12 Witnesses

We had quite a bit of traffic on the first Church Staffing post this week and a few comments. In fact, that post is still dragging lurkers at a pretty decent clip, so it must have hit a nerve, or at least been moderately interesting.

So the last one was primarily about part and full time staff. How about another balancing act?

Which do you value more? Education or experience?

Do you qualify education? Seminary over Bible College? PhD v DMin v MDiv v MDivBL? Do you check grades?

Do you value one Seminary over another? Why?

How does experience factor in? It can’t mean nothing, so what does it mean? Does mega church intern beat small church Chief?

I know guys who, during Seminary, took tiny churches in the boondocks because they wanted the title “Senior Pastor” on their resume, while I volunteered as a Youth Worker and Sunday School teacher at a local church.  Know what?  It worked.  They got taken more seriously by a lot of search committees and went to larger churches than I did.  Which is fine, because I went where I needed to go and served that church for almost ten years.

I’ll also add this controversial thought:  Most PhD’s I know have been decent profs (not all), but I’ve rarely known a PhD that made good preachers or pastors. Settle down, I’m not saying all academics are too in their head to pastor, but anecdotally, I’ve seen academics thrive best in academia.

So, where’s the balance?

I am teaching through Romans on Sunday nights and last Sunday, our text was:

3 For by the grace given to me, I tell everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he should think. Instead, think sensibly, as God has distributed a measure of faith to each one. 4 Now as we have many parts in one body, and all the parts do not have the same function, 5 in the same way we who are many are one body in Christ and individually members of one another. 6 According to the grace given to us, we have different gifts:
If prophecy, use it according to the standard of faith;

7 if service, in service; if teaching, in teaching;

8 if exhorting, in exhortation; giving, with generosity;
leading, with diligence; showing mercy, with cheerfulness.

Romans 12:3-8

In expositing verse 3, I talked of how the latter part of the verse spoke of an equality before God of all believers that was necessary to help us accomplish the admonition of the first part of the verse, that is to not think of ourselves more highly than we ought.  I said that we needed to see ourselves and others through God’s eyes.  Unworthy, but not worthless.

The difference between unworthy and worthless is …

Worthless - no intrinsic value, and not wanted.

Unworthy - no intrinsic value, and wanted anyway.

Or this post could be titled Power in Preaching 5 (Addendum)

I have noted the interesting correlation in my ability to preach with my personal sense of holiness. Not that I necessarily think that I am holy, (although that matters as well, but on a different level) but that I have a sense that I have laid aside those things that I desire in my flesh in order to be prepared to preach.

Often, I am not very “holy” at all as the outworking of Sanctification has varied at times in my life from very much to very little control of my thoughts, actions, desires and motives. When preparing to preach, I am very aware that if I allow something I know to be sinful in my life, it will weigh me down and has the potential to destroy whatever message might have been given.

It is destructive in several ways. First it destroys my peace of mind. I wrestle with a sense of unworthiness when I evaluate my holiness. I know that some would take that to mean that I wrestle with some particularly gruesome sin or sins, but it is not that simple. The fact is that all my sins are particularly gruesome, for all of them have the power to enslave and destroy. The same is true for all of us.

Another way the presence of sin is destructive in preaching is that haunts the mind. As I try to think through what I am to say, remembrances of that which I willfully have harbored in my heart spring to mind, distracting me from the task at hand and rendering me into a stuttering fool, with no power.

Ultimately, it is destructive of my ability to preach because I cut off sensitivity to the Holy Spirit by rejecting His divine conviction in favor of separation from Him and union with my fleshly preferences. Without the Holy Spirit’s power, what good is preaching? Orators are not preachers. Too often those are easily confused.

That did not happen yesterday, by the way. I have taken some personal baby steps in furthering God’s control over my life by eliminating some things that I felt were dragging me down. Under personal conviction, I have struggled against them and have met more success than failure.

It is not that I am more holy now than I ever have been, either. It is more that I am winning some of the battles or, rather, that God is winning them in me. They are important battles, too. Well, they all are, but I have a sense that this is the key to my relationship with God and His ability to use me in leading my church. For me, this is the focus of the holy Spirit, as He speaks to me.

So I find myself with more “junk” in my life than I have had at other times of my life, but feeling so good about God’s victories in my life, I sense great power in His work in me and in the church. Therefore, I approach the pulpit with both confidence and sensitvity to the Holy Spirit.

