“For my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water.” (Jeremiah 2:13, ESV)

At Bridge Baptist Church we affirm the centrality of the Scripture for the life and sustenance of the church. We further deny that any church that does not share this value can long survive as a true church. What we mean by this is that without true expository preaching of the Word of God, the church will languish and ultimately die, ceasing to be a true church. The people in that organization may continue to gather, but they are not a true church. Any church in Kamloops that does not preach the Bible in an expository and exegetical fashion and does not embrace a public reading of the Word of God in some form will eventually cease to be a true church. It is my fear that there may be churches in Kamloops who have forsaken the Word of God and turned to broken cisterns that cannot satisfy, thus venturing down a path where they cease to be true churches. I pray that they would return to the faithful exposition of the Word and demand nothing less from their pastors.

Extended topical preaching will not satisfy. Preaching messages that draw extensively from personal life experiences and other anecdotal stories while utilizing only one or two verses of the Bible tacked on at the end in order to make it “biblical” will not suffice. Preaching through chapters of books written by Christian best-selling authors such as Mark Driscoll or Francis Chan is entirely wrong and contrary to true Christian faith in the supremacy, sufficiency, inerrancy and authority of Scripture. Even these Godly Christian authors would recoil in horror to learn that their books such as Vintage Jesus or Crazy Love have replaced the faithful expository preaching of the Scriptures.

It is possible for churches to continue through a season without hearing the exposition and exegesis of the Word of God, but with all continued spiritual famine comes an eventual spiritual death. Christians cannot survive without the Word of Christ, period. We at Bridge Baptist Church are not the only ones who believe this. We are a part of a larger brotherhood of confessing evangelicals from various denominations who also hold to this ideal who are Together for the Gospel. [1]

Read the confession and shared affirmations and denials here: Together for the Gospel Affirmations and Denials. Note particularly Article IV on Expository Preaching, and pray that more pastors would return to the clear exegesis of the Scriptures.

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[1] Together For the Gospel (T4G) is an inter-denominational group  started by four pastors from four different theological persuasions (Baptist, Presbyterian, Charismatic Pentecostal, and Reformed) in 2006, and it is a growing movement within mainstream evangelical Christianity. Nearly 5,500 individuals, mostly pastors, participated in the 2012 T4G.