What Is Our Business?

Leaders of organizations are often advised to ask two questions:

"What is our business?"

"How's business?"

My church is not a "business" per se, but we do have a business.  Churches are easily distracted and can lose focus.  Preachers can forget to keep the main thing the main thing: preaching the gospel of Christ.

In preparation for a recent sermon, I ran across this story from a Charles Spurgeon sermon.  Apparently he considered the issue of sounding like a broken record in his preaching.  He knew he was addressing an old subject, the blood of Christ, and he told why.

I used it in my message last Sunday.  ( Yes, R.W., I quoted Spurgeon!)  It reminds me in my preaching and teaching to keep the main thing the main thing and to stay in the business of preaching the gospel:

Do I hear some one say, that I am now coming to an old subject? This thought struck me when I was preparing for preaching, that I should have to tell you an old story over again; and just as I was thinking of that, happening to turn over a book, I met with an anecdote of Judson the missionary to Burmah.     He had passed through unheard-of hardships, and had performed dangerous exploits for his Master. He returned, after thirty years' absence, to America. "Announced to address an assembly in a provincial town, and a vast concourse having gathered from great distances to hear him, he rose at the close of the usual service, and, as all eyes were fixed and every year attent, he spoke for about fifteen minutes, with much pathos, of the precious Saviour, of what he had done for us, and of what we owed to him; and he sat down, visibly affected. "The people are very much disappointed," said a friend to him on their way home; "they wonder you did not talk of something else." "Why what did they want?" he replied: "I presented, to the best of my ability, the most interesting subject in the world." "But they wanted something different—a story" "Well, I am sure I gave them a story—the most thrilling one that can be conceived of." "But they had beard it before. They wanted something new of a man who had just come from the antipodes." "Then I am glad they have it to say, that a man coming from the antipodes had nothing better to tell than the wondrous story of the dying love of Jesus. My business is to preach the gospel of Christ; and when I can speak at all, I dare not trifle with my commission. When I looked upon those people to-day, and remembering where I should next meet them, how could I stand up and furnish food to vain curiosity—tickle their fancy with amusing stories, however decently strung together on a thread of religion? 

That is not what Christ meant by preaching the gospel. And then how could I hereafter meet the fearful charge, 'I gave you one opportunity to tell them of ME; you spent it in describing your own adventures!'" So I thought. Well, if Judson told the old story after he had been thirty years away, and could not find anything better, I will just go back to this old subject, which is always new and always fresh to us—the precious blood of Christ, by which we are saved.

I shudder.  One opportunity to speak to others.  Of whom do I speak?  Myself or Christ?  

The answer is clear.