Fundamentals

Some recent reading about John Wesley pointed out that he was always more concerned with preaching fundamentals of the faith than the trendy peripheral issues which tempted those who climbed up in the pulpits of his day.  It is a real temptation for preachers of the church today who want to be as current and as relevant as the morning newspaper we used to get thrown out at the house every day.  The hard truth is that we let issues guide our preaching more than the Scripture.  I remember too many times when I thought I had to expound on everything with a little spiritual twist at the end.    

One of the places where church folks often suffer is in their inability to pass a basic test on the fundamentals of the faith.  And, the reason they might get a failing mark on such a test speaks to the failure of the pulpit.  The atonement, justification, and the work of the Holy Spirit are just a few of those things which Wesley would have regarded as the fundamentals and so should today's preachers.  Instead, we tend to abandon the traditional language of the Scripture for watered down words that provide little more than a shadow of the substance being proclaimed.    

Of course, all the new versions that re-write the Scripture in easy to read language also have added to the problem.  This is not a call to go back to the King James Version, or to the original Greek and Hebrew, but simply a reminder that those big theological words we avoid may have something to declare to us that a trendy modern rendering might overlook.  Maybe it can all be summed up by saying that Wesley preached Christ which would be a good place for any preacher or seeker to start.