Is it enough?

Is the goal of our preaching/teaching life change? For years I said that it was, but I feel myself moving a little bit on that based on some things I've observed over the past several years. These days, I'm not sure that goal is well enough defined.

Life-change is important, don't get me wrong, but life-change has to be based on something. Some preaching philosophies seem to base it on common sense. Those pastors spend the majority of their time developing an image, or using narrative to help people arrive at a specific conclusion. The main thrust of the message is the point at which someone tells the story of how God pulled them out of an adulterous relationship, and now their life is better. Thus, they say, you should leave your adulterous relationship.

The problem with that being the main thrust of the message is that your experience might be different than theirs. Your life might be harder after you leave a bad relationship. Your wife might not take you back. If the primary basis of our persuasion toward life-change is story/someone else's experience, we're in trouble.

Story is fine. Narrative is fine. It's important to hear how God has used an application of Truth in another person's life. But at some point we have to be diligent to remind people that the Truth isn't in the story - the Truth is in the Scriptures.

I'm becoming more and more convinced that our primary goal doesn't need to be life-change. Our primary goal needs to be life-change based on a right understanding of the Scriptures. If someone walks away from our services different, but without an understanding of the true basis/reason for life-change, we're simply motivational speakers who get to play the God card.

Help people understand what the Bible says, and life change will always follow. The reverse isn't necessarily true.