Fewer Prophets Of Prophesy

We need fewer prophets of prophesy. We need to move away from the ministries of personal profit and gain. We need to stop trying to force the Shekinah cloud to fill the sanctuary every Sunday morning and stop trying to force the Holy Ghost to take over our bodies. We also need to remember that God’s grace and gifts are given according to God’s pleasure and will and are not “on demand” according to our wishes.

We need to rediscover that Church services were never intended to be entertainment, concerts, theatre productions or multi-media presentations.

We definitely don’t need more Preachers of church protocol and reciters of religious rites and rituals.

What we do need now more than ever are for Preachers to be more like Ezra and Nehemiah. We need more Bible exposition and less self-expression from the pulpit.

“So they read in the book in the law of God distinctly, and gave the sense, and caused them to understand the reading.” (Nehemiah 8:8).

Preach and teach the word of God. Increase people’s understanding and sense of scriptures. Teach how to learn and the process of “rightly dividing the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15). Selah! Then will you have planted the seeds of God within the hearts of the saints, plus, enabled them to plant, water and grow God’s seed on their own. This will create a much happier and healthier congregation, one that is growing both in numbers and direction towards God.

“And all the people went their way to eat, and to drink, and to send portions, and to make great mirth, because they had understood the words that were declared unto them.” (Nehemiah 8:12)

Money, politics, publicity, self, sententiousness and power; are any of these bricks of your ministry? Are any of them cornerstones? If so, then you are not assembling a welcoming Church built on the word of God, but rather fabricating the middle wall of partition, founded on pride and contention.

The weight of this great responsibility of learning does not fall on the Ministers shoulders only. The congregation must put forth the effort to understand as well. We as congregants need to be like the Bereans in that “they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so” (Acts 17:11).

Preachers, throw your religion, ministry and self out the window. Then open your Bible and read God’s word without prejudice, faithfully and “distinctly”. Read so as to cause your congregants “to understand the reading”. Teach how to learn and understand scripture. Cause the Bible to be the power source that everyone can plug into.

If we do not teach how to learn, then the Bible will remain locked to the very ones it was written for.

Bill Hitchcock