This is Area 50 Baptist Church in Lilongwe, Malawi. Lilongwe is a funny place, it’s the capital city, but there’s no much of a centre, everywhere is really spread out, and Area 50 (they don’t really have proper names – it’s like a city district I guess) has the feeling of being in the middle of nowhere as you head down the dust track to get there.

Last year Bishop Hannington Church helped to pay for the roof (so that the building wouldn’t fall down), it was great to serve there. We ran 3 evening classes on Principles of Exposition, looking at how we can rightly handle the Bible, including stuff on Parables and Old Testament narrative.

We also visited for the women’s meeting, ran a marriage seminar day, and joined them for their Sunday service. For my part I taught on Bible Principles, Genesis 1-2 and preached on James 1. These were all translated into Chichewa, the local language.

My feeling was that the saying that the Christianity is a mile wide, but an inch deep is true. There’s a great passion for the Gospel, and there’s a great desire to be taught the Bible, but listening to some of the elders teach, it’s clear they really need training to help them rightly understand and teach God’s word… great to be able to serve them in that way.

Whilst sat in a rustic lodge overlooking Lake Malawi I thought, I know, I’ll read a book! Fortunately close to hand was the ‘waiting-to-be-read’ copy of ‘Why Johnny Can’t Preach‘ a short book by T.David Gordon.

Gordon looks unfavourably on the general state of preaching in American churches, I agree with his summary and am sure it is equally applied (as a generalisation) to many churches in the UK also.

He sights two main reasons why Johnny can’t preach. Firstly because Johnny can’t read (texts). Gordon suggests that our culture no longer values literature, to the point where we don’t really know how to read properly. Gordon argues that we should get back to reading classical literature to hone our textual skills, or at the very least put a lot more work into scriptural studies including Greek and Hebrew.

Secondly, Johnny can’t write! Gordon says with the invention of the telephone and the Internet that we’ve lost the art of letter writing, of properly constructing well organised text. He says that this means we preach in a poorly organised way too.

On the whole I agree with Gordon’s assessments. We do live in a culture where reading and writing in the traditional sense are devalued, and this does have a negative impact on the way we read the Bible and come to structure and deliver a sermon.

However, Gordon misses one key step. How then do we preach, into a culture where these things are true. It’s all very well to properly read and understand a Bible passage. It’s all very well to compose a well structured sermon, BUT… this is not what our culture is used to or values… I would say it’s the job of the preacher, as well as to understand the passage, and to construct a sermon well, to also communicate with the audience in a culturally ‘normal’ way. Good book, and good insights, but I think misses a logical conclusion to his argument.

This is pretty special. Cultural engagement at its best!

I preached last Sunday night… we’re still in Proverbs… preaching it thematically…

I got the topic of Repairing Relationships… which is ironic at best. But it was good to use lots of resources collected on the topic of Forgiveness, lots of Keller influence who’s just very helpful at explaining and applying the Proverbs…

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