One of the dangers of audio and video media, avatar projections, mega-churches, multi-site campuses, and conference attendance is the relational distance between the speaker and the listeners. Let’s be honest—we really don’t have a personal relationship with the popular preachers we’ve come to love. We kid ourselves if we think we know them. What kind of person are they really? Do we actually know? How do they treat their wives and children? Are they godly? Do they live a life that is consistent with their own teaching? What does their family look like? Do they have personal integrity?
The same questions ought to be asked of me.
Do you really know me? Some of you do. Some of you don't. But, you see, that is my point. Resources like Christian books, blogs, CDs, and online downloads ought to be supplemental to your
regular local church teaching and involvement where you can know your pastor and elders personally, not a replacement to
them. The tricky side of printed and digital publication is that you cannot really know the one(s) who produced it. The author or speaker becomes your
unknowable pastor. And yet, this is commonplace today.
Tim Challies warns:
There is a danger in relying on other people’s discernment and
especially that of people we don’t know. The most natural context for
discernment is the local church, where issues particular to a congregation can
be dealt with. Those charged with discernment are known to be godly, discerning
people. When we go looking to books and the Internet as our primary source of
discernment, we risk being unduly influenced by people who are not discerning.
We risk exposing ourselves to people who seek to destroy rather than edify, and
who are, perhaps inadvertently, heaping scorn upon the church.[1]
Similarly, those popular authors and
speakers don’t know you either. They don’t know your situation. How can they
minister to your particular need and context? Some missionaries go out to their
particular field only to mess things up because they weren’t aware of subtle
cultural differences. Their words, their tone, their demeanor, their humor just
didn’t go over—it was offensive—and as a result, the truth they were trying to
communicate was lost in cultural translation—let alone language. The same
happens when you divorce preaching from your local context. That super-preacher
on the other side of the continent or on the other side of the globe will never
be able to bring the Word of God to you with the same applicability as your
local pastor who knows you because he’s been in your home.
And yet, we still have our
preacher-preferences and still value the input from distant-theologians who add
so much to our local church experience. That’s okay, but be careful that you
still value the preaching which comes from your own pastor in your own
backyard. He is the one who will confront you when you need it. He is the one
who will encourage you when you’re down. Don’t take your pastor—a blessed gift
from God—for granted. Learn from his preaching and his fellowship. He’s the one
who can provide both.
[1] Tim Challies, The Discipline of Spiritual Discernment (Wheaton,
IL: Crossway Books, 2007), 147.
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