Two things about preaching with power now.

First, passion. When I am passionate about that which I proclaim, it has power. Frankly, that is just good oration. Any good public speaker will speak with passion. Any great public speaker will roll his passion in waves, peaking at just the right moments finally ending with the greatest crescendo.

The good thing is that, as a preacher, you can get better. The bad thing is that you can fake power. Oration and power aren’t the same.

The flip side is when I think I’ve gone flat, but people are changed. The Word is powerful. The Word can’t be faked. I loved yesterday’s sermons. There were just a few brief moments of passion, but not many. Mostly, I was trying to get through the vast material on time, which I did. I had five points in the morning and just 30 minutes to get through them and the invitation.

You see, we share our facility with two other congregations, one Korean and one Hmong. They meet after us, and they have been patient, but we have pushed them back with almost 90 minute services - which is way out of hand. The services are flying by, and most people really enjoy them, but that’s another blog. The deal is, I had to put a move on.

So I did. The night was similar, pressed by an impending business meeting. On both occasions I picked my moments to settle on profound truths, but for the most part, I hit the high points of the Scripture and moved on with brief illustrations.

But I got more feedback from the congregation today than I had on many occasions when I had tried to illicit a reaction. The after sermon comments talked of great content. Hmm. The content? Simple exegesis of the text. In truth, I am not responsible for the content. The Scripture is.

I have heard many a “powerful” orator preach with tremendous ability to capture the mind and inspire. I have also been greatly captured and inspired by Shakespeare. I have further seen many a great orator fall from the pulpit with personal scandal. Passion and oration is seldom power.

Paul wrote this:

1When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. 2For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. 3I came to you in weakness and fear, and with much trembling. 4My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, 5so that your faith might not rest on men’s wisdom, but on God’s power.

Emphases mine.

So, how do you improve your preaching, but deny your desire to use oratory skills to fake power, or produce temporary inspiration that will never have eternal significance?

Preparing to preach …

As I struggle to get a hold on the time in my week that goes flying away from me, I realize some truths that I heard some of the old guys say when I was growing up are actually pretty accurate. I always thought they were exaggerations.

First, “The hours of 6 am to 8 am are longer than the rest of the hours in the day.” Which is to say, you can get more done in those hours than you can in other hours. I have also heard it this way, “I can get more done between 6 and 8 than I can between 8 and 5.” I thought that was a bit of an exaggeration, but I don’t any more. It’s true both for spiritual prep as for the other prep that I need to do.

Second, that Spiritual preparation has as much to do with powerful preaching as mental, oratorical, hermeneutical or even physical. Tom Eliff once said that he’d rather be prayed up than studied up in his sermon prep.

I think this is worthwhile. There is certainly a place for continuing your education and study is important, but sometimes I am in a place where I have to choose: Pray or read commentaries. It all comes down to how much time I have, and where I spend what is left to me by the demands of pastoring. I fear that I too often choose to read commentaries for fear that I will say something easily refuted by a lifelong student of the Word in my congregation and thereby be deemed “weak” for my ignorance. In so doing, I think I place my own standing in the eyes of the people above the need to be sufficiently surrendered.

Spiritual prep is more than just surrender, though. Remember that the Holy Spirit is our teacher, that he knows the situations in which our people reside - what they need in the moment - and that by spending time with Him, we train ourselves to be sensitive to His leading. That may be crucial in the middle of a sermon where He chooses to lead you where He desires.

What about you? Do you often find that you have to choose between spiritual and other preparations for preaching? Are the early parts of your day best for prep, or do you have another secret you can share?

If you are not a preacher, what do you think about your pastor’s preparation?

My plan was to post another thought and some questions about preaching with power for the next installment on my series, but I had the most extraordinary day, yesterday. I had two aspects of powerful preaching happen in very different ways in the morning and then in the evening services at Skelly Drive.

In the morning service, I preached the fourth in a series on “Surrender,” working through selected Scriptures in Philippians. Yesterday the text was the powerful 2nd chapter, verses 5-11. Christ as our example of surrender. I won’t give you the full outline, as that is not the point.

