Category: Preaching (Page 1 of 23)

The Preacher is a Member

Here’s the last thing in this short series of posts about preachers, myself in particular, and all preachers generally. These thoughts have come from reflection and introspection I’ve done generally over the past 17 years and specifically over the past five or six weeks as to why I keep doing what I do. I pray these thoughts have helped you better understand me. If I’m not your preacher, I hope they help you better relate to your preacher at your church.

The preacher is a member of your congregation. He is not a hired gun brought in to preach and grow the church, he is not a fundraiser or a change-agent, and he is not a motivational speaker. He and his family are committed members of your congregation.

The preacher does not enter the pulpit on Sundays from a secret door backstage or sit by himself on the front pew until it’s time for him to perform. The preacher is a fully invested and equal member of the church body. He rises from the midst of the congregation to proclaim what the church believes and what the church needs to hear. Typically, the preacher has moved his whole family to this town to be a member of this church and to give himself to the relationships and the mission of this church.

He is gifted by God and ordained by his fellow Christ-followers to faithfully study and pray and speak his Word to them. As one of them. He challenges them and teaches them; they keep him straight and encourage him. It’s a partnership. He worships and serves and shares life with the other members of the community of faith. He needs the church as much as they need him. As much as we need each other. It’s not a one-way deal.

Peace,

Allan

The Sermon is a Holy Moment

The sermon is not a cat video or an epic fail or an advertisement for another new and improved product you just have to have. It is the holy Word of God, proclaimed to the holy people of God, as an act of faith in God. It’s a miracle, really.

It kind of works like the sacraments, I think. Not exactly, but similarly. The sermon is human words spoken by human lips, but those words and those lips are indwelled by God. God works through the proclaimed words to communicate the realities of his love and grace. It’s divine speech. God’s will, his character, his mission, his desires–it’s directly revealed to us by God through the preacher.

It’s not a lecture, not a book report, not somebody telling you what to do, not somebody giving you new information. It’s a direct message from our holy Lord. Preaching is not us talking about God; it is God talking directly to us.

As such, the hearer should come into a sermon prepared to hear that Word from our God. The hearer should have already read and prayed through the sermon text before Sunday, anticipating that the Lord will speak to her or him. There should be an expectation. There should be an openness and eagerness to receive what God wants to give through the sermon. I tell people all the time that the sermon is just as much about the posture and attitude of the hearer as it is about the preacher or the words he speaks or the style in which he or she preaches.

The Sunday sermon is a holy moment of direct communication between the present God and his redeemed people. I wish more of us came to church each week with that understanding.

Peace,

Allan

Preaching is Faith

On the surface, it doesn’t make sense. Preaching? In the ears of the unbelieving world, preaching is silly, a trivial exercise in regurgitating verses from an ancient book or pronouncing religious doctrines and practices for a group of willing listeners. But I believe preaching is a bold act of faith.

“God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe.” ~ 1 Corinthians 1:21

If I didn’t believe God was doing something with these human words I proclaim every Sunday, I wouldn’t do it. Every week, I am counting on our God to put his Word right into the heart and soul of the hearer. Preaching is God’s deal, not mine. I am diligently studying, I am praying and reading and writing and practicing as faithfully as I can. But this is God’s work. I open my mouth in faith, believing that God’s Holy Spirit is directly communicating his Word to the listeners in ways I can’t understand. Through preaching, our God is doing what he wants and accomplishing what is needed. I’m honored to be a conduit, I’m privileged by God to be his instrument. But these are God’s words and God is the one who makes things happen in preaching. All preachers have to believe that or they wouldn’t preach.

It’s also an act of faith for the hearer. The disciple has to believe that God is speaking to him/her through this fallen, broken, flawed, sinful preacher. The church ordains the preacher as an act of faith, asking God to and believing that God will speak to us through the preacher. It’s not Allan, Steve, Ruth, or Darrin speaking; this is God’s will and God’s Word, God’s correction and God’s encouragement, God’s wisdom and God’s character being placed into my heart and soul by God’s Spirit. If we didn’t believe that, why would any of us listen?

“My Word that goes out from my mouth will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.” ~ Isaiah 55:11

Peace,

Allan

Preachers Are Strange

I want to say a few things this week about preachers, myself in particular, and all preachers generally. These thoughts come from reflection and introspection I’ve done generally over the past 17 years and specifically over the past five or six weeks as to why I keep doing what I do. Maybe these thoughts will help you better understand me. If I’m not your preacher, I hope they help you better relate to your preacher at your church.

First, preachers are weird creatures.

I can’t help but preach. God’s Word burns inside my bones and I can’t NOT preach. I do believe with all my heart and soul, mind and strength, that our God has gifted me to preach his holy Word. He has given me abilities and called me to use those abilities to proclaim his message. So I feel obligated to God to do what I do. I’m compelled by him to do this. I answer to him. Every day. Every sermon. God has put the gift of preaching inside me and I cannot shake it.

