Bedhead Theology

One of the greatest struggles for preachers today is preaching that transcends time. Yes, difficulties abound in preaching. There is difficulty contextualizing for a modern audience, the opaqueness of seeking to meet the congregation’s needs, and even struggles in captivating the fleeting attention spans of modern audiences. Nevertheless, pride is one of the greatest perils preachers face in the pulpit. This struggle is two-fold. First, let me address the obvious. The tendency to conflate the greatness of God’s Word with our oratory genius is a common temptation among all preachers. As far as I can tell, this has been that way since the beginning. John the Baptist asserted, “He must increase; I must decrease” (John 3:30). He was acutely aware that he must exalt Christ above all else. This necessity has followed the church throughout history. Gregory the Great (540-604) astutely drew attention to the source of the problem. He wrote, “Since it is often the case that when a sermon is deli...

  The Long Defeat I recently learned of J. R. R. Tolkien’s concept called “the long defeat.” I have been researching this concept for a couple of weeks. I am, by no means, proficient in the study of philosophy. I often read philosophy and scratch my head, saying, “Those certainly are words.” But the long defeat struck a chord with me. It just made sense. The long defeat stands as a philosophical thought that captures Tolkien’s view of history: a slow, inevitable decline in which evil continually re-emerges, beauty fades, and human efforts inside worldly history ultimately end in loss. However, this view is far from a message of despair; the long defeat underpins the philosophy of heroic duty, perseverance, and hope. The question arises: in the face of inevitable defeat, we must decide why we fight. We do not fight for immediate victory; we fight for what is good, true, and holy. We stand as bulwarks against the evil of this age, knowing that we may very well be scarred by the b...

A quarter of a century sounds like a long time, and in fact, for the limited time we have on this planet, it is a significant milestone. Yet, as I reflect on everything that has transpired since that fateful day in 2001, I can see a world that is topsy-turvy. In some respects, our culture has advanced in leaps and bounds. The technological differences between 2001 and today show a fundamental transition. Society went from localized, physical, and highly fragmented devices to hyper-connected, cloud-based, and AI-driven platforms. Never before have people had access to the world’s wealth of information together, at the same time. On the other hand, we have lost some important aspects of our collective “soul.” As we remember the tragedy of 9/11, we must also recognize the tragedy that befalls us today—the death of civil discourse, the celebration of murder on the premise of ideology, the rabid acceleration of the death machine we call Planned Parenthood, and so much more. Given our cult...

  The church is in desperate need of gospel clarity. Rampant on every social media platform is a barrage of claims about Christianity rife with compromise. Gospel clarity must be anchored in biblical and theological consistency. Ultimately, that clarity must begin in the pulpit. An old preaching adage I first heard in my expositional preaching class asserts, “If there is a mist in the pulpit, then there will be a fog in the pew.” [1] The lack of gospel clarity among Christians stems from a lack of clarity within the local churches’ leadership. A church devoid of conversions is, plainly speaking, a dying church. A church with no gospel conviction—no evangelistic vision, passion for reaching the lost, nor any fervor for the Great Commission—has succumbed to apathy and complacency. Too often, local churches look to secular business models for church growth tactics and lose sight of their missional mandate—make disciples. Business models become transfixed on numerical growth that ...