Justin Moffatt: Beyond the Predictable Church & Sermon Talk 1

I’m at our Moore year reunion houseparty. Our speaker’s Justin Moffatt, from York St Anglican church in downtown Sydney. I’m blogging almost live – Justin just finished his first talk, I took notes on my laptop, I just tidied them up a bit, asked Justin for permission to blog – and here it is.

The case for predictability
A metronome is predictable. But it gives the piano player a structure to start singing a tune.
The word of God and the gospel of Christ is the metronome that structures everything we do. It enables us to sing a song to our congregation, and encourage them to join us in singing the song of the Christ who died for us. We aim to aid the congregation to sing this song.
God never changes. We have one story that will never change. We tell that gospel that Christ is Lord to a world that has a different story. We must preach that one gospel.
Jonah is about God’s consistency, and how frustrating Jonah finds that consistency. God is consistently and stubbornly good; Jonah if people repent, God is always consistently kind.
Acts 20:20-35: Paul consistently spoke the same message. So our task is to constantly speak the whole counsel of God.
1 Cor 1: Paul is predictable in his message – the cross – and his method – cruciform.
The congregation needs to be confident that the gospel will be preached each week. That’s the only way the regulars will be confident to bring friends.
The congregation needs to lose all dependence on your giftedness. Otherwise they’ll put their faith in you, not Christ.
If the passage is saying something different from what the preacher’s saying, there’s something wrong. The preacher needs to say what the passage is saying.
We preachers need to be freed from the tyranny of performance.

Beyond predictability
God’s grace is always surprising.
Hab 1:5 Habakkuk complains about sin in Judah. And God says he’s going to do something that you wouldn’t believe even if I told you.
Jesus spoke in unpredictable ways.
Matt 20 the parable of the generous landowner: the punch-line is about God’s grace.
Luke 16 parable of the shrewd manager. A crook held up as a model? Why would Jesus do that?
There’s only one place where Jesus is predictable: Mark 12: “What is the greatest commandment” – “Love God and neighbour” – “well done, teacher”. Outside of that, Jesus is unpredictable.
The human heart is deceitful; therefore the gospel will always be a surprise.
Pastorally, our leaders need a fresh aspect on the gospel. We have an old story, but we need to sing it in a new way.
Our listeners need both gravitas and levitas – weight and lightness, seriousness and freshness, challenge and humour, sobriety and joy, explanation and poetry, information (theology) and insight (particular lives of our people).
The congregation needs us to be ourselves, not someone else. If we try to be someone else, we’ll be predictable. We’re not Mark Driscoll or Tim Keller! The Spirit works in us & puts his stamp on us in particular!