{"id":688,"date":"2013-08-26T19:39:39","date_gmt":"2013-08-27T02:39:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/messofpottage.com\/blog\/?p=688"},"modified":"2013-08-26T22:48:41","modified_gmt":"2013-08-27T05:48:41","slug":"rebuking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/messofpottage.com\/blog\/2013\/08\/26\/rebuking\/","title":{"rendered":"Rebuking"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A few weeks ago, I came across <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=PSJt-LHMNRY\">an excerpt from a sermon<\/a> where the pastor at a church started &#8220;rebuking&#8221; members of the congregation for their various faults.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/PSJt-LHMNRY\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe> <\/p>\n<p>That video has gone viral now and, as I write this, about 600 thousand people <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=PSJt-LHMNRY\">have seen it on Youtube<\/a>. So <cite>Christianity Today<\/cite> asked a number of experts about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/ct\/2013\/september\/should-pastors-rebuke-parishioners-from-pulpit.html\">rebuking from the pulpit<\/a>. I was particularly interested to see Methodist luminary <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/William_Henry_Willimon\">William Willimon<\/a>&#8216;s take on it:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Prophets such as Amos or Nathan called people to account personally. It&#8217;s almost refreshing, in this age of feel-good theology, to see a preacher really get worked up over behavior and get morally indignant in the service of the truth delivered to him to speak.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Well, yes, as a fellow mainline pastor, I agree that it is (sadly) refreshing to see a preacher get worked up and morally indignant. But is it the right thing to do? <a href=\"http:\/\/www.albertmohler.com\/about\/\">Albert Mohler<\/a> said, &#8220;I can&#8217;t imagine a situation in which it is healthy or wise to attempt individual church discipline or exhortation in the context of preaching in a worship service.&#8221; I agree with him more than I do with Willimon.<\/p>\n<p>But my own position is one I&#8217;ve stolen from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flatironschurch.com\/staff\/\">Jim Burgen<\/a>, and it goes like this: if you can&#8217;t put &#8220;me too&#8221; somewhere in the sentence, then just don&#8217;t say it. There are other people in the congregation and they can probably see what the problem is as well as you can. Instead of you thundering &#8220;you bad person&#8221; from the pulpit, let those other people come alongside and say &#8220;I struggle with that too, and here&#8217;s how God has helped me.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A few weeks ago, I came across an excerpt from a sermon where the pastor at a church started &#8220;rebuking&#8221; members of the congregation for their various faults. That video has gone viral now and, as I write this, about 600 thousand people have seen it on Youtube. So Christianity Today asked a number of &hellip; <span class=\"more-link\"><a href=\"https:\/\/messofpottage.com\/blog\/2013\/08\/26\/rebuking\/\">Continue reading &raquo;<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[573,574,39,572],"class_list":["post-688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-correction","tag-discipline","tag-pastoring","tag-rebuke"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/messofpottage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/messofpottage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/messofpottage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/messofpottage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/messofpottage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=688"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/messofpottage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":690,"href":"https:\/\/messofpottage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688\/revisions\/690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/messofpottage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/messofpottage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/messofpottage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}