What To Preach To A Dead Church

Student Question.

"What passages of scripture would you preach to a dead church, and what passages would you not preach to a dead church?"

Dr Steven Lawson Reply.

"I think you can preach anything to a dead church. All scripture is inspired by God and profitable.

I've preached to a dead church. You know, I came to realize a few years ago, not my present church, I was Pastoring an unconverted church. That is literally what a dead church is, an unconverted church. They didn't need John 3: 16. They had had that every Sunday. I preached first John and the necessary marks of the new birth, the distinguishing marks of one who is born by God, and a dead church has got to come alive in Christ to begin with. I saw over a hundred adult conversions in one year just among church members coming to faith in Christ. So preaching First John had power. It works in the South, you know, where everyone thinks they are saved; that there are necessary evidences of the new birth, and without these evidences you can be assured you are not saved.

If the church was just languishing, I don't know, I might go to the seven letters to seven churches. And Revelation two and three. There are some some kick in those verses and those letters; from "I have this against you, you left your first love", to, "but I spew you out of my mouth." I mean, that is just kind of a wake-up call right there. And then everything in between, "I have this against you, you tolerate the woman Jezebel", "you have a name, but you are dead" to the church at Sardis. So those Immediately come to mind.

Plus the demands of discipleship from Christ, "Except a man hate his own father and mother, brother, and sister, and yes, even his own life."

I would want to jolt them a bit, off the fence, help them see their lost condition, or just their languishing or backsliding.

A right diagnosis is half the cure.

Help them see where they are."

- Dr. Steven Lawson

When Good People Take Risk

"Thucydides tells us that during the plague at Athens those that most displayed their virtue perished with their friends that were ill, for they neglected their own lives in going to visit them."
- Plutarch's Morals. 1st Century Greek Philosopher. 

Speaking To My Chatacter

"Another time, my dad gave 50 bucks to a guy who said he needed to buy medicine for his kids. I told my dad he was probably going to spend the money on alcohol or something, but my dad said that "whether he was lying or not says something about HIS character, but hearing someone in need and choosing not to help when l have the means to says something about mine".

I never forget that."

- Josh Wolcott

Get Out Of Your Tin Car

"What can I tell them? Sealed in their metallic shells like molluscs on wheels, how can I pry the people free? The auto as tin can, the park ranger as opener. Look here, I want to say, for godsake folks get out of them there machines, take off those fucking sunglasses and unpeel both eyeballs, look around; throw away those goddamned idiotic cameras! For chrissake folks what is this life if full of care we have no time to stand and stare? eh? Take off your shoes for a while, unzip your fly, piss hearty, dig your toes in the hot sand, feel that raw and rugged earth, split a couple of big toenails, draw blood! Why not? Jesus Christ, lady, roll that window down! You can't see the desert if you can't smell it. Dusty? Of course it's dusty—this is Utah! But it's good dust, good red Utahn dust, rich in iron, rich in irony. Turn that motor off. Get out of that peice of iron and stretch your varicose veins, take off your brassiere and get some hot sun on your old wrinkled dugs! You sir, squinting at the map with your radiator boiling over and your fuel pump vapor-locked, crawl out of that shiny hunk of GM junk and take a walk—yes, leave the old lady and those squawling brats behind for a while, turn your back on them and take a long quiet walk straight into the canyons, get lost for a while, come back when you damn well feel like it, it'll do you and her and them a world of good. Give the kids a break too, let them out of the car, let them go scrambling over rocks hunting for rattlesnakes and scorpions and anthills—yes sir, let them out, turn them loose; how dare you imprison little children in your goddamned upholstered horseless hearse? Yes sir, yes madam, I entreat you, get out of those motorized wheelchairs, get off your foam rubber backsides, stand up straight like men! like women! like human beings! and walk—walk—WALK upon your sweet and blessed land!

- Edward Abbey 

Sacred Million Year Old Things

" If the life of natural things, millions of years old, does not seem sacred to us, then what can be sacred? Human vanity alone? Contempt for the natural world is contempt for life. The domination of nature leads to the domination of human nature. Anything becomes permissible. We return once more to the nightmare cultures of Hitler, Stalin, King Philip II, Montezuma, Caligula, Heliogabalus, Herod, the Pharaohs; Christ sacrificed himself in vain."

- Edward Abbey, Beyond the Wall: Essays from the Outside

Let Us Chop Wood

"High technology has done us one great service: It has retaught us the delight of performing simple and primordial tasks - chopping wood, building a fire, drawing water from a spring."

- Edward Abbey 

Let Them Get Eaten?

 "A venturesome minority will always be eager to set off on their own, and no obstacles should be placed in their path; let them take risks, for godsake, let them get lost, sunburnt, stranded, drowned, eaten by bears, buried alive under avalanches - that is the right and privilege of any free American."

- Edward Abbey 

Two Legged Thanks Giving

"Children are grateful when Santa Claus puts in their stockings gifts of toys or sweets. Could I not be grateful to Santa Claus when he put in my stockings the gift of two miraculous legs?"

- Chesterton

Armpit of Africa?

“You’re going to the armpit of Africa,” the prim doctor said, as I rolled up my sleeve for the first injection. “We can only do so much for you.” She was as thorough as she was adamant."

(To Timbuktu For a Haircut. Rick Antonson)

Degenerating Into A Money Making Machine

“I am losing precious days. I am degenerating into a machine for making money. I am learning nothing in this trivial world of men. I must break away and get out into the mountains to learn the news” 

― John Muir

Walking The Roads of Nature For The Soul

"While calling ourselves intelligent, we’ve lost touch with the natural world and, as a result, lost touch with our own souls. I believe we can’t access our full intelligence and wisdom without some real connection to nature!

.... Francis of Assisi (c. 1182-1226), spent many days, weeks, and even months walking the roads of Umbria and letting nature teach him. Francis knew and respected creation, calling animals, sun and moon, and even the weather and the elements his brothers and sisters. Through extended time in nature, Francis became intimately connected with non-human living things and came to recognize that the natural world was also imbued with soul. 

Almost all male initiation rites—including those of Jesus and John the Baptist (see Matthew 3:13-17)—took place in nature, surely for that reason."

~ Richard Rohr