In search of the Gospel
Jul. 9th, 2008 07:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragoness_eI've been commuting to work lately, and as a result listening to the local gospel station, as it has the fewest commercials and no sports-talk, and actually has something interesting on, usually.
Things I've noticed: whoever manages station programming seems to farm out air-time to anyone that fits their demographic, with no consistent theology: we get everything from Health & Wealth preachers to Joyce Meyers, with some guy pitching "natural foods" and herbal medicine in between. What "natural" medicines have to do with gospel radio I'm not certain.
There's a couple of radio evangelists I enjoy, because they get seriously into the text of the Bible and preach lessons around them: Rev David Paul, Rev David Jeremiah and Joyce Meyers, among others. There's a few that make me scream and switch to the nearest classic rock station when they come on--the health & wealth "evangelist", who I find utterly offensive, Bob & George's little phone-in show, because they never actually address their callers' spiritual issues seriously but just regurgitate the same pap for the last 20 years (Do you guys actually listen to your callers, or do you just use keywords in their call to launch off into a pet lecture?), and the local preacher who is seriously of the "hellfire & brimstone" variety.
There's also the other local preacher I can't take seriously because he ends every single sentence with "yes, yes," and makes me think of Beast Wars Megatron. BW Megatron preaching gospel is just not the right mental imagery taking a preacher seriously, no....
So in all this I finally notice that a lot of evangelists talk about "the Gospel", and tell us how important it is that we receive the Gospel, and that we preach the Gospel to others, and so on and so forth... but they never actually tell us what the Gospel IS. They talk about how important it is to believe in Jesus, and through Jesus you are saved, but they don't mention what Jesus said. The ones that are preaching from the Bible (rather than generic anti-non-Christian ranting) are preaching on Old Testament lessons.
If my local "gospel" station is typical of the smaller, evangelistic Protestant denominations, something is seriously missing from the picture. Also, where do the mainstream denominations hide their radio programs? I don't catch anything Lutheran or Catholic or Orthodox on this station during my commuting hours.
This curiousity sent me back to the New Testament looking for what Jesus actually preached. What was "the Gospel"?
So far, I've discovered that the Gospel of Matthew and Mark aren't redundant; Mark talks about Jesus' preaching and discipleship, but he doesn't say what Jesus preached. Matthew, however, is a gold mine: he repeats many of the sermons of Jesus. I'm looking forward to re-reading Luke and John, and then the Apostolic letters, with an eye toward re-discovering the Gospel.
I'll have more to say later on.
Things I've noticed: whoever manages station programming seems to farm out air-time to anyone that fits their demographic, with no consistent theology: we get everything from Health & Wealth preachers to Joyce Meyers, with some guy pitching "natural foods" and herbal medicine in between. What "natural" medicines have to do with gospel radio I'm not certain.
There's a couple of radio evangelists I enjoy, because they get seriously into the text of the Bible and preach lessons around them: Rev David Paul, Rev David Jeremiah and Joyce Meyers, among others. There's a few that make me scream and switch to the nearest classic rock station when they come on--the health & wealth "evangelist", who I find utterly offensive, Bob & George's little phone-in show, because they never actually address their callers' spiritual issues seriously but just regurgitate the same pap for the last 20 years (Do you guys actually listen to your callers, or do you just use keywords in their call to launch off into a pet lecture?), and the local preacher who is seriously of the "hellfire & brimstone" variety.
There's also the other local preacher I can't take seriously because he ends every single sentence with "yes, yes," and makes me think of Beast Wars Megatron. BW Megatron preaching gospel is just not the right mental imagery taking a preacher seriously, no....
So in all this I finally notice that a lot of evangelists talk about "the Gospel", and tell us how important it is that we receive the Gospel, and that we preach the Gospel to others, and so on and so forth... but they never actually tell us what the Gospel IS. They talk about how important it is to believe in Jesus, and through Jesus you are saved, but they don't mention what Jesus said. The ones that are preaching from the Bible (rather than generic anti-non-Christian ranting) are preaching on Old Testament lessons.
If my local "gospel" station is typical of the smaller, evangelistic Protestant denominations, something is seriously missing from the picture. Also, where do the mainstream denominations hide their radio programs? I don't catch anything Lutheran or Catholic or Orthodox on this station during my commuting hours.
This curiousity sent me back to the New Testament looking for what Jesus actually preached. What was "the Gospel"?
So far, I've discovered that the Gospel of Matthew and Mark aren't redundant; Mark talks about Jesus' preaching and discipleship, but he doesn't say what Jesus preached. Matthew, however, is a gold mine: he repeats many of the sermons of Jesus. I'm looking forward to re-reading Luke and John, and then the Apostolic letters, with an eye toward re-discovering the Gospel.
I'll have more to say later on.
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Date: 2008-07-10 01:26 am (UTC)*splorfle*