what I did on my study week

I had a very good study week. I studied where I felt led by the Lord. That took me through three books, Hebrew grammar, and worship.

The first book was “Whose Land? Whose Promise: What Christians are not being told about Israel and the Palestinians” by Gary M. Burge. The author is a professor at Wheaton college who tries to balance out God’s demand for justice for both the Arab and the Jew from a biblical viewpoint. I found the book very stimulating. It gave me resolution on some of the ethical/theological issues of that region. I gained a Reformed viewpoint of the situation which is very different from a Christian dispensationalist (Assembly of God, most non-denominational churches) or Jewish view.

Next I studied Hebrew ("A Grammar for Biblical Hebrew", C.L. Seow). Language is a gateway to intimacy whether it is with people in conversation, or with an author in print. I discovered a need in the last months to relearn the foundations of Hebrew grammar. It was fantastic to have long periods of time to immerse myself in things like verb forms, endings, and the morphological changes of the trilateral root. By the end of the week I noticed an improvement in my reading ability. I plan to keep working on my grammar over the months. This is important because when my Greek and Hebrew skills are sharp I am able to hear God’s voice clearer when I read the Bible.

I spent a day reviewing “Built to Last: successful habits of visionary companies” by Jim Collins. This bold book was important in last Summer's leadership work. A key concept in this is “Preserve the core and stimulate progress”. This was hard to grasp last summer but now has become second nature. In my own words it means to build on our particular tradition of faithfulness while changing to as needed to apply our values to this current time.

Jim Collins has a brilliant metaphor for leadership. "Are you a time teller or a clock builder?" A “time teller” is needed to tell others time. He is needed because he alone has the ability to “tell the time”. An organization led by this kind of leader lives and dies by the ability of that one and is limited by the leader’s ability to perform. That is the type of leadership I thought was needed in my early ministry. But the leader I now try to be is a “clock builder”.

The leader works to help the organization build clocks so that everyone can tell time. This type of leadership enables an organization to expand in ways not limited by the abilities of the leader. The shift is from the “dynamic leader” to the “dynamic organization”. This is the kind of leadership that I have been striving over the last few years to embody.

A day was spent relishing "Homiletics". This is book on preaching by one of the 20^th Century’s greatest theologians, Karl Barth. He analyzes protestant understanding of preaching and proposes a new definition which became the dominant model in the Presbyterian Church. He claims preaching is a dual effort between God and the preacher.

“1.Preaching is the Word of God which he himself speaks, claiming for the purpose the exposition of a biblical text in free human words that are relevant to contemporaries by those who are called to do this in the church that is obedient to its commission. 2. Preaching is the attempt enjoined upon the church to serve God’s own Word, through one who is called thereto, by expounding a biblical text in human words and making it relevant to contemporaries in intimation of what they have to hear from God himself.”

He boils that lengthy definition down to this. “First, God is the one who works, and second, we humans must try to point to what is said in scripture. There is no third thing.” I found his work exciting. I underlined heavily and made emphatic notes. He reignited my passion for preaching.

I worshiped in a very different congregation from ours on Sunday. God spoke to me in many ways through the people and the preacher. I gained much.

All in all, it was a blessed week. It is always good for me to spend long chunks of time with God studying. It takes time for me to be able to listen to him. In this way, God equips me to be the best pastor I can be for his glory.