Christian education must bridge the space between listeners’ hearts and minds in order to effectively change them for Christ, longtime preaching professor Robert Smith Jr. recently shared during a chapel service at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas.
“Eighteen inches from head to heart,” Smith pointed out during the Feb. 6 service. “From the cranial to the cardiological, from taught truth to lived truth, from exegesis to experience, from learned truth to felt truth. And to hold those inextricably together, so that we present the message that is convincing, that’s Christological, that’s Spirit-driven, and is God-glorifying.”
Smith explained that he came to speak, as part of the International Alliance of Christian Education’s sixth annual meeting that was hosted by Southwestern Seminary, about the heart of Christian education. But he proposed that the issue of Christian education is not a lack of knowledge, but a need to deepen that knowledge so it is not just superficial, but a true understanding and experience of God. And that change needs to begin in the Church.
Ministering to an ‘anemic world’
“I think the church today needs to be admitted into God’s General Hospital,” Smith said. “Where it can undergo a period of redemptive observation and have a blood transfusion, because an ill church cannot really minister to an anemic world and a world that is afflicted and is at best on life support system.”
Preaching from Luke 24, Smith spoke of when Jesus, after His resurrection, spoke to two disciples who were traveling to Emmaus. Calling them slow of heart initially, Jesus walked them through the Scriptures that addressed Christ and His need to suffer and die, and later those disciples announced they felt a burning in their hearts.
Smith taught at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and then for nearly 30 years taught at Beeson Divinity School, where he held the Charles T. Carter Chair of Preaching. He also pastored a church in Cincinnati for 20 years.
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EDITOR’S NOTE — This story was written by Michelle Workman and published by Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.
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