Most people do not come...
Illustration
Most people do not come to church to be woed, but to be wowed. Beautiful music, inspiring sermon, gorgeous flowers, lovely building -- wow! I'll be back!
Amos came not to hear wow! but to proclaim woe.
The contemporary prophet's task has been described as this: To comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable. The problem is, today many divinely called preachers find themselves standing before congregations that often look, very, very comfortable.
There are still 21 wars being waged on the face of the earth today. Famine continues to ravage vast areas of the globe, bringing death to thousands upon thousands of adults and children. Hundreds of thousands of homeless people populate the refugee camps of the near East and the streets of the great cities of the world. (Item: In Los Angeles alone it is estimated that at any given time there are between 5,000 and 20,000 homeless, runaway teenagers with no regular shelter.)
Preachers may muster enough courage to pronounce a few woes upon governments that expand spending military hardware while shrinking funds to feed the hungry and help the poor.
But it is tough to pronounce woe to the church when we are tempted to become preoccupied with fighting for (or against) prayer in our schools, arguing whether or not the Scriptures are "inerrant and infallible," or debating what to do about those treacherous secular humanists in our public schools -- while the starving still die and the homeless still wander.
At times we are called to speak -- and to hear -- "words that wound, thoughts that sear." Healing, growth, redemption might result.
Amos came not to hear wow! but to proclaim woe.
The contemporary prophet's task has been described as this: To comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable. The problem is, today many divinely called preachers find themselves standing before congregations that often look, very, very comfortable.
There are still 21 wars being waged on the face of the earth today. Famine continues to ravage vast areas of the globe, bringing death to thousands upon thousands of adults and children. Hundreds of thousands of homeless people populate the refugee camps of the near East and the streets of the great cities of the world. (Item: In Los Angeles alone it is estimated that at any given time there are between 5,000 and 20,000 homeless, runaway teenagers with no regular shelter.)
Preachers may muster enough courage to pronounce a few woes upon governments that expand spending military hardware while shrinking funds to feed the hungry and help the poor.
But it is tough to pronounce woe to the church when we are tempted to become preoccupied with fighting for (or against) prayer in our schools, arguing whether or not the Scriptures are "inerrant and infallible," or debating what to do about those treacherous secular humanists in our public schools -- while the starving still die and the homeless still wander.
At times we are called to speak -- and to hear -- "words that wound, thoughts that sear." Healing, growth, redemption might result.