During the sermon yesterday morning, I really felt as though I struggled. We had a visiting worship leader as ours is on vacation this week. I filled in and did the welcome and forgot to ask the visitors to identify themselves so we could get them an information packet and I felt that it kid of spiraled from there. I just never felt like I was “on a roll” at any point in the day. The service was long and I felt like it dragged, as did my sermon. Nevertheless, I had several people tell me that they were powerfully challenged and moved deeply. Several indicated that there were things that they had kept between them and God - areas where they had yet to surrender to God’s authority, that they were having to deal with under the conviction of the Holy Spirit.

My first observation here is that the power of the preaching is in the simple exegesis of the Word. It doesn’t take an articulate, polished presentation of a moving set of ideas. It takes God’s Word and me not getting in the way of God’s Word. As Paul said…

1 When I came to you, brothers, announcing the testimony of God to you, I did not come with brilliance of speech or wisdom. 2 For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. 3 And I was with you in weakness, in fear, and in much trembling. 4 My speech and my proclamation were not with persuasive words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the Spirit and power, 5 so that your faith might not be based on men’s wisdom but on God’s power. 1 Cor. 2:1-5, HCSB

In the evening, I had a completely different experience. I felt a sense of excitement leading into the sermon. I am preaching through Romans on Sunday nights and the text was Romans 3:9-26 - The wickedness of all men, our need for redemption, the law is incapable to redeem, the law and the prophets point to the redemption offered in the propitiation that is Christ’s death.

Let me say that I had thoroughly prepared the sermon. There was so much there and I looked forward to mining the depths of these Scriptures. Things were going well, but when I was near the end and exegeting the word “propitiation,” I began to talk about the ramifications of Christ absorbing the wrath of God - what it truly means to have substitutionary atonement. Thoughts began to come, rapid fire, to my mind in sequence that led to a powerful plea for all Christians who were bound by the chains of sin to turn back to God. He has no wrath left for you - only love. He has poured out His wrath on the propitiation and that cup is empty. Whatever shame or guilt or idea that God is holding sin against the child of God is a lie of the devil that only has power in our belief that it is true, and it is nothing like being true. Though I had thoroughly prepared, these conclusions weren’t originally in my sermon.

Also, as I preached, the truth overwhelmed my own mind and I had the sense of my heart breaking as well. I spoke with passion and trembling voice, pleading for the Christian caught in sin to come home. There is love and redemption waiting.

The response, this time, was immediate. People were visibly shaken and there were vocal responses and even a raised hand. One person started to clap, they were so excited.

Now, the second experience and second observation is not that I was persuasive in the second sermon. It is that the Holy Spirit was in charge and the things I said were spoken first to my mind by Him. Don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t in a trance, nor was I “possessed” by the Holy Spirit. Rather, I had prayed earnestly for Him to speak and that He did.

Can’t He do that while you prepare the sermon? I hope that He does with EVERY sermon. I don’t want to show up with my thoughts and pray for God to do something different in the middle of the delivery. I want the whole process to be bathed in the direction of God, but I admit that I am just a very fallible man and I sometimes don’t get the memo.

Power in preaching happens in many ways.

Have you ever been skewered by a “dry” sermon that seemed to bore everyone else? Have you ever been there when “God showed up?” What do you think?

Along with participating in the Spiritual Disciplines blogging series, I have been considering for some time blogging a personal series on powerful preaching.

Having ministered to teenagers for 19 years before serving this last year as a Lead Pastor, my opportunities to preach on a regular basis have been slim. Of course, my Bible Studies have always been more sermonesque than the vignettes that most Youth Ministers offer. I have noticed a trend that this style of speaking to youth is growing. I think that is good, to some degree. However, that is not the discussion I would like to have.

Rather, I have spent a year coming up with three sermons a week and have begun to compare my previous experiences with new ones. Also, I realize the dangers of self reliance.

I have been the subject of many a poor sermon. Knowing the preacher as I did, and the congregation as I did, I can safely say that it wasn’t just me not connecting to the kerygma - the preached gospel.

That is not to say that the Truth was not being proclaimed. OK so sometimes we only got psycho-babble with a poorly related verse of Scripture read at the beginning, but for the most part, truth played a part in some point of the sermon.

What makes the difference? I have several ideas I would like to explore. In the meantime, you tell me. What makes a powerful preaching? What separates that which is mundane from that which transforms? Why do we have so much mediocrity in the pulpit?