“As I urged you when I was going to Macedonia, remain in Ephesus so that you may charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine, nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies, which promote speculations rather than the stewardship from God that is by faith. The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. Certain persons, by swerving from these, have wandered away into vain discussion, desiring to be teachers of the law, without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions.”
– 1 Timothy 1:3-7
One could argue that since the very construction of the United States of America, Christian preaching has been held captive by political ideology and the structures and systems of the world. This type of bondage has lead to Christian preachers and leaders sounding more like conservative and liberal politicians than prophets, pastors, evangelists, and apostles rooted in Scripture. These men and women hinder the advancement of the Kingdom of God. It hurts my heart when preachers out of the Black Church and Evangelicalism – the churches that raised me – and other Christian leaders jump on the bandwagon of cable news commentators, radio shock jocks, and humanist activists.
There have been segments of Christian preaching that supported the tragic treatment of Native Americans, the enslavement of Africans, Jim Crow segregation, the marginalization of women, and American nationalism on steroids. These concepts were preached over and above the citizenship in the Kingdom of God. In recent years segments of Christendom have preached in support of sexuality without boundaries, Marxism, and a theology that puts the virgin birth and the atonement in question. In too many instances, Christian preaching in America takes place within invisible shackles. When will we come to terms with this real homiletic dilemma?
I have heard many preachers speak on and even specifically call out false preachers and teachers. I’ve never heard preachers speak on their own potential of becoming a false preacher or discuss sermons they’ve preached that, after further study and review, they wish they could take back. I’ve never heard a preacher take back a sermon because the message was more rooted in the matrix of race, family origin issues, or political ideology than being deeply rooted and saturated in the Bible. It is possible to think you are rooted in the Bible and simply be using the Bible to make a worldly point. We can twist the Bible to make a point rooted in political party lines. And yet we should be dismantling policies and platforms from both Democrats and Republicans by preaching the Kingdom of God rooted in solid biblical interpretation.
I don’t desire to sound like a politician (no offense to politicians); I desire to allow God to speak through me about an eternal government that can come to bear upon the social challenges we face today for the transformation of lives and communities. Preachers must look within themselves for places of pride, arrogance, ideological captivity, ego, social conditioning, and unbiblical mental frameworks. This is where the freedom of the preacher begins. We have a heritage of liberated preachers. I yearn for the day when preaching in this line of transformational communication represents the great majority of what is spoken from behind pulpits.
