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Sermon prep for the non-vocational preacher

An open Bible being read

It’s one of my favorite times of the year—I’m getting ready to preach for the first time in ages. With moving, settling into my new job, traveling for work, and a host of other things, it’s been hard to even start looking for opportunities. So, God graciously provided one for me this coming weekend when I head down to Texas to work on a Gospel Project-related video.

Sermon prep methodology fascinates me. I love learning how pastors manage their time to prioritize prayer, study, writing, and practice. Through the years, my own habits have changed pretty drastically. I used to joke that my prep was like “Forrest Gump”-ing my way into a good sermon. It was basically a happy coincidence. I don’t joke like that anymore (and not just because it annoys my wife). Actually, I work really hard to prepare any sermon or presentation. I’ve never considered myself a natural public speaker, so I don’t wing anything.

So what do I do? Today, I thought I’d share a bit about what my current process looks like:

How much time do I spend?

Around 8-10 hours. This is the formal part of preparation: outlining the passage, checking sources, and writing my manuscript. (Yes, I work from a manuscript.) Stewing on the passage, praying, letting it roll around in the back of my head… no idea.

How do I break up my time?

Once I’ve settled on a text (unless it’s been assigned), it looks sort of like this:

  • Day one: read the passage three or more times in at least two translations. Get a feel for its rhythm and look for the natural breaks. Start working out the main point. (1 hour)
  • Day two: Once I’ve got my main point (the one thing the message is about), I start working on my outline and supporting points. Commentaries start coming into play toward the end of this time. (1-2 hours)
  • Days three and four: Write the manuscript and check commentaries. (2+ hours each day)
  • Day five: Read through and revise. My read-throughs are a little more elaborate. It’s  more like dry-run preaching to myself (and sometimes my wife). (1-2 hours)

That’s typically what my process looks like. It’s not perfect, obviously, and doesn’t always line up to this. For example, sometimes there’s an additional day is needed because I need more time to make my manuscript shine. Other times, I find that what I’m saying doesn’t actually make sense, so I have to scrap it and start over. But despite these minor variances, this process works pretty well.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to start reading Jeremiah 31.

How to listen to bad preaching without (hopefully) becoming self-righteous

freely-speaking

For the past while, I’ve been listening to some preachers (or, if you prefer, “preachers” in some cases) for a little project I’m working on. And it’s been painful—I mean, really, really painful. Now, all are actually decent public speakers—one, in fact, is a brilliant motivational speaker—so it’s not because they’re entirely lacking in value from an entertainment perspective, nor are there no helpful nuggets to be gleaned from what they’re saying.

But they’re really hard to listen to and not act all high-and-mighty. To not nitpick every word, joke or non-sequitur that inevitably appears. Why? Because they’re missing the thing that make preaching preaching—Jesus. After all, if Jesus isn’t preached—if the good news isn’t proclaimed—is it really preaching?

I’m very thankful that I am a part of a church where we actually do preach the gospel consistently. We open the Bible each week and we study the Scriptures together, looking at how what we’ve learned both applies to us and points us to the good news of Christ’s life, death and resurrection.

But when you find yourself under a different sort of word ministry—one that uses the Bible to prove a point or as an illustration, rather than as the point—what do you do? Is there a way to listen to this sort of preaching and not become totally self-righteous?

Believe it or not, yes. But it takes some work. Here are a few ideas:

Look for the evidence of God’s grace. If the preacher subscribes to a different model than you might believe is most biblically faithful, it doesn’t mean he’s abandoned the faith. It means he’s using a model he prefers (even if we disagree). Look for the helpful elements of the message, even if they’re something that could be found in a talk given by a non-Christian. Then look to see if those things actually relate to the truth of Scripture. If they do, accept them. If not, well, you’re out 27 minutes.

Write while you listen. Grab a notebook, or a piece of paper or something, and write down what’s going through your head. Don’t just let them rattle around. Pray about them, look at them in light of Scripture, and pray that God would keep you humble as you listen.

Pray for change in the speaker. You might be watching the message on your computer. Or listening to it on your phone. Or streaming it on Netflix. However you’re engaging, the exposure to these sorts of preachers is an opportunity to pray for them. Perhaps God might encourage them to change their methods and approach.

