Go far enough to be able to hear the Word

In all of his learnings from his pastorate in rural Switzerland and his own reading of Scripture, Karl Barth made a type of conclusion in The Word of God and the Word of Man, saying, "We must take the trouble to go off far enough to hear the Word again." Both Barth and Bonhoeffer had to go away to re-hear the good news they had awoken to first years ago, to be reminded of what to Paul was "of first importance." As a young preacher and pastor in America, I am reminded of what Andrew Walls would call, "a certain vulnerability, a fragility, at the heart of Christianity" (that is, the cross of Christ). In the midst of the evangelical industrial complex that has been built here in the West, we must not modify this "good news for the poor," or try and rephrase it so that it might "work" for the satisfied, popular, and wealthy.

Chris Nye in Leadership