I have become a servant of God’s Gospel by the gift of his grace given to me. I thank Christ Jesus our Lord who has given me strength, that he considered me faithful, appointing me to his service. I was shown mercy so that in me, the very worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his unlimited patience as an example for those who would believe on him and receive eternal life.

I know this about myself and our God. I am answering his call to do his work with his gift and by his power. I know it.

At the same time, I do not feel worthy to do what I do. I don’t feel qualified. I feel completely inadequate. I am still nearly petrified every single Sunday by my deficiencies and weakness, by my failings and flaws. The song right before the sermon is almost always the hardest part of my Sunday and the song right after the sermon is the moment I feel the most relief. And then, about ten minutes later,  I am almost always disappointed that my words did not live up to what’s in my heart. Almost every Sunday, I come up way short.

And I keep doing it.

It’s weird.

Peace,

Allan

 

Remembering Dr. Weed

In December 2006, I was given the honor and the horror of being selected to “roast” Dr. Michael Weed at the faculty-student Christmas party at Austin Graduate School of Theology. The five minute bit was part of a video we students made as the main entertainment for the evening. I played Dr. Weed giving a lecture on New Testament theology to a class of a dozen or so diligent note-takers. And I played up every one of Dr. Weed’s idiosyncrasies and habits.

I exaggerated the way Dr. Weed dug into both eyes with the heels of his hands as he tried to remember a name or a date from the Middle Ages. I overdid the way he rubbed his forehead with all ten fingers as he contemplated the answer to a student’s question that had nothing to do with the topic at hand. I made fun of how Dr. Weed would talk randomly about seemingly unrelated events from different continents and centuries and then connect them all together to drive home his point that you didn’t even know he was making.

I quoted a lot of his well-worn lines like, “I’m old enough to say this book was written five years ago and it was really thirty” and “I wanna say this carefully…” and “I don’t want this to sound pejorative” and “I’ll give you a chance to push back on that in a minute.”

At one point in the video I mimicked Dr. Weed’s breakneck lecturing pace. We showed closeups of students doing their best to keep up. One student’s desk was littered with nubs of pencils he’d gone through. We used matches and slow motion to make it look like one student’s pen was literally catching on fire as she tried to keep up. I said one of Dr. Weed’s most used lines: “Am I going too fast? I’ll slow down.” And then I started talking even faster.

“Think with me…”
“We can do ethics in theology. Or are we doing theology in history? What class is this?”
“Fair enough?”
“Oh, Bernice!”

I ended the video with the way Dr. Weed always ended every single one of his lectures. “Peace.”

Later in the evening, Dr. Weed began his encouragement to the students by pointing out to everyone how foolish it was of me to put that performance on video the week before finals.

Those two years at Austin Grad were a formative time for me and Dr. Weed was at the very front and center of it all. I was reading the Bible for the first time as a narrative, as the Story of our God and his people, instead of a verse here and a verse there pulled out of context to support an argument. Scriptural dots were being connected. My faith in the Lord and his salvation mission was becoming more important than my strict adherence to a set of rules. I was appreciating Church history for the very first time in my life. I was understanding for the first time that tradition is the living faith of the dead and traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. He introduced me to Karl Barth and Augustine, Reinhold Niebuhr and Neil Postman, Bonhoeffer and Erasmus. He taught me about the sacral framework of our communities and churches. He showed me how we are being formed all the time by everything around us; nothing is neutral, everything is created or made for a purpose; form is function; the medium is the message. He personally worked with me through some of my early issues with what he called “theological puberty.” In my second year at Austin Grad I made sure I spent at least one afternoon per week in his office talking about theology and ministry, the current state and the coming future of our congregation in Marble Falls and the Church in America as a whole.

During my first seven or eight years preaching, a month did not go by that I didn’t consult my old Austin Grad notebooks to find a quote or an illustration from Dr. Weed that would help me in a sermon. The exact analogy. The perfect example. Dr. Weed made nearly half of my early sermons tolerable instead of torture.

After every lecture, Dr. Weed would stop and say, “Now, here’s how the Church needs to hear this. Here’s why this matters.” And it would get really practical really fast. Here’s what’s happening to Christians, this is what they are hearing and believing and doing, and here’s where the Scriptures can better form us. Here’s where the history can inform us. Here’s how our faith can transform us. When I returned to Austin Grad for a sermon seminar he would always ask me, “Allan, how are your people being formed?” It was always top-notch world-class scholarship with Dr. Weed. But it was always for the Church.

Dr. Weed finished his race on Saturday. He ran well. Very well. He died in Austin, loved by our God, forgiven by Christ Jesus, and filled to overflowing by the Holy Spirit of our Lord.

The tributes and memorials will be many over the next few days. Here’s a link to a beautiful piece authored by Todd Hall. Even if you’ve never heard of Michael Weed, this tribute by Todd is worth the read. Todd shares a letter Dr. Weed wrote to him after Todd’s wife died in 2000, a wonderful portrait of a teacher who genuinely loves his Lord and loves his students.