Stop listening. Final thing that’s most helpful is to turn it off. Don’t keep listening to something you know is only going to feed your unhealthy and ungodly tendencies. There’s no point in exposing yourself to that which prevents you from thinking on whatever is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, excellent and praiseworthy (Phillipians 4:8).

I realize if you’re in a church that works under this model, that last point is way harder since it may require leaving your church (which should always be a last resort, but is a biblically acceptable option). If you’re finding you’re in this position every week, talk to the leaders of the church. Ask  them to help you understand the reasons behind the types of messages given. Though there might still be no other option but to leave, it might put you in a better position to leave as friends in disagreement than out of bitterness.

I’ve been putting these ideas into practice while listening, and it’s been surprisingly helpful (which also explains the lack of snarky tweets while I’m listening). It doesn’t make me enjoy the preaching more, and sometimes I still get nothing from it, but it doesn’t lead me to look at those speaking with contempt (I hope). Lord willing, they’ll help you do the same.

Preaching by Timothy Keller (Book Review)

preaching-keller

If you’re a preacher, you’ve probably got a short list of individuals and authors you look to for encouragement and advice. For me, these includes a few personal friends and mentors, as well as a number of well-known individuals. There’s a great deal I’ve learned about preaching from the works of Charles Spurgeon and Martyn Lloyd-Jones, from listening to men like Daniel Akin and Matt Chandler.

And then there’s Tim Keller. One of the things I appreciate about Keller is the fact that he holds his hearers’ attention without drawing too much attention to himself. He loves words and wordplay, but he’s not trying to entertain you (even though his humor is quite disarming)—he wants you to understand the Bible on its own terms, and to see Jesus in every jot and tittle. So when Keller set out to write a book on preaching itself, I was intrigued. Would he focus primarily on mechanics? Study habits? The C.S. Lewis saturation point in each sermon?

In Preaching, Keller chooses to take a different approach than other authors writing on the subject by primarily looking at Word ministry philosophically, asking readers to consider how preaching serves the Word of God, reaches people, and is a demonstration of the Spirit and of power.

Methodology and showing them Jesus

The first section of the book addresses the best methods for preaching. Keller encourages making expository preaching your typical approach, as it best “expresses and unleashes our belief in the whole Bible as God’s authoritative, living, and active Word” (35).

Topical preaching, on the other hand, can be helpful at times, and even necessary, but a steady diet of it doesn’t leave people appreciating the scope of God’s Word, nor grasping the Spirit’s power. Most importantly, it fails to show hearers how all of Scripture is about Jesus. He writes:

Try reading only one chapter out of a Charles Dickens or Victor Hugo novel without reading anything before or afterward in the book. Would you be able to understand and appreciate the chapter?  Certainly you would learn about the characters, and some relatively complete narrative action or subplot could take place within the portion of the book you have read. But much would be inexplicable, because you wouldn’t know what came before, and many things that the author was doing in the chapter would be invisible if you didn’t see how the story played out. That is what it is like to read and preach a text of the Bible and not show how it points to Christ. If you don’t see how the chapter fits into the whole story, you don’t understand the chapter. (59)

Someone can give a great, inspirational message, but if Jesus isn’t there, if he isn’t made known, preaching hasn’t happened.

Contending for contextualization

The bulk of Preaching deals more with the issue of contextualization. Readers familiar Keller’s other works know that this is a hobbyhorse of his. Why? Because we don’t seem to understand what is meant by it.

By contextualization, he does not mean conforming and compromising the truth in order to make it palatable for a 21st century audience—instead, he means communicating the truth in ways that they can actually comprehend. Though there are some who adamantly deny we should do this at all, we are wise to remember that “no one can present a culture-free formulation of biblical truth”:

The moment you open your mouth, many things—your cadence, accent, vocabulary, illustrations and ways of reasoning, and the way you express emotions—make you culturally more accessible to some people and force others to stretch and work harder to understand or even pay attention to you. (102)

I was reminded of this reality a few months ago when speaking at a church in another community, and one illustration I made—referencing Calvin and Hobbes—just didn’t resonate. Because it was a very friendly and smaller group, there was a lot more freedom to adjust on the fly as I was preaching. So I asked, “How many of you know what I’m talking about right now?”

