On Sat, 24 Jan 1998 19:50:25 -1000, "Rowland C. Croucher" <> wrote:

>... if I can be frank here, the 'faithful' often lose whatever
>'faith' they had, when we preachers preach about the fallibility of the
>biblical writers. They ask 'If I can't trust the Bible in this and that
>can I trust it for anything?'

Hi, frank.

I think it would be unwise to preach about the "fallibility of the biblical writers". Such comments may have a place in teaching, but they do are a distraction in preaching.

FWIW I am very careful to be honest and truthful in the language I use in preaching. I avoid saying "Jesus did..." or "Jesus said...", rather saying "According to the Gospel, Jesus...", or "In this story we read of Jesus...". When there are contradictions between two accounts I often draw them out as two different ways of looking at the same event. With references to the Pentateuch and the epistles where authorship is sometimes an issue, I say "the author" rather than saying "Moses" or "Paul" when I am fairly confident that it is not.

In teaching, especially in small groups, when people can ask questions for clarification, and even put an alternative viewpoint, I tend to be more 'frank'. In preaching, however, where the object of the exercise is to engender faith and to challenge people to work with the Holy Spirit in their lives, issues of "who wrote what" and "what actually happened" are mostly an irrelevant distraction.

>Two issues: what should preachers do with their own questions when
>behind the pulpit?

Keep them to themselves. A preacher who talks about their own issues in the pulpit is a bad preacher. We are there to talk about God's issues and the congregation's issues.

>And how can we encourage people to move from faith in a book to a living
>faith in Christ?

By the way we put our own faith into practise, and by being honest and accountable for what we say, open to criticism and questioning, and accepting of those who hold different opinions.

It is a great disadvantage in a preacher to need to be 'loved' or 'accepted', and even more so to need to be always right.

Nigel B. Mitchell