Listening to Sermons

In the summer edition of The Briefing, Nathan Walter gives some tips on listening to sermons (back page)… he starts off with a gentle rebuke to people who say “Mark Driscoll says…”, I don’t know anyone like that, hmm… but that is always a danger isn’t it, that we hold too high an opinion of the words of [insert your favourite preacher here] diminishing both our own pastors and our personal time with God in His word. Here are his tips:

• Vary your diet of preachers, and, sometimes, why not simply listen to an audio Bible?
• Be wary of comparing the online preacher (publicly or privately) to your own God-given pastors.
• Don’t forget your responsibilities as a listener. Test everything. Never listen without your Bible open. Chase up the passages and write notes.
• Keep audio sermons in their place: like good Christian books, they can help us grow enormously, but we mustn’t let them loom too large. Nothing beats the godly discipline of reading your Bible.
• As with all preaching and teaching, don’t just listen to store up knowledge; listen to sermons in order to put the Word into practise. Listen to an iSermon on your iPod, but make sure you also have an iHarvest of righteousness.

Some good advice. The only one I would question is point 3 – while I agree in principle and certainly would do this when listening to a talk while at home, a lot of the time if I’m listening to a sermon on my iPod I’m doing something else; walking around town, travelling, at the gym (rarely but has been known)… it’s on my iPod because I’m not in the position to sit with open Bible and make notes.