One person. That was, on my part, poor contextualization (though, honestly, one that probably couldn’t be helped), in the same way it would be were I to use the word “sanctification” with the grade four and five kids in our children’s ministry without explaining what it means.

Identifying the spirit of the age—correctly

But Keller goes one-step beyond simply reminding us that we need to remember where we are, but also reminds us of the need to correctly identify the spirit of the age. What Keller argues is that we are actually not in a post-modern age, but in a late-modern one. Citing Charles Taylor’s The Secular Age, he writes that,

…secular people are not more objective, but instead have embraced a new, constructed web of alternate beliefs about the nature of things that are not self-evident to all, are no more empirically provable than any other religious beliefs, require enormous leaps of faith, and are subject to their own array of serious problems and objections. (124-125)

What makes late-modernity unique, though, Keller says, is:

Nonsecular cultures are overt about their faith, and their members acknowledge the faith nature of their convictions. Many late modern secular people, however, don’t see or grant the leaps of faith they are taking.

And that is what presents the great challenge to preaching in our day. This has been put before our eyes in the most graphic way possible by the Planned Parenthood video scandal. They’re edited. They can’t be trusted. Think about the services women wouldn’t have access to without Planned Parenthood? A fetus is human, but not a person… On and on the arguments go, all seemingly without anyone taking a moment to really think about what’s being said.

That is the late-modern worldview at work. And that is what our preaching needs to combat. But even as we do, it’s wise to remember that, as Keller writes, “you are at odds with a system of belief far more than you are at war with a group of people. Contemporary people are the victims of the late-modern mind far more than they are its perpetrators. Seen in this light, the Christian gospel is more of a prison break than a battle.” (155-156)

Edifying the believer and reaching the unbeliever

Preaching matters not simply because it’s something we’ve always done, but because of what it does in people—or more correctly, what the Spirit of God does through in people through faithful preaching. When the Bible is faithfully preached, some people are challenged in how they have been living and believing. Others are strengthened and given new hope. Others still find the message abhorrent and want nothing to do with it. And this can happen all in the same sermon!

And that’s why this book matters, and why anyone engaged in any form of preaching ministry should carefully consider what Keller has to say in it. Preaching is not a book on “how to preach the Tim Keller way”. And for that I am grateful. It is a book about the primacy of preaching, a call to put our trust in God’s word on display, and to rely on the Spirit to work through our preaching as we strive to show Jesus as the real answer to those the late-modern mind cannot answer.


Title: Preaching: Communicating Faith in an Age of Skepticism
Author: Timothy Keller
Publisher: Viking (2015)

Buy it at: Amazon | Westminster Bookstore

What a good sermon is like

What should a sermon be like? Should it be the equivalent of a lecture, or a family chat, or feel like a stand up routine? Should it include ten tips, five tricks or three steps, each beginning with the letter “p”?

A sermon may be all of these things—or it may be none of them. But a good sermon does not try to be any of them. It is not mere entertainment, any more than mere intellectualism. A good sermon intrigues the mind and stirs the heart—but not through the efforts of the preacher, but through the Word of God.

sword-cuts

Tim Keller describes it this way in his book, Preaching:

[Preaching compellingly] means not merely informing the mind but capturing the hearer’s interest and imagination and persuading her toward repentance and action. A good sermon is not like a club that beats upon the will but like a sword that cuts to the heart (Acts 2:37). At its best it pierces to our very foundations, analyzing and revealing us to ourselves (Hebrews 4:12). It is built on Bible exposition, for people have not understood a text unless they see how it bears on their lives. (21)

A good sermon does these very basic things: it leads us to repentance and compels us to action. Tips, tricks and well-timed jokes won’t do these things. But drawing our hearers’ attention toward the gospel in any and every text—from Genesis to Revelation—always will. This is no easy task, but it is always worth the effort.


Photo credit: Albion_Hospitaller_Medieval_Sword_3 via photopin (license). Designed with Canva.

Lord, renew our taste for true “spiritual food”

only truth

One of the things that absolutely terrifies me as I look across the popular landscape of Christian music, publishing and preaching is the… fluffiness of it all. We act as though there is a profound resurgence of robust Christian belief and practice—and truth be told, I genuinely believe we may be on the cusp of such a thing—but every week, hundreds of thousands of professing Christians only hear a legalistic and anemic message about how they can have their best life right now—better finances, a better marriage, a better body—but never actually hear about the one from whom all blessings flow.

