CANDIDATE INFORMATION PACKET - Ryan Fields

everyone will stand before God to give account for their position and that we are united in the most essential aspects of the faith. Christ calls his people to exhibit a unity before a watching world to the fullest extent possible (John 17:20-23).

Briefly explain your views on the inerrancy of Scripture and how those views impact your preaching? To say that the Scriptures are "inerrant” means that they do not err in any matters upon which they speak, be they matters of faith and practice or history and science (2 Pet. 1:20- 21). This derives from the fact that everything said in Scripture is ultimately said by God Himself, who cannot err or deceive (Num. 23:19, 1 Sam. 15:29, Tit. 1:2). Inerrancy is important because it reinforces our confidence in the full authority of God’s Word, which our Lord affirmed again and again in his ministry (Matt. 5:17, 15:1-6, John 10:34-35). We affirm that “the Bible is without error in the original writings” in that it is the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek manuscripts which can be said to be inerrant; modern translations of the Bible are reliable only to the degree that they are faithful in communicating the message of these original writings. Thankfully the work of gifted and competent Bible translators gives us great confidence that when we exercise Word ministry from our English Bibles we are indeed hearing from the Word of God. This directly impacts preaching because we can be confident that as God's Word is proclaimed, inerrant truth is being proclaimed, and this truth goes forth in the power of the Holy Spirit to do the work of transformation for which it was intended (Isa. 55:10- 13). Our confidence in preaching comes not from the giftedness of the preacher nor the readiness of the congregation, but from the fact that God promises to use preaching to bring his inerrant Word home to the hearts of his people. Are there any doctrinal positions you hold which might be regarded as outside the mainstream of the EFCA? If yes, please explain. No. In your pulpit ministry, how do you apply Scripture to life needs? Applying Scripture to life needs means helping God's people to see how the thrust of the passage preached bears on their lives. Effective preaching doesn't just present information; it seeks to demonstrate how the content of God's Word ought to impact every arena of life. This is ultimately because we can never exhaust the implications of the gospel; the entire Christian life is spent attempting to press deeper and deeper into the import of the gospel for how we should live, with no portion of our lives held back to remain unchanged. Effective preaching can thus be described as "bridge building": the task of the preacher is to build the bridge between the biblical world and the world of his hearers. If Scripture is not ultimately applied to the life needs of the congregation, then that bridge has not been sufficiently built. It is important that the preacher help God's people to envision what impact God's Word might have (by indicating possible avenues of application), but ultimately he must trust the Holy Spirit to drive home the Word in 1,000 particular ways that he could never have fully envisioned. Part of how I do this involves sharing from personal experience, being vulnerable with areas where the Word is both challenging to me (showing me my insufficiency and need) and also comforting to me (meeting that insufficiency and need).

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