will you join a bible study that you’ve been neglecting, will you take that mission trip you’ve been putting off, will you seek out that person from whom you are estranged in order to confess and/or forgive, will you forfeit some time doing something you enjoy in order to create more space for spiritual reflectiveness?

There are a 1000 different ways to pursue God and we can’t do all of them.  But we can do something.

So, “what’s your plan?”

Thoughts on Thematic Preaching

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chris polskiThis is the second year that we’ve attempted an over-arching preaching theme for Trinity.  Last year our theme was “Who is my neighbor?” This year our theme is “He restores our souls!”

Now some have asked me whether or not its a good idea to have an annual preaching theme that becomes so central to the pulpit ministry of the church.

It’s a good question!

The heart of the question arises out of a fear of preaching becoming too eis-egetical. That’s a strange word, so let me explain.

Ex-egesis is reading out of something.  Eis-egesis is reading into something. So, the fear is that when a church has an annual preaching theme the preacher is going to be compelled to be eis-egetical, that is, he will be forced to read his theme into every text he preaches, even if it is not there.

So, does an annual preaching theme risk too much eis-egesis?

My answer is a qualified “no.”

My qualification is that some themes can indeed be too eis-egetical. For instance, if I made the theme “Being good parents” it would be very tough to not become allegorical in interpreting certain texts.  This is because “being good parents” is only a narrow part of the Bible’s message. On the other hand, if the theme fits a more fundamental biblical theme (i.e. grace, showing mercy) then it already appears in almost every part of the Bible anyway.

In terms of more specific reasons why I think a big picture preaching theme is ok, here are just a few thoughts.

First, the big theme must first be subservient to the local theme. We must place the local theme in its context and then prove, from the text, how that theme connects to the over-arching theme.

Second, there is a difference, in every sermon, between exegesis, illustration and application. Exegetical insights on a text should be fairly standard.  Illustrative demonstration of a text’s teaching is going to vary, preacher to preacher. This is because the application of almost every text of scripture is manifold and tuned to the hearers particular context.

For instance, if we are teaching about sexual faithfulness from Matthew 5 and our audience is a youth group, the way we illustrate and apply the text will be very different than how we might do so at a marriage conference or even a mixed morning worship setting.

This applies to theme in the fact that often thematic preaching is aimed at contextual application.  This is perfectly acceptable so long as the text has been adequately and contextually exegeted.

Third, the Bible still presents overarching themes, no matter what the narrow or local situation in a given text.  Whether talking about Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac or the fall of the wall of Jericho, the bottom line is that both of these stories still speak of the grand overarching theme of God’s covenant faithfulness to His people.  And not only this, but also his love for his people, his provision for his people (even miraculous) or even his attentiveness to the needs of his people.

This is why you could sit in ten different churches over ten different weeks and listen to ten different sermons on the same text and still come out every week with new and fresh insights to what a text means in a range of different applied contexts.  Fundamental exegesis may not vary much but focal point of exegesis can. In other words, a preacher preaching on the fall of the wall of Jericho may take an angle focused on God’s call to faithfulness for his people or, an angle of the unfaithfulness and resistance of the people of Jericho.  He might zoom in on Joshua’s role as the leader of God’s people or the particular function of the priests in wartime. The possibilities are quite wide, so long as the fundamental and over-arching purpose of the text is not mistaken for a particular point of preaching emphasis.

Fourth, its very possible to pursue an annual preaching theme either aggressively or passively. What I mean by this is that some weeks the theme may be heavily underlined in a direct way in a specific text. Other weeks, the theme may simply float overhead of the text, like a puffy summer cloud…always in our vision, sometimes casting a shadow, but never directly raining on us. It’s simply reminding us by its occasional shadow, that it is there.

This is the way that I think of annual preaching themes.  Some weeks they will be heavy and close and specific, other weeks they will be like that puffy cloud.

I hope and pray that this year’s annual theme “He restores our souls” will resonate with us precisely because it echoes and enlightens the theme of God’s restoring grace for souls that feel sometimes adrift and thin. And at the same time, I pray that each text we preach will come alive with time tested exegetical and contextual insights that were acutely germane to the specific situation in which they were originally delivered. Both of these must be true in biblically faithful preaching.