Preaching Beyond The Text

PREACHING BEYOND THE TEXT

Once, while browsing through a local bookstore, I came across a book entitled “Emotional Intelligence.” While I did not read the book, the title, however, stuck with me. I learned later that EI is the capacity of individuals to recognize their own, and other people's emotions, to discriminate between different feelings and label them appropriately, and to use emotional information to guide thinking and behavior.

I know little beyond that which I have already stated, about the theory, which the author of that book was expounding within his copious manuscript but one thing I do know is that emotions—and I mean emotions far beyond the more frivolous ones play a major part in the psychological makeup of the human condition. In our realm of the spiritual perhaps it is not so much “emotional intelligence” as it is “emotional ignorance” that we grapple with.

Pastoring, or better yet, shepherding, people can be a daunting task. The job itself is often thwarted by the very malady with which it seeks to aid others in their wellbeing—emotional conflict. Keeping one’s head screwed on straight is not always as easy as some wish it to be.

Why is it that some people “which know better” make such foolish decisions or why do certain people who have occupied a privileged pew for years, under exemplary leadership, suddenly transform into someone who acts as though they have never heard teachings which should have averted their course to destruction? Simply put, many times the answer lies not with their lack of doctrinal education but rather with their lack of defense within their emotional mindset.

Like a defective gyroscope, which was designed to aid the guidance of certain airborne craft, so too can an errant emotional system cause the human mind to lose its proper guidance—veering it dangerously off course from its intended path.

If preachers fall into the error of just thinking that logic alone is all that needs to be applied to the minds of his flock he will be caught quite rudely with the reality of a vibrant slap to his professorial ways. Even though logic is a necessary ingredient in gospel presentation it is not sufficient in and of itself to accomplish all that the human mind and heart must feed on to be healthy.

One of the powers of the Word of God is to “prosper” in those to whom it is sent. The word “prosper” is the word “success” or “promote.” The Word promotes certain things within the mind and heart of the hearer which succeed in developing “God’s thoughts” within them. This prospering must deal with the emotions along with the logic of the hearer. It must succeed in aligning the heart and the mind into a unified channel. Failure in this area often allows the emotional mindset to overrule the logical mindset.

Emotional strength has often been misperceived to be, essentially, a lack of feeling. In reality, emotional strength actually has little to do with toughness, and a lot to do with resilience—it is not how little troubles we experience in life, but how we respond to them, that counts. And that response must be a response conditioned by all the essential ingredients of the Word of God.

It is no wonder then that as pastors, shepherds, we must diligently seek to deliver the whole counsel of God—much more than just rote and rhetoric but also with Blood-flowing power that reaches both heart and mind of those to whom we preach!

--jlg--