The Unchangeable Tool

A few Sundays ago I watched a preacher read the sermon from an Ipad.  It was not something noticeable from the pew, but seeing the service live stream opened a whole new vista.  At other moments I had noticed scripture lessons being read from a handheld device instead of a Bible with pages.  Imagine Billy Graham at one of his crusades waving an Ipad in the air instead of the old bound version of the Scripture which he held constantly in his hand.  What a different image it would have created!  

I have often said I retired at the right time because the technology was on the edge of changing the old world in which I had worked so long.  In my first office was a mimeograph machine and manual typewriter.  It was some years before I graduated to a word processor and a copy machine.  Before I reached the finish line of my ministry, a computer and printer provided not a printed rendering of my sermon, but a hard copy.  By the time I made it to the farm, both the equipment of ministry and the language had changed so much I was not just a worn out preacher, but an obsolete one as well.   

There is; however, one thing which has remained constant over those forty years of preaching.  The unchangeable tool of preaching is the Bible.  Without it there can be no sermon.  A sermon is not an entertaining talk which tickles ears, but a message which rekindles the vision of the Old Testament prophets who spoke saying, "Thus says the Lord..."  To speak of preaching in such a manner may make some preachers squirm, but to forget this core definition of what is to be done on Sunday morning is to relegate preaching to something less than what it is meant to be.  Good preaching is not about what the preacher thinks, but about what God is saying through the written Word.  There is a difference.