There is a bird, the cuckoo, who is a common in England and many other parts of the world. The first sign of spring is that bird’s call. The cuckoo never builds her own nest. When she feels an egg event coming on, she finds another nest with eggs and no parent bird. The cuckoo lands, hurriedly lays her egg, and takes off again. That’s all the cuckoo does in terms of parenting. (We, likewise, have a lot of cuckoos in our society today!)
The victim thrush, whose nest has now been invaded, comes back, circles, and comes into the wind to land. Not being very good at arithmetic, she can’t imagine why her nest immediately begins to list to starboard. She gets to work hatching the eggs. Four little thrushes and one large cuckoo eventually hatch. The cuckoo is two or three times the size of the thrushes.
Mrs. Thrush, having hatched the five birds, goes off early in the morning to get the worm. She comes back, circles the nest to see four petite thrush mouths and one cavernous cuckoo mouth. Who gets the worm? The cuckoo.
Guess what happens. The cuckoo gets bigger and bigger; the little thrushes get smaller and smaller.
In the process of time – to find a baby cuckoo in a nest, simply walk along a hedge row until you find little dead thrushes. The cuckoo throws them out one at a time. Here’s an adult thrush feeding a baby cuckoo that is three times as big as the thrush.
The tragedy of the out-of-balance preaching and ministry is that a tangent will have future disastrous consequences because unbalanced lives will devour the life of the things that we should have nourished and protected… prayer, worship, devotion, godliness, etc. etc.
Tangents are dangerous because they allow the starvation of other vital spiritual necessities. Keeping balance in the ministry of the Word is only possible by avoiding tangents.
We must be careful to “declare the whole counsel of God.” Also, that’s why there is still a five-fold ministry in God’s church today – to help balance the spectrum of preaching and teaching.
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