My guess is that no CGGCer can answer beyond a surface level--if even that--because the Shepherd Mafia has effectively killed off the spiritual gift of teaching in our body.
Without looking it up: What are the differences between the words euaggelizo and kerusso?
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It has occurred to me lately that the one APEST gift/calling that is most threatening to the Shepherd Mafia may very well be the gift of teaching because teachers could and would calmly and factually expose the values the mafia foists on the body as not being Word-based.
That is a truth our mafia dons can't afford to have exposed.
bill, I'm not sure that it's fair to require people do know Greek. I think it is fair to ask about the words though. I have studied the words a bit and as not fully convinced that they are totally different, although there are surely distinctions between the concepts. We need to be careful that we don't commit the exegetical fallacy of assuming that different works have 'entirely' different meanings.
ReplyDeleteI believe that kerusso can legitimately take place in different communication contexts, as can euangelizo.
As almost always, my point here is a macro, big picture point.
DeleteCertainly, not everyone in the CGGC should be conversant in Greek but if our shepherd leaders were not a mafia, there would be a significant, respected and thriving community of people who are
AND who are sharing their gift and knowledge with those who are not.
But such a community would threaten the dons.
Sorry for the typos in my response :-( Also, it reads that I am downplaying the distinctions between terms too much.
ReplyDeleteWhat I'm getting at is that keeping Jesus and the Gospel central, the proclamation that we do to call people to respond to Jesus flows into the teaching, preaching, proclaimation that instructs people in the ways of living out our response to the gospel call. A substantial part of evangelistic activity is to repent and believe the good news. The teaching that we do bears out the fruit of that ongoing repentance and faith in Jesus. It's the working out of our salvation - instructing on all that it means to be a disciple of Jesus...
But even the proper meaning of NT words is often an interpretive endeavor in itself and even the reference resources that we have can be colored by interpretations and opinions...
Among the questions I have is that, as I read the New Testament, I'm beginning--just beginning--to think that, very much UN-like our practice today, gospeling was done primarily within the Christian community and that preaching was done primarily outside of it.
DeleteI think we have seriously perverted the concept of preaching by associating that verb with the presentation of a sermon. The sermon seems to have been invented about 1,000 years after the end of the New Testament era.
I suspect that when you talk about what you preached on Sunday that you are describing an act entirely unknown to New Testament people. Depending on content, however, you may actually have gospeled.
AND, I am struck by Galatians 1:8 and 1 Corinthians 15:1f in which Paul talks about gospeling as, I don't know, the essential theological building block of the early Christian community.
"I want to remind you of the gospel I gospeled to you..." as if this was something he defined and repeated over and over again.
Now, in the CGGC, New Testament plan, context this distinction between preaching and gospeling should be crucial--if we are going to be true to who and what we say we are and do.
The fact that it is not condemns us in our to talk is to walk-ism. It points to foundational dysfunction in our body and what is one of our essential corporate sins of which we must repent.
For those following, euaggelizo is the word gospel as a verb. The English speaking church has trouble translating it. Kerusso is the most generic word meaning to preach. Interestingly, in the New Testament, it is used for speaking to people who are not disciples and the direct object in the Word is never the word sermon.
ReplyDeletePreaching of sermons is so essential to being Protestant. Sadly, for those who care about faithfulness to the Word, it's not biblical.
And, when and how in the CGGC, do we gospel?