Why We Should Keep The Church Of Christ: Lay Preaching/Writing

One of the things that I think the future congregations should keep from the church of Christ is our tradition of great lay preachers and writers.  I hate to use the term “lay” as though the clergy have some high office (if you have read this blog you know that I have no special respect for clergy).

Most of our congregations were started by regular people who just wanted to serve God.  These people led these meetings and became great preachers without ever attending any kind of Bible college.  Many of our smaller congregations still employee preachers that many organizations would deem uneducated.  I think some education is probably a good thing, I truly believe that a person without a degree can be an equally qualified teacher of Scripture.

We have also had writers that were not considered especially well educated (Cecil Hook comes to mind but I’m not sure whether he attended bible college or not [i think he did]).  We have never been a respecter of a person just because he had p.h.d. after his name and I think that this is something that should carry over to the future congregations.  We should judge a person’s work on the quality of it and not on what school they went to.