Dr. Weed is a renowned Christian scholar, a prolific writer, and a beloved teacher. His impact on preachers and churches and the Kingdom of God can never truly be measured. I am just one of his thousands of students. He was my teacher. So influential. I admire him and his thinking and his faith so much. My careful attention to Christian formation is a gift from Dr. Weed to me and to the churches where I’ve preached. Transformation and mission. Formation zones. Christian practices and spiritual disciplines. Ecumenical partnerships. 4Amarillo and 4Midland. All of that grows from seeds Dr. Weed planted in me and nurtured by faith during those crucial two years at Austin Grad.

I use the word “pejorative” because of Dr. Weed. I’m extra sensitive to the damaging effect of digital technologies because of Dr. Weed. And I sign every blog and every bulletin article and every letter and card with “Peace” because of Dr. Weed.

I thank God today for Dr. Weed. I praise God that he placed Dr. Weed right in front of me when I first started hungering and thirsting for a closer relationship with the Lord and growing in my desire to answer God’s calling to congregational ministry. May our heavenly Father bless all those who are grieving today. May we all be comforted by the many memories of how Dr. Weed impacted us, our ministries, and our faith. And may our Lord receive Dr. Weed into his loving and faithful arms on that great day of eternal resurrection that is coming very soon.

Peace.

Allan

Thanking Rick Ross

Dear Rick Ross,

Congratulations on your retirement yesterday after 36-years of congregational ministry, preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the Kingdom of God, mainly at the Mesquite Church of Christ and the Decatur Church of Christ. Whatever good things happen for you this week, whatever nice things are said about you–you deserve them all, and more.

I’ve told you before, but I want to put it in writing: I was born and raised in and by the Church–I’ve been listening to sermons since I was nine days old–and you are the very first preacher I ever really HEARD. You are the first preacher I ever truly listened to. The way you connect the dots from Old Testament to New Testament, the way you preach the Bible as the beautiful Story of God and not a book of rules, the way you shape your congregation by focusing on God’s love and mercy, and the way you tenderly bring us along when we need correcting or when the truth is hard to hear–all that had a tremendous impact on me when we moved to Mesquite in the Fall of 1999. You opened my eyes and my heart for the first time to the Good News I thought I already knew.

Everybody has that one preacher they name when they remember the first time they really heard about “grace.” Rick, you are that preacher for me. I thank God for you.

I have many memories of those incredibly formative years at that Mesquite church. That was such an important time for Carrie-Anne and me and directly led to our decision to leave radio and enter full-time congregational ministry. All that started in Mesquite, taking my faith in Christ and my discipleship to him seriously, and your preaching was the catalyst. But, just as important, and inseparable from that, is your life as a follower of Jesus. I know I said some bone-headed things to you back then and did a few bone-headed things. And you showed me such grace and understanding. Over time I learned to pick up on when you were being mistreated by the people you were serving with your heart and soul, which meant I also picked up on how you continued to treat those people with grace and forgiveness and stay faithful to your calling to preach and pastor and lead with love. There were times when it looked like being the preacher at Mesquite was a hard thing to do. And you kept doing it. And you kept loving us and faithfully leading our church. I think about you often and how you showed me and Jason Reeves and countless others how to do this difficult thing. I’m so grateful.

One of my earliest and most vivid memories of you, Rick, is worshiping together on the floor of the convention center at the annual Tulsa Workshop. I think it was the very first Workshop Carrie-Anne and I attended. I don’t know if it was Free Indeed or Keith Lancaster, but we were all singing “You Will Turn.” You and Beverly were one row in front of us and to the left. And when we sang, “You will turn…” you turned! Literally! You spun around! Physically! Your finger was in the air and your were singing and turning with great enthusiasm. When we sang, “…my mourning into dancing,” you danced! Kinda. If that’s what you call it. I was really surprised. Maybe even shocked. After the second time through, I looked back at Jenny who was behind us and to the right, and I pointed at you with my eyes wide open. She raised both eyebrows and smiled real big and nodded and said, “I know!”

I thought, “Who is this guy?” Who is this preacher who is so serious about his faith, so devoted to his walk with Christ, so careful and deliberate with his preaching, but at the same time clapping and singing and dancing during worship?”

That’s Rick Ross. I remember thinking in that moment and all through that weekend that if I were ever dumb enough to go into preaching, that’s exactly the kind of preacher I would want to be. Praise God for Rick Ross.

Well done, brother. You are God’s good and faithful servant. I feel like John Chrysostom when he lamented that his words couldn’t live up to what’s in his heart. I don’t know how to say it, Rick. Your preaching and your life have impacted me and countless others in profound ways for eternity. I wish you the very best of God’s richest blessings of joy and peace. And I pray that you know and feel our Father’s presence with you. And his very good pleasure.

Peace,

Allan

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