Fed on a steady diet of such gobbledygook, we’ve lost our appetite appetite for true spiritual food. We are like small children who prefer processed chicken-like meat over the real thing. This simply will not do. We need our taste for spiritual food to be renewed—and we must plead with the Lord that he would bring such renewal. But as Charles Spurgeon said when preaching on Psalm 28:9,[1. “A Prayer for the Church Militant”, sermon 768, preached in 1867] the need goes beyond simply recognizing our need for sound doctrine:

Ask the Lord to illuminate His people’s minds as to the doctrines of Covenant Grace, that they may see into the ancient things—that they may get to the depth that lies under and that rolls beneath, and may reach to the precious things of the everlasting hills. Why, half of the Lord’s people do not feed because they do not believe that that is bread which God puts on the table! They are afraid of some of His Truths because they have been told, “Oh, they are so high—it is such high doctrine.” “Savory meat,” I say, “such as my soul loves!” O that these people had but an appetite to feed upon these things from which they are kept back—not because the things are not good—but because they have been warned against them! Whatever is in this Book is fit for our souls to live upon! If God has revealed the Truth, O Believer, be not ashamed to accept it and to make it the nutriment of your soul!

Still, even if we had the prayer answered as to good pastors and sound doctrines, that is not all we need—the soul’s food is to really feed upon Christ Himself. Jesus Christ is received by the heart through communion with Him, and it is only by fellowship with Jesus that, after all, we get the marrow and the fatness of the Gospel. “The truth as it is in Jesus” is the only truth which really nourishes the spiritual man.

Lord, renew our taste for true “spiritual food” of the only true sort—and for One who truly nourishes our souls, Christ himself.


Photo credit: Recreation of Easter at Canterbury Cathedral via photopin (license). Designed with Canva.

The only truly good sermon you will ever hear

good-sermon

“Did he tell us where we can see Jesus in the text?”

It’s a question I’ve asked on more than one occasion after hearing a message. It’s hard to hear someone speak—even when they explain the text more or less correctly—and wonder, “Did he say anything about Jesus here?” It’s common to wonder this if you’re used to messages that involve five points beginning with the letter “p,” but I’d argue that a commitment to preaching verse by verse does not guarantee we’ll keep Jesus front and center. In fact, I sometimes think it’s easier for us to lose sight of Jesus as we examine the veins on the leaves of a particular tree in one section of the forest.

Truly, there is no worse sermon than one that misses Jesus. By that, I don’t mean ham-fisted attempts to force him into the message, or a tacked-on memorized gospel presentation at the end of the message. What I mean is to always show the connection to Christ. Charles Spurgeon reminds us of this in the following story, previously told by a Welsh minister:

A young man had been preaching in the presence of a venerable divine, and after he had done he went to the old minister, and said, “What do you think of my sermon?”

“A very poor sermon indeed,” said he.

“A poor sermon?” said the young man, “it took me a long time to study it.”

“Ay, no doubt of it.”

“Why, did you not think my explanation of the text a very good one?”

“Oh, yes,” said the old preacher, “very good indeed.”

“Well, then, why do you say it is a poor sermon? Didn’t you think the metaphors were appropriate and the arguments conclusive?”

“Yes, they were very good as far as that goes, but still it was a very poor sermon.”

“Will you tell me why you think it a poor sermon?”

“Because,” said he, “there was no Christ in it.”

“Well,” said the young man, “Christ was not in the text; we are not to be preaching Christ always, we must preach what is in the text.”

So the old man said, “Don’t you know young man that from every town, and every village, and every little hamlet in England, wherever it may be, there is a road to London?”

“Yes,” said the young man.

“Ah!” said the old divine “and so from every text in Scripture, there is a road to the metropolis of the Scriptures, that is Christ. And my dear brother, your business in when you get to a text, is to say, ‘Now what is the road to Christ?’ and then preach a sermon, running along the road towards the great metropolis—Christ. And I have never yet found a text that had not got a road to Christ in it, and if I ever do find one that has not a road to Christ in it, I will make one; I will go over hedge and ditch but I would get at my Master, for the sermon cannot do any good unless there is a savour of Christ in it.”[1. From Spurgeon’s sermon, Christ Precious to Believers, March 13, 1859.]

