The growing movement in the church seems to be moving away from the sufficiency of the Word and going towards the Word +. The Word + cool music. The Word + great programs and events. The Word + funny stories and illustrations. These are all ways to "grow" the church but is it biblical growth or simply numerical growth? Are these the ways that we should try to grow our churches or is there something else? Reverberation sums it up by saying "God's Word, working through God's Spirit, is God's primary instrument for growing God's church."
We need to come to the realization that God's Word is the only thing necessary to grow His church. Nothing more and nothing less. But yet somehow we have lost this reverence and this reliance on God's Holy Word to do what only God's Holy Word can do and that is to cause spiritual life and spiritual growth is sinful and spiritually dead human beings.
Our first thought always goes back to the preacher or the "hired professional" and how he is supposed to bring the Word and we are supposed to just take it and receive it. However, this is not God's design. God's design is for us all to make disciples and teaching them to obey all that he commanded us. Leeman says that the "ministry of the Word indeed begins in the pulpit, but then it must continue through the life of the church as members echo God's Word back and forth to one another. The word reverberates", hence the name of the book.
Part one of the book is titled "The Word"
The Word invites and divides. Christians will listen to God's word because he or she loves God but non-Christians do not listen to God's word because they do not love God. Sure, some non-Christians will do good things that God tells us to do in the Bible but they do not truly listen to the Bible. Jesus says "My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it" Leeman says "Jesus will identify Himself with those who listen to God's word, even more than his family and nation". However, so many preachers today want to water down the message and not really teach directly from God's word as much as they want to teach what will make their "audience" feel good. The problem is, when we do this "we will be tempted to unite people around something other than God's divisive Word, like music, or style, or acts of service." Leeman goes on to say "Bringing up the Bible can be like walking into a room waving a sword. People are going to fight or flee! So keep it in the scabbard, right? Of course not. When we do, we invite people to something Jesus is not inviting them to. Believe it or not, Jesus means to divide people through His call to repentance (Matt. 10:34). When we soften the invitation, leaving out the tough bits, we oppose His very purposes."
"You can measure a person's opinion of God by his or her opinion of God's Word." Wow, that statement really cuts to the heart. How lightly we take God's word and how much we spend time in God's word by studying, memorizing and meditating on it, is a direct reflection of our opinion of God and therefore a direct reflection of our spiritual state. I believe also it's not just that you read His word but that you desire to read His word because you desire to know Him because you love Him. So often, I know I fall into the trap of reading the Bible to get knowledge or wisdom because I in general like to learn things but we need to read God's word because we love Him and God's word is an extension of God Himself.
In all things that we do, the Word must play a lead role and "everything else, at most, plays supporting cast and is subject to other considerations". One trap some tend to fall into is that good works is a substitution for the Word. Perhaps they look to Matthew 5:16 when he says "Let your light so shine before men so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven." They assume that that means that our good works can lead others to Christ but the Word and the Word alone convicts of sin and frees us from the bondage of sin. "You can proclaim the gospel without deeds, but you cannot proclaim the gospel without words."
Part 2 of the book is titled "The Sermon"
This is the part of the book that really encouraged me about the church that I call home. Leeman puts it pretty simply when he says "Just preach the point of the text!" and "God speaks through us whenever we plainly and modestly relate whatever He has already said in the Bible". The fault of some preachers is to try to preach there own words and not rely on the Holy Spirit to work though God's Holy Word. Some try to add things or take verses out of context in order to prove their point. This is one reason why I love our church and our pastor. He does preaches expositionally as opposed to topically. He "concentrates all his powers on reproducing the burden of the Bible in the hearts and minds of the people, and he avoids letting anything in his person get in the way of that goal. He'd rather risk boring or offending his congregation (both of which has happened) than depriving them of the opportunity to hear what God says."
I love when a pastor goes straight through books of the Bible because as Leeman says, "God sets the agenda. And the preacher learns along with the congregation."
The sermon should also announce the gospel and confront sin but unfortunately, as Leeman points out, some sermons could easily have been preached by a Jewish rabi or a Muslim imam. "There should be something distinctively Christian about a Christian sermon; namely, it should point to the person and work of Christ." He even goes on to say how one "Christian" book that claims that all men have a battle to fight and an adventure to live, is a required reading for a Mexican gang that is responsible for drug dealing in several nations as well as decapitating local police officers. That's pretty sad when a book that is supposed to be Christian, doesn't contain anything remotely close to the gospel and it is a required reading for gangs.
Most people, don't like to be confronted on their sin, especially from the pulpit. They would rather hear messages about how God loves them and has a wonderful plan for their life than how the images they are looking at on the computer screen are rotting away their brain and tearing them from holiness or how they need to be more forgiving or humble or loving to their spouse or family or enemy. However, by preaching through books of the Bible and letting God's word reverberate in the hearts of men, true conviction of sin and life change can happen.
Part 3 is titled "The Reverberation"
There are four sections in this one; singing, praying, discipling and scattering to gather. Everything about our lives and church services should be centered and founded on the Word. Starting with the songs that we sing, "a church's songs should contain nothing more than the words, paraphrases, or ideas of Scipture." This section was especially convicting for me because a lot of times, as we sing old hymns in our church, I tend to get frustrated and perhaps roll my eyes because I want us to sing modern songs and more upbeat songs. However, I need to look more at the content of the songs than the beat of the songs. I need to focus on the lyrics and how God centered they are than the beat of the song and how good it sounds to my ears. "Singing, I'd say, is the medium by which God's people grab hold of His Word and align their emotions and affections to God's."
The section on praying was another one that convicted me. I tend to have trouble knowing what to pray or how to pray but the best way to pray is to pray scripture and as our pastor quoted on Sunday, the best way to get better at praying is to pray! "Praying is how God's people should grab hold of His Word and align their will and their hopes with His" and not the other way around. When we conform our prayers to God's word, "we will adore, confess, give thanks, and ask for those things which His Word tells us to. We are the people who delight ourselves in the Lord, and so He places new desires in our hearts, desires that He then fulfills when we ask for them through prayer (Ps 37:4). We tend to be so me-focused when it comes to prayers but if we look at the prayers of Jesus, Paul and others throughout scripture, they rarely prayed for their own needs/wants but instead prayed for others and God's glory above all!
Another thing that we should be doing as disciples of Christ is making other disciples and we do that by relationships. However, to effectively disciple, we need to be examples and so we are able to say as Paul says "imitate me as I imitate Christ." All of our discipleship should be centered on the Word and the gospel and this includes counseling. "The most useful tool in counseling is the gospel and the Word of God." We don't need more self-help books or counselors that try to help others without mention of the gospel and how ultimately, every reason for counseling that we may have comes down to the heart and only the Word is "living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart."
Finally, the word scatters, and, once again, invites. As we receive the Word through preaching, reading, singing, praying and discipling, our responsibility is to then reverberate the Word to others. Since we know that God's word alone saves and that God's word alone has the power to create true freedom from bondage, we should share it without reservation. We also need to realize that it is not our responsibility to save someone but instead it is our responsibility to be the means in which God uses His word spoken through human vessels to bring about salvation by the Holy Spirit.
As one pastor once put it so well, "does the word stop with you or spread through you?"
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