In the past twenty years, the church has put its pastors in a double bind. The church says it’s committed to local, Spirit-empowered, context-sensitive ministry—while becoming bedazzled by the great performances of Christian stars. The problem is rural as much as urban. Anyone who can tune in to a Christian radio station is now a homiletics professor.
I’m not all that bad a preacher, but I wonder sometimes why I shouldn’t just show videos of preaching geniuses on Sunday morning. People say they believe in the local church and in the gifts of the Spirit, but sometimes I feel that if my gifts are not prodigious, they can’t be productive.
The fault is not with great preachers or Christian radio or television. We, the church, are at fault.
In synch with our culture, we crave talent and genius, and disdain hard work and character. We are fascinated by the nature of Christian genius and are bored by the grace of the Christian gospel. Preaching conferences on delivery are full; conferences on the message are empty.
To put it bluntly, the gospel is no longer enough. The message must be preached brilliantly, or have a garage sale; it’s time to move on.
Whenever I feel snake-bitten by our Christian culture’s obsession with genetics, the ten pages in Soren Kierkegaard’s “Of the Difference between a Genius and an Apostle” (an essay appended to The Present Age) help me.
I purchased The Present Age in May 1979, the month I graduated from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, for a buck at Barnes & Noble Basement on my last trip to Boston. I read this one-dollar gold mine during my first year in ministry and many times since. It makes me want to preach the gospel with all my might.
Butcher-knife intellect
Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) was a colossal genius who didn’t do many things well. He wasn’t a great theologian, he’s tough as nails to read, and though he is famous as a philosopher, it is hard to say that he even had a philosophy. He underwent a genuine conversion experience, and though his life was moral, it was hardly exemplary. His genius was so focused it was as if his brain could do only one thing.
S. K.’s genius was discernment. His intellect cut to the core of everything, like a butcher knife cracking open an apple. When we try to develop a Kierkegaardian theology or philosophy we are sorely disappointed. But when we submit our world to his intellectual blades, everything is suddenly cut open for clear inspection.
Kierkegaard caught Protestantism’s adulation of genius as it displayed itself in the insipid state-church Lutheranism of Denmark. In his day scholars and preachers deliberated on the apostle Paul’s supposed genius. Kierkegaard tells us, “[O]ne not infrequently hears priests . . . prostituting Christianity. They talk in exalted terms of St. Paul’s brilliance and profundity, of his beautiful similes and so on—that is mere aestheticism. If St. Paul is to be regarded as a genius, then things look pretty bleak for him.
“As a genius St. Paul cannot be compared with either Plato or Shakespeare, as a coiner of beautiful similes he comes pretty low down in the scale . . .”
S. K. highlights three basic differences between a genius and an apostle. I’ll paraphrase them:
1. Genius brings forth something new, but it is eventually assimilated and advanced upon by humanity. The apostle Paul has something new to bring as well, but it can never be assimilated and advanced upon by humanity. The message of the apostle remains new for eternity.
“A man may have reached the age of discretion long ago, when suddenly he is called to be an apostle. As a result of this call he does not become more intelligent, does not receive more imagination, a greater acuteness of mind and so on; on the contrary, he remains himself and by that paradoxical fact is sent on a particular mission by God.”
2. Genius is what it is according to its content and artistry; an apostle is what he is through having divine authority. “Divine authority is, qualitatively, the decisive factor. It is not by evaluating the content of the doctrine aesthetically or intellectually. . . . I do not have to listen to St. Paul because he is clever, or even brilliantly clever; I am to bow before St. Paul because he has divine authority.”
3. The goal of genius is to produce the work of genius; the apostle’s goal is completely outside of himself. “Genius lives in itself; and humorously, might live withdrawn and self-satisfied, without for that reason taking its gifts in vain, so long as it develops itself earnestly and industriously, following its own genius, regardless of whether others profit by it or not.
“The doctrine communicated to him [an apostle] is not a task which he is given to ponder over, it is not given him for his own sake, he is, on the contrary, on a mission and has to proclaim the doctrine and use authority. . . . just as a minister who is sent to a foreign court is not responsible for the content of the message, but has only to convey it correctly: so too an apostle has really only to be faithful in his service, and to carry out his task. Therein lies the essence of an apostle’s life of self-sacrifice. . . . Intellectually speaking he is like the tireless housewife who herself hardly has time to eat, so busy is she preparing food for others.”
Gospel genius
That God has given us George Whitefields and Charles Spurgeons and ________ (fill in the blank) is his generous gift to us; that we focus on their genius instead of on their message is to return idolatry to God instead of gratitude.
I know that I must preach the gospel as clearly and compellingly as my gifts allow, but I dare not see myself on the stage of some Christian Gong Show. The essence of all is in the authoritative, apostolic message I have been entrusted with, a message I accept, not because of the genius of St. Paul, but because God spoke through him. I acknowledge his authority as an apostle, and I preach with that authority myself.
Dave Hansen is pastor of Belgrade Community Church in Belgrade, Montana. In this column, he explores how church leaders from the past can mentor us today.
1996 by Christianity Today/LEADERSHIP journal
Last Updated: September 17, 1996
