CREEDE HINSHAW: Churches timid about proclaiming God’s power

Is your church too tentative when it comes to proclaiming the power of God?

My jumping off point for this column is Acts 9:26 which reports that the first Christians were afraid of the converted Paul because they couldn’t believe he was now one of them.

What had happened to this fire-breathing persecutor of the first Christians was so astonishing, so transformative, so mind-numbing, that when the transformed Paul began preaching on the resurrection of Christ and Jesus as Messiah, those in the earliest church considered it an absolute impossibility that Saul the persecutor could be Paul the apostle.

Saul’s conversion was instant and dramatic. Saul/Paul did nothing to make it happen nor did he even seek it out.

From all appearances Saul the Jew was perfectly happy in his role as learned Pharisee, interpreter and defender of the Torah, and chief patrol officer for the Lord God Almighty. Saul was not seeking a happier, more fulfilling life. In fact his life might have been easier had he not been converted.

One moment Saul was on his way to Damascus to round up Christians, the next moment he was blind, humbled and on the receiving end of instruction from God. His life moving forward was so dramatically different that he was unrecognizable.

And so I ask, does the church still preach a faith in God’s power to change us so dramatically that other people won’t even recognize us anymore?

Too many sermons focus on what I’d call “little life lessons.” I recognize those sermons because I’ve preached too many of them myself. The preacher stands in the pulpit or wanders back and forth across a dais, telling the congregation the three things they can do this morning to make their life better, align themselves with God, etc. This preacher becomes a dispenser of trite advice or prescriptions for a happy life.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with suggesting or telling people what to do or how to get better unless by so doing week after week we overemphasize the role of the person in the pew.

What is so often missing in these three-step life lesson homilies is that they emphasize the power of the person to change more than to praise God for God’s own ability to touch people dramatically, suddenly, permanently and miraculously. Though the person transformed by God is responsible for honoring that transformation and striving to maintain it, this is secondary to the creative, initial, mighty work of God in the person’s life.

To the extent that the church stresses little life lessons and that self-improvement will lead to happiness, the church will neither thrive nor even serve God. Dramatic, miraculous change in life is possible any single moment when God is involved, and more than we might realize, God still overtakes converts like a thief in the night. The church must never stop proclaiming the dramatic transformation that took place – solely by God’s power — on the road to Damascus.

Email columnist Creede Hinshaw, a retired Methodist minister, at [email protected].