Choosing The Good Portion

The church needs to get deep in the Word and that happens when individuals get alone with the Word of God.

The church should be a bunch of people who spent time on that mountaintop alone with God and then we gather together to talk about it...

- Francis Chan

What is more crucial than sitting at the feet of Jesus and learning from Him and learning of Him? Check out this video from Francis Chan where he references Mary and Martha from Luke 10:38-42...

I love what he says around the four minute mark about the entire church getting into the Word so they could talk about it when they get together instead of being starved all week and needing to hear a word from just one guy.

I can see it being easy for some people to hear this and think Chan is talking about a bunch of Christians reading the Bible in isolation but I think that is the complete opposite of what he is talking about. What he is talking about is the entire local body being engaged in the study of the Word and then taking that shared engagement and reflecting on it as the Body of Christ. That is what I am talking about when I talk about a community hermeneutic. Instead of one or a few "experts" telling a largely disengaged group of observers what to think about a passage, the people of God open the Word of God together and work through it together. That is hard for people like me who have a tough time listening to others because we are really waiting for our turn to talk but it is so important. You can tell people what to think over and over and they usually won't ever get it deep into their being but if you teach them to think the power can be overwhelming. I don't think heresy is enabled when the Body works through Scripture together, I think it is far more likely when the Body doesn't know how to think, how to interpret and apply, how to discern and are easily led astray by one guy with screwy ideas because no one knows the difference between truth and error.

This is also where elders come into play, not by telling people what to think, but rather by being proven as reliable and mature brothers who can act as guides for others, helping to keep them on the path without telling them what to think. It is a lot easier to just tell people what to think but elders should be in the equipping business, not the lecturing business. Certainly if someone is teaching contrary to Scripture and refuses correction, the elders should step in but generally they should be helping people to study and learn rather than being subcontracted to do the studying and learning for the rest of the church.

Good stuff from Chan.