Reformation

From Faith Pulpit, Fall 2014. Used by permission, all rights reserved. (Continued from Lessons from the Reformation.)

From Faith Pulpit, Fall 2014. Used by permission, all rights reserved.

Preaching?: Simple Teaching on Simply Preaching by Alec Motyer

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“The Word of God is the constitutive reality at the heart of the Church” (p. 18).

There are as many ideas about how to grow a church as there are books on the subject. There are books that focus on meeting felt needs, worship strategies, small groups and a myriad of other ministries that can be maximized to grow your church. However, what many of these books fail to recognize or address is that the bedrock of growing a church is the ministry of the Word through preaching.

With a biblical focus on the Word of God at the heart of a church Alec Motyer has written Preaching?: Simple Teaching on Simply Preaching. As the Old Testament editor for The Bible Speaks Today series, Motyer has turned his pen to writing on preaching and has written a book that addresses both the biblical-theological aspects as well as some practical issues.

The first five chapters address the nature of preaching. These chapters are exegetically grounded in various passages of Scripture. Motyer defines good preaching as that which has a “sense of being plain and unmistakable” (p. 11). Preaching that is good is to be expositional, that is, “the restatement of a Scripture” (p. 30). Motyer wants to impress upon his readers that preaching is the ground upon which the whole church grows and functions. All ministry grows out of the Word and the preaching of the Word. His exegetical work deals with many NT passages that provide us with the nature and task of faithful biblical preachers. His observation, especially of the book of Acts, is that it is the ministry of the preaching of the Word that drove the growth of the early church. Surely there were other attending contributions, like the work of the Spirit through the Word, but it was always the Word that led the way and was responded to.

Why should we celebrate October 31?

For hundreds of years, people of the western world have attributed spiritual significance to the last day of October and the first day of November.

But “doctrines of demons” (1 Tim. 4:1, NKJV) governed the celebration of these days during the Dark Ages, until God brought light out of this darkness through the pen and voice of a humble monk and priest—Martin Luther.

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As a parent of six young children, I am constantly looking out for Christian resources to put in their hands. The Reformation in particular, is one of the pivotal moments in church history that has been sadly neglected today. More and more authors however, are now filling this gap and providing excellent books for our children.

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With the renewed interest today in the Reformation, its history and theology, it is not surprising to find more and more books written for children that highlight some of the heroes and heroines of that era. What follows are two brief reviews of recent books devoted to lesser-known Reformation-era figures.

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“Hollywood history” is the name given to the movie industry’s presentations of persons and events in history. Implied in this term is the possibility that the “history” presented may or may not be accurate, or have even occurred—just as long as the story makes money for the producers. Sometimes in his attempt to find an illustration, a pastor does the same with Christian history. Payton’s book is an antidote to that kind of abuse and misuse of Reformation history.

He tells the reader:

This book arises from my ongoing fascination with and study of the Reformation. It was borne of a desire to expose, challenge and correct some misrepresentations of the Reformation which have become common. It comes as a call to appreciate, learn from and live out of the Reformation—not the Reformation of our fond imaginations, but the one which exploded on the European scene in the sixteenth century (p. 20).

It is my opinion that he succeeds with only one minor reservation, which I will mention later.

The chapter contents show that he has surveyed every side of the cauldron of events that we call the Reformation: (1) The Medieval Call for Reform, (2) The Renaissance: Friend or Foe?, (3) Carried Along by Misunderstandings, (4) Conflict Among the Reformers, (5) What the Reformers Meant by Sola Fide, (6) What the Reformers Meant by Sola Scriptura, (7) How the Anabaptists Fit In, (8) Reformation in Rome, (9) Changing Direction: From the Reformation to Protestant Scholasticism, (10) Was the Reformation a Success?, (11) Is the Reformation a Norm?, (12) The Reformation as Triumph and Tragedy.

Chapters 10-12 are his assessment of the Reformation. Chapter ten is a very good example of how to historically evaluate any movement. He cautions that as “a historical movement, it need not ‘succeed’ (whatever that might mean): it just was” (p. 211). But he “asks” each reformer what he would have “thought” of his own success. He then analyzes what happened in the second half of the sixteenth century. His answer? “It proved to be a significant but flawed product, often victor over opposition but also victim of its own weaknesses” (p. 233).