Greetings from Philadelphia.  I'm here this week for a preaching workshop sponsored by the Simeon Trust and being held at the historic Tenth Presbyterian Church.  About 40 preachers are being taught and coached by the Rev. Drs. Phil Ryken and Mark Dever.  Our focus is on the first five chapters of Romans, but the principles are useful anywhere in the Bible.  I attended a similar Simeon Trust workshop in 2007 and found it very helpful and challenging.  Phil Ryken describes this workshop as "spring training for preachers."  In addition to lectures and model sermons, a significant portion of the week is devoted to small group presentations and constructive critiques of one another's work.  This hands-on approach is very helpful to the cross-section of Presbyterian, Baptist, and independent evangelical pastors here. 

I'm investing this time (the cost of which a donor from outside our church generously covered as a gift - to me and you!) because God's Word makes God's people.  In Genesis 1, God speaks and the world comes into existence.  After the Fall in Genesis 3, at a point when there should be no hope but only the right and promised judgment of a holy God on rebels, God speaks.  Perhaps the most vivid picture of our predicament and God's response is in Ezekiel 37.  In the Valley of Dry Bones, Ezekiel gives a picture of piles and piles of bones, long past life and activity.  When the prophet speaks the Word of God, the Spirit of God uses that to bring life to those bones and create a great army.  Romans 10 tells us that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God and, particularly, the Word of God preached.  In 2 Timothy 2:15, God exhorts pastors to "rightly handle the word of truth."  The most exhilarating and terrifying thing I do is to step to the pulpit each week and speak for God.  Yet that is the means He has appointed in the church.  In Mark 7:35, Jesus speaks words to a deaf man and the man's ears are opened.  Is there a more vivid metaphor for what He does by His Spirit in His people?

Because of this pattern, and because of the specific charge the Apostle Paul gives to Timothy in 2 Timothy 4:1-2, we labor diligently for the centrality of the Word of God to the life of the church.  So in asking how we should live and think, we don't form a committee to dream up answers, nor do we survey what everyone thinks.  Instead we ask, "What has God said in His Word about this matter, either directly or in principles that can be wisely applied?"  I feel a sense of accountability to you and to my presbytery, but I feel an infinitely greater sense of accountability to the same Lord who told Peter three times in John 21:15-17, "Feed my sheep."  Because you and I don't live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God, it is incumbent upon the elders and ministers of the church to make sure that we get what we need for life. 

Our Westminster Shorter Catechism asks in Question 89, "How is the Word made effectual to salvation?"  The answer given is: "The Spirit of God makes the reading, but especially the preaching, of the Word, an effectual means of convincing and converting sinners, and of building them up in holiness and comfort, through faith, unto salvation."  I love that phrase, "especially the preaching."  The place of preaching in the life of the church of Jesus Christ can hardly be overstated.  John Broadus, the pre-eminent American preacher of 19^th century Baptists, said words in 1870 that are as true now as they were then:

In every age of Christianity, since John the Baptist drew crowds in the desert, there has been no great religious movement, no restoration of Scripture truth, and reanimation of genuine piety, without new power in preaching, both as cause and effect.

Bryan and I want to be used of the Lord at Christ Community in the faithful preaching of the Scriptures.  Thank you for letting us labor in the ministry of the Word and prayer.  Pray for us in that labor and hold us accountable.  Also, pray for James Dickson and Ken Kunkel as they prepare in seminary for the ministry of the Word. 

Your friend,