There is no worse sermon than one where you cannot find Christ in it, no matter how good the explanation of the details of the text. There is no worse devotional thought than one devoid of the presence of our Lord and Savior, no matter how encouraging or motivational it may be. The only truly good message is one where we’ve shown Christ in the text. Every text, every road, as the old divine said, leads to him. Whether we go over hedge and ditch, it is worth it, for good of all who hear—and ourselves—to point the way.

What to expect when we preach the gospel

friends-gospel

In modern times, we tend to look at the world around us and say, if only we were X—whether X is hip, trendy, socially active, or whatever—then we’d win the culture to Christ. We act as though there’s some magic formula to this. That somehow we can make everything go exactly our way if we could just unlock the secret.

Now, imagine having these sorts of aspirations—of winning your people with your powerful and prophetic preaching—and rather than turning to God in repentance, they turn on you with murder in their eyes. That those plotting your demise are not strangers, but your childhood friends.

And not your friends only, but your family: your parents, siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles…

They all want you dead.

What would you do?

Jeremiah, often described as the weeping prophet, didn’t need to imagine this, for it was his experience. He wrote in chapter 11 of his book of their scheming. For he heard them say,”Let us destroy the tree with its fruit, let us cut him off from the land of the living, that his name be remembered no more,” not knowing that “it was against me they devised schemes” (Jeremiah 11:19).

How would you respond to opposition of this degree? Would you flee? Would you be tempted to retract your message? Or would you turn to the Lord to defend your cause as he did, pleading, “But, O LORD of hosts, who judges righteously, who tests the heart and the mind, let me see your vengeance upon them, for to you have I committed my cause”? (Jeremiah 11:20)

While many around the world don’t have to wonder, for it is their daily reality, I hope none of us here in North America will ever have to experience exactly what Jeremiah did. None of us should ever desire persecution of this nature, or actively pursue it. Nevertheless, it’s important to remember as we consider the experiences of Jeremiah, the Apostles, the Reformers, and so many others right up to our own day is that the gospel is offensive. If we preach the truth—if we preach that Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, died for our sins on the cross and rose again on the third day—we are preaching “a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense” (1 Peter 2:8).

The gospel shows us as we truly are—lost, depraved, unable to save ourselves no matter how good and moral we attempt to be. Thus, it confronts us with uncomfortable realities. We know we can never be good enough (even by our own standards, to say nothing of God’s). We know the deeds and thoughts done in private. The gospel shatters our self-image, and so we are left with two options: repent or retaliate.

And that’s the hard thing for so many to get, I fear: generally speaking, we’re not going to win any popularity contests when we’re preaching the gospel in a culture that runs contrary to it. The hard-hearted Israelites to whom Jeremiah preached would not hear him, and in their rebellion sought his death. Today, we’re called bigots for upholding biblical truths and not being able to bless actions that run contrary to them. We’re called intolerant for our exclusive claims. Even when people think we, individually, are very nice, collectively, Christians are personae non gratae.

This is what we should expect when we represent Christ, no matter how well we represent him. Some will be drawn closer, but others—many others, perhaps—will be repelled. That’s what we should expect, because it is what we’re told will happen. So do not lose heart if social action doesn’t win the affections of the lost, or being culturally relevant still results in us being left out in the cold. Give thanks to God and carry on.

Six books I want to read this summer

summer reading

Summer vacation is already here for some of us, and nearly upon us for others. Although my reading has left me feeling a little unfulfilled of late, I’m still looking forward to what some time off with a good book or two will bring. Here’s a look at what I’m planning to read this year:

The Prodigal Church: A Gentle Manifesto against the Status Quo by Jared C. Wilson

This is one I’ve been meaning to get to for a while now. I’ve read a few pages, though, and it’s delightful.

Buy it at: Amazon | Westminster Bookstore


The Return of the King by JRR Tolkien

I’ve been reading the Lord of the Rings series for the last little while, so it’s going to be fun to finish it up.

Buy it at: Amazon | Westminster Bookstore (trilogy box set)


Newton on the Christian Life by Tony Reinke

I am a big fan of the Theologians on the Christian Life series from Crossway, and based on what I’ve seen so far, this volume looks pretty spectacular.

