Please Preach

Last night I confessed a fetish to my church. OK, so there were only 15 there at the time, but it was a surly confession nonetheless. I have a book fetish. I can't seem to get enough of them. I sometimes buy a half dozen books in a months time--sometimes more. The book of books tells us that "of the making of books there is no end" (Ecc. 12:12) and I think I need to read--well not all of them, but my "need to read" stack is piling higher and higher. One of the caring souls in our congregation reminded me that we have a library, so I need not purchase so many books. Another countered that you're not supposed to mark up library books (which of course I do a lot of). I must confess that neither one of these helpful comments helped much.

With that being said, I am reading a great book by Philip Jensen called "The Archer and the Arrow." It's about preaching the very words of God, aimed mostly at preachers. But he gives a very clear definition to preaching:

Sermons and preaching are not synonymous … Biblical preaching is about communicating God’s thoughts and not our own. And so we preach biblically whenever and wherever we declare the word of God to each other. In fact, sometimes there may even be more preaching happening over morning tea than from the pulpit, if dozens of conversations revolve around sharing God’s word of encouragement and rebuke with one another. Sermons, in other words, are a subset of a larger activity – the activity of proclaiming God’s word to one another, and from one generation to the next. Preaching is an activity that all are called on to perform.

So please preach God's Book and help me stop buying any more than I need.