The Responsibility of Congregants

The following was written by great Presbyterian preacher Floyd Doud Shafer in an issue of Christianity Today dated March 27, 1961. It addresses the responsibility of congregants to demand nothing less than a hearing of God's Word. What congregants must do to their leader is:

Fling him into his office, tear the office sign from the door and nail on the sign “study.” Take him off all mailing lists. Lock him up with his books, his typewriter, and his Bible. Slam him down on his knees before texts and broken hearts and the flick of lives of a superficial flock and a holy God. Force him to be the one man in our surfeited communities who knows about God. Throw him into the ring to box with God until he learns how short his arms are. Engage him to wrestle with God all the night through. And let him come out only when he is bruised and beaten into being a blessing. Shut his mouth forever spouting remarks and stop his tongue forever tripping lightly over every nonessential. Require him to have something to say before he dares break the silence, and bend his knees in the lonesome valley of prayer. Burn his eyes with weary study. Wreck his emotional poise with worry for God. And make him exchange his pious stance for a humble walk with God and man. Make him spend and be spent for the glory of God. Rip out his telephone. Burn up his ecclesiastical records. Put water in his fuel tank. Give him a Bible, tie him to the pulpit, and make him preach the Word of the living God. Test him, quiz him, examine him, humiliate him for his ignorance of things divine. Shame him for his good comprehension of finances, game scores, and politics. Laugh at his frustrated effort to play psychiatrist. Form a choir, raise a chant, and haunt him with it night and day “Sir, we would see Jesus.” When at long last, he dares assay the pulpit, ask him if he has a word from God. If he doesn’t, dismiss him. Tell him you can read the morning paper and digest the television commentaries and think through the day’s superficial problems and manage the community’s weary drives and bless the sordid baked potatoes, green beans add infinitum, better than he can. Command him not to come back until he’s read and re-read, written and re-written until he can stand up worn, and forlorn, and say, “Thus saith the Lord.” Break him across the board of his ill-gotten popularity. Smack him hard with his own prestige. Corner him with questions about God. Cover him with demands for celestial wisdom. And give him no escape until he’s back against the wall of the word. And sit down before him and listen to the only word he has left: God’s Word. Let him be totally ignorant of the down street gossip. But give him a chapter and order him to walk around it, camp on it, sup with it, and come at last to speak it backward and forward, until he says about it all things that ring with the truth of eternity. And when he’s burned up by the flaming word, when he’s consumed at last by the fiery grace blazing through him, and when he’s privileged to translate the truth of God to men, and finally transferred from earth to heaven, then bear him away gently and blow a muted trumpet and lay down softly, place a two-edged sword on his coffin, and raise the tune triumphant. For he was a brave soldier of the Word and ere he died he had become a man of God.

Just deliver the message!

The fundamental task of the Christian Spiritual leader has always and only been to listen to God’s Word, understand God’s meaning, and proclaim it to his contemporary community. The Christian leader is to lead his people to pay attention to God. In these last days, God is paid attention to through the text of his spoken Word, the Bible (Heb. 1:1-3). The primary call of the Christian leader, then, is to continue to exegete God’s Word and teach it to his community. John Stott points out that when the Church has neglected to execute its first duty to authentic, exegetically based, expository preaching, it has experienced its eras of decline and weakness in strength, numbers, and vitality.
                        
Imagine I had to suddenly leave my home for a foreign country without a chance to say good-bye to my family. But, before I left, I dictated a letter for my family to a friend and charged him with the task of delivering my message to my family. Suppose though, on the way to deliver this message to my family, my friend decided that what my family really needed to hear was a series of lectures on his opinions of the perfect family. He then delivered these lectures, using quotes from my letter, taken out of context, to back up his points. If I found out he had done this, I would be furious at my friend! I gave him a message for my family. His task was to deliver it to them with no embellishments or distractions. I would say, “Just deliver the message! Only ad what you need to say, to help them understand it because they weren’t there when I dictated it!” I believe God is furious over what passes for preaching in many churches. He has given a message to his family and has appointed teachers and preachers to “just deliver the message!” and to only ad what they need to ad to help God’s family understand it because they are in a new context. His message is his transformative Word. It is to be listened to, understood and obeyed. This is the fundamental task of Christian attention.

Some may assert, “Of course the content of Christian proclamation is the Scriptures. That’s obvious.” If it is obvious, why is it so often not practiced? Why do we find, in so many gatherings of God’s people, that there is so much topical, human opinion being proclaimed, while God’s plain message to his family is ignored or changed? The fundamental task of making sure God’s Word is heard, is not just the responsibility of Christian leaders. The people of God must take responsibility for their own spiritual formation. They must demand that their leaders expose them to an authentic hearing of God’s authentic message.