Don't Feed the Play Preacher
Looking to go back to church on Easter?
Beware! Some churches have play-preachers. He has no gift for public-speaking, hasn’t given his life for it, but does it like other men take up golf.
Others, have a gift for the gab and can entertain you but haven’t invested significant time preparing for it. They haven’t invested their life to be a pastor but they ask you to invest an hour of your Sunday morning listening to them.
My advice: Don’t do it and
read this article: Don’t Feed the Play-Preacher (< click the link)
This article reached #2 on The Gospel Coalition list (September 25, 2022).
If you haven’t read it, do so now (it’s short) and recommend it to a friend who may be a victim of a play-preacher.
Instead, find a pastor who has both the gifts and who has invested his life in developing those gifts and feeding Christ’s sheep.
Puritan William Perkins, “Whom God calls, to them He gives competent and convenient gifts, or knowledge, understanding, dexterity to this or that, and such like; and thereby makes them able for the performance of the duties of their callings. Contrariwise, they that enter into any calling being utterly unable to perform the duties thereof, were never called of God.”
John B. Carpenter, Ph.D., is pastor of Covenant Reformed Baptist Church, in Danville, VA. and the author of Seven Pillars of a Biblical Church (Wipf and Stock, 2022).