B.Y.O.F. – week two

in case you’re new to this site…or if you’ve been sleeping through the sermons the past couple of weeks, “B.Y.O.F.” stands for “Bring Your Own Fork”.  it was an idea that began this past summer as i was thinking about how to respond to the reality that people leave churches because they are not getting fed.  they are critical of the shallow teaching and gravitate to some other church family that teaches better and gives them more of what they are looking for.

i will never be found guilty of minimizing the need for solid bible teaching and the need for gifted and godly teachers of the word.  i have been blessed throughout my life with a few men who have opened the sacred book and showed me things that i could never have found on my own.  i will always be grateful for that.  but they did something more.

they inspired me to feed myself.  the best teachers of the word i have ever had in my life did not create a dependence.  they did not make me worship them.  they did not cause me to extol their virtue as teachers, in spite of the enormous respect and gratitude i had for them.  they simply took me deeper into god’s treasure chest and helped create a hunger in me that could only be satisfied by studying the bible for myself.

good bible teachers teach people why they need to study the bible for themselves. 

good bible teachers teach people how to study the bible for themselves.

good bible teachers inspire people to study the bible, in order to teach it to others…so those people will study it to teach others…and so on…

that’s god’s plan.  it always has been.