One thing reformed evangelicalism and charismatic evangelism have in common, and generally get wrong, is the efficacy of scripture.
Plank, Splinter, Speck of saw dust. Confession time. All the time, ALL THE TIME, I take kids through the bible without ever reading them the actual text of the bible. I do stories from the bible without quoting the text, I do moral points without showing them the proverbs. I do all sorts of things to hide scripture. The line between getting people to study scripture because it changes their hearts and magic bookism is probably small, but I've avoided dealing with it by not letting them see the plain text.
Caveats in place, back to the first sentence. Scripture has efficacy, a technical short hand which means, you read it, and it changes your life. It is powerful (and if I don't have to clarify, scripture means the Christian bible, the other scriptures have the efficacy of arsenic). And yet, when we preach, or lead, or it's-not-preaching-it's-speaking-from-the-front, we so often fail to recognise it. I presume this is pride, that we understand scripture rightly and therefore our words have efficacy. This manifests itself as the reformed preaching a multi-point outline of scripture and not scripture, or the charismatic preaching 'this is what God is saying to us' and not scripture.
that's a keeper, ta.
A caution. One interesting argument with Muslims is whether the Koran is created or uncreated. Most say the later which puts them close to heresy: they end up with a bi-theism: Allah and the Koran. We must be careful not to make the same mistake. Scripture is what it is because Christ speaks in it through the Spirit (I'd guess!)
As I take it you're not saying we should do away with sermons, what exactly are you criticising? Expositional sermons I've heard take great care to let the text not only dictate what they say, but quote from it so that people can see their points come from Scripture and not themselves. They also generally read it all out at the start. Are you merely warning against forgetting to actually quote from Scripture in preaching?
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