12/28/2023 0 Comments Little bo peep staff diy![]() ![]() ![]() Such an approach mutes the subversive nature of the biblical narrative and the uniqueness of Jesus is diluted into general principles and attitudes for living. Jesus is used like a spiritual ATM card a man needs money and his ATM card is a way for him to achieve his goal of obtaining money. When sermons are approached in this manner, even if they proceed verse-by-verse through the biblical text, Jesus becomes a means to a self-referential end. There is no incorrect theology in this sermon outline but Jesus is incidental to the nursery rhyme narrative. We may not be able to find the lost but he can. For those who have been found “in Christ” there is great comfort in knowing that Jesus is on a mission of rescuing the lost. That emptiness you feel inside is the aching of your lostness. Some of you are lost and do not even know it. Use Jesus to find a solution or example of what to do – Jesus came to seek and to save the lost. I needed help that was beyond my resources. I knew that the fear and emptiness I felt was far beyond my control. Illustrate the problem or challenge – Once I lost one of my children in a crowd at a sporting event. ![]() Identify the textual problem or challenge – Little Bo Peep lost her sheepĬonnect the problem to the listeners – Little Bo Peep is not the only one who has lost something valuable is she? What have you lost? There is no one who has not experienced the pain of loss. Nursery rhymes serve to set up those sermons just as readily as a biblical text: I call this Little Bo Peep preaching because you do not need the Bible for those sermons to work. Jesus becomes the means to an end that centers on us. We come to the Scripture with ourselves as the primary subject and the goal becomes solving our self-defined problems or challenges. Jesus’ attitudes and experiences become a general principle for how we understand our attitudes and experiences. When this approach is used, Jesus becomes absorbed into human experience and is not sermonically treated as a unique and focal subject outside of us that governs our interpretation and thinking. It describes preaching that uses the text of Scripture as a starting point to connect to a universal human problem or challenge and then uses Jesus to help find the solution or as the example to help us know what to do in response to the problem. “Little Bo Peep preaching” is a term I began using years ago. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |