Cotton Candy Sermons?
Author: Sherman Haywood Cox II (587 Articles)
Sherman Haywood Cox II is the director of Soul Preaching. He holds the M.Div with an emphasis in Homiletics and a M.S. in Computer Science.
Thanks to the Theo Centric Blog for this link that the Preaching Today WebLog has a post up where he decries the lack of doctrine by many preachers. Robinson notes:
They end up being nothing more than moralisms: We should, we must, we ought. Or, here are three ways in which we can be better off financially. A sermon I heard a while ago on how to deal with procrastination had as its first point to get a Day Timer. You knew you were in trouble when you heard that. I have no doubt that when people left that church, if they were procrastinators, they thought it was a helpful sermon. But it was simply something that a motivational speaker could have done.
Perhaps it is this kind of preaching that makes people think that the American Middle Class lifestyle is the essence of the Gospel. Here you are given tools for living, but no confrontation of the divine into this world that will transform it.
Robinson continues:
If people are raised on cotton candy, they are not going to grow as Christians. When Paul writes to his young associate Timothy, he says that “all Scripture is inspired by God,” and that all Scripture is profitable for doctrine, for teaching, for putting the fundamental truths in front of people, and for “reproof, for correction, for instruction in right living.” We have ignored that first affirmation—that the Bible is given to teach doctrine. It’s not the only thing it does, but doctrine is first, and out of that there is reproof and then there is correction and then instruction in right living.
In our zeal to reach the “felt-needs” of the “unchurched” so that we can build mega-churches many preachers have missed these major functions of Bible preaching. To put it bluntly, Cotton Candy will only rot your teeth. Robinson is on to something.
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