Buy it at: AmazonWestminster Bookstore


Onward by Russell Moore

Though this one has the least practical relevance to my life (since I live in Canada), it should be a thought-provoking read nonetheless.

Buy it at: Amazon (pre-order)


Preaching by Timothy Keller

The people we have the most to learn from about preaching (aside from those to whom we preach) are those who have done it for a long time. Given Keller’s decades of pastoral ministry experience, I’m really looking forward to learning from this one.

Buy it at: Amazon | Westminster Bookstore


The Batman Adventures, vol 2 by Puckett, Parobeck, and Burchett

For an entire generation, Kevin Conroy’s Batman from Batman: the Animated Series is the definitive Dark Knight. I finally introduced Abigail to this staple of the 90s, and she thinks it’s pretty rad. It’s also one of the few superhero comics I’ve been able to find that isn’t kind of porny or otherwise wildly inappropriate to share with my kids (but that is a story for another time…).

Buy it at: Amazon


That’s a quick look at what I’m trying to read. Some of it I’ll be done sooner than others, naturally, but I think it’s a reasonable goal. What’s on your reading list?

Long preaching isn’t always good preaching

least-to-say (1)

Early on in my faith, I was enamored with preachers who would give these 45, 50, 60-plus minute sermons. I would compare what I’d hear in their podcasts to what I was hearing on Sunday mornings, and I always wondered, “Why doesn’t my pastor do what these guys are doing?”

Which, of course, is stupid. But then again, I was kind of an idiot.

(Moving on…)

Over time, I grew less enamored with some of those preachers (or at least their preaching). As I listened, I increasingly realized that the guys that seemed to be able to get up and had little more than a post-it for notes weren’t actually saying much of anything. They were using a great many words to say very little.

When training pastors on the importance of keeping people’s attention, Charles Spurgeon encouraged his hearers to keep their sermons shorter. “Spend more time in the study that you may need less in the pulpit,” he said.

We are generally longest when we have least to say. A man with a great deal of well-prepared matter will probably not exceed forty minutes; when he has less to say he will go on for fifty minutes; and when he has absolutely nothing he will need an hour to say it in. (Lectures to my Students, 156)

This is valuable advice (and also helps us understand why TED Talks are so powerful). Sometimes preaching[1. and blogging, and books, and…] “long” isn’t necessary—it’s just long. It’s a “noisy gong or a clanging cymbal”(1 Corinthians 13:1), revealing a great love of our own pontificating, but little for our hearers. And I really have no interest in that, either as a preacher or the hearer. I’d rather speak five simple words that communicate clearly than 1000 that may be eloquent or funny, but lack substance. What about you?

What do true teachers do?

true-teacher

What do all faithful teachers have in common? What separates a good teacher from a bad one? And what do they actually do?

It’s easy to become confused about this. After all, there are plenty of speakers and teachers who are technically excellent. They are captivating personalities and incredibly gifted, yet they are a total train wreck.

Assuming the primary issue is understood—after all, the Scriptures place little emphasis on an individual’s abilities and focus almost entirely upon his conduct and character—there is really only one thing that determines if a teacher is a true one, a faithful one: how firmly he holds to Scripture. Martyn Lloyd-Jones made the point well in Life in Christ: Studies in 1 John:

The most important test is the conformity to scriptural teaching. “Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God.” How do I know that this is a scriptural test? All I know about Him, I put up to the test of Scripture. Indeed, you get exactly the same thing in the sixth verse of 1 John 4 where John says, speaking of himself and the other apostles, “We are of God: he that knoweth God heareth us; he that is not of God heareth not us. Hereby know we the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error.” The first thing to ask about a man who claims to be filled with the Spirit and to be an unusual teacher is, does his teaching conform to Scripture? Is it in conformity with the apostolic message? Does he base it all upon this Word? Is he willing to submit to it? That is the great test.

Your ability to teach matters, make no mistake. But what’s more important than your ability that you hold fast to the Scriptures. That you grab hold and never let go, no matter how tempting it may be (or how popular it may make you). Pastors, bloggers, conference speakers and authors should always be the first to say, “Do not simply take my word for it. Check the Scriptures—listen to them above me.” He doesn’t encourage closing the book, nor turning off your brain. He doesn’t imply infallibility in his ministry. He is subordinate to the Word of God. He conforms and submits to it.

That’s what a true teacher does.