Where to Give Your Hour?

I recently heard a pastor say in the pulpit quote: "If you only have one hour to give on Sunday morning I would rather you give it in a small group". What? Did I hear that right; is this pastor giving more importance to a social small group meeting where the Bible may or may not be the topic, over the proclamation of the Gospel? I would like to let John MacArthur weigh in on this importance issue.

Today we have this great emphasis on a whole gob of little group Bible studies and home interaction things and in their place they’re all very good. But seminaries and colleges that are supposed to be producing men for the ministry today are teaching psychology and counseling techniques and they’re producing reams of material on psychotherapy, group counseling, sensitivity training with certain deletions so it becomes palatable to Christianity.

You can go to Acts Chapter 13, 14, 17, 20, and right on out to the end of the book of Acts and you’ll find that the priority in the church was the preaching of the word. Now it’s important to have Bible studies. It’s important to have Sunday School. It’s important to have home action groups. It’s important to have a lot of things. Nothing supplants the preaching of the word. Preaching is characteristic of Christianity. Broadus in his classic volume on preaching says, “No other religion has ever made the regular and frequent assembling of the masses of men to hear religious instruction and exhortation, an integral part of divine worship except Christianity. It’s the genius of Christianity as so designed by the Holy Spirit. Others have copied it because of it’s power.”

There’s nothing sacred my friends about small groups. People say to me, well, isn’t your church getting too big? I mean, if you get too many people there, what happens to your small groups? And my answer is, if God wants to build a church where the word of God is preached, I don’t care if He brings 50,000 people if that’s His desire. I believe in the word of God as preached. And we need some men today like that. We need some faithful, some bold, some powerful men, some holy preachers who make no compromise with the world, no compromise with the flesh, no compromise with the devil, and stand true to the word of God and declare with fire and power.

Excerpt taken from a sermon preached by John MacArthur titled "Peter’s Sermon: Explaining Pentecost". You can download this sermon at www.gty.org message 1705