Category: Preaching (Page 18 of 25)

I realize every time I get up in the pulpit on Sunday mornings I’m preaching between 900-1,000 different sermons. Everybody within earshot hears something a little differently. The people in our churches arrive in the assembly and bring to our sermon different experiences, different worldviews, different backgrounds. They come from different family dynamics, different geographical locations, and different economic circumstances. These different contexts shape the sermon; what they hear; how they respond.

I’m also aware that what’s happening in the room also impacts the way I preach. I feel that I’m much more bold when I’m preaching in Arkansas or California to people I’ve never met. It’s not that I don’t want to be bold at Legacy. It’s just that it’s much more difficult to say hard things to people I’ve grown to love. I love these people and I think I speak differently to them. Obviously, it’s much, much easier to preach following an uplifting service of praise in which the entire assembly has together raised the roof in joyful song than following a half-hearted robotic effort to trudge through songs nobody likes or nobody knows. The songs are intended to edify the congregation, to uplift the people of God. And they do. They uplift the preacher, too.

The great theologian Reinhold Niebuhr knew that his Sunday morning sermons were better than his Sunday evening sermons. He realized that cicumstances do affect the quality of the message. And a lot of that, according to Niebuhr in Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic, has to do with how many people are in the room.

“A full church gives me a sense of fighting with a victorious host in the battles of the Lord. A half empty church immediately symbolizes the fact that Christianity is very much a minority movement in a pagan world and that it can be victorious only by snatching victory out of defeat.”

Yes, the preacher is impacted by the mood of the crowd, the lighting in the room, the events of the past week, and by the anticipated, yet strangely unexpected, moving of the Spirit. All those things, and many more, affect the sermon.

My faith is in the divine promise that God’s Word never returns to him empty. He puts his truth directly into the hearts of our hearers. Despite our shortcomings and inadequacies, despite our human tendencies to be swayed by temporal distractions, our Father uses preaching to reveal himself to the world.

That’s still pretty cool.

Peace,

Allan

I spent the first Tuesday of every month in 2008 with Jim Martin, a long-time family friend and the preacher at the Crestview Church of Christ in Waco. Jim had put together a mentoring group of nine preachers and an elder, all from the Waco area. And he had asked me to join.

I came to crave those Tuesdays. I needed them.

For the most part, people I know say, “Good sermon,” and they mean, “You didn’t offend me.” They ask, “How are things going?” and they mean, “How are things going at church?” They say, “Let’s get together,” and they mean, “Let’s talk about a program or a ministry issue.”

That’s a broad generalization, I know. Please understand that I love these people. All of them. And I’m thrilled to have these beautiful, God-ordained, holy relationships. I’m blessed.

But, once a month, it was nice for my good friend Jim to look me square in the eyes and ask me, “How are YOU doing?” Not your ministry, not your church, not your sermons, not your programs. You. How are you doing? How are you and Carrie-Anne doing? Tell me something that excites you right now about God. What part of you, Allan, needs work? What can I specifically pray about for you? How are your kids?

It was also refreshing to hear my brothers call me to accountability. They were not afraid to challenge my view of a particular topic or my stand on a current situation. They were not embarrassed to ask me if maybe my pride or my ego were affecting my thinking. They didn’t mind showing me something from a different angle that maybe I hadn’t considered.

The best part for me was knowing that I could really be myself. I could be totally open and honest and 1) know that everybody in the room completely understood and 2) they weren’t going to judge me or tell on me. They know. All these preachers know. They know the heartache and the joy, they know the burden and the responsibility and the blessing of being one of God’s preachers. I trusted them. Still do.

For one day a month, it was sanctuary.

Jim puts together a new group every year. Seven or eight new faces. Only two or three holdovers. I didn’t participate last year. And I missed it. I missed the focus it gave me. I missed the camaraderie and the worship and the study and meditation. I missed hearing all the good things our God is doing in other faith communities. I missed encouraging other preachers and being encouraged by those same preachers. This year, I’m in.

Twelve Tuesdays. And it starts today.

The renegade elder, Ray Vannoy, is in. I’ve never met a shepherd quite like him. He’s so well read, so current with what’s happening in the Kingdom, so encouraging to preachers, so open with his own criticisms of church and church leadership. So over-the-top gentle and generous and humble. My good friend Charlie Johanson from the Brentwood Oaks Church of Christ in Austin is in. Charlie and I probably took 40 of our 48 hours at Austin Grad together. He was always one step ahead of me. Always pointing me to the bigger picture. A perfect picture of what hungering and thirsting for righteousness looks like. And then there’s Jim. His soft voice and mild mannerisms don’t quite cover up a fiery passion for our Lord that’s obviously boiling inside him. He’s so deliberate. So insightful. So empowering. He sees good in everything and everybody. He is a man of God beyond reproach.

And I want to be just like him. And Charlie. And Ray. I pray that being with them will cause some of their character to rub off on me.

~~~~~~~~~~

I’m disturbed today to read that Joe Perry and the rest of Aerosmith are actually auditioning lead singers to tour with the band and cut a new album while front man Steven Tyler recovers from his rehab. You can read the story here. Reportedly, Lenny Kravitz and Billy Idol are among those being considered.

All indications are that Tyler’s relapse into the drugs that derailed the group in the late 70s was his first setback since they all went cold turkey back in ’85. This doesn’t make sense. Give him a break.

I know Tyler and Perry split this band up once. Ego and drugs and pride and philosophies and all kinds of things were to blame then. But to actually use another lead singer while Tyler is recovering seems crazy. And mean. You know, David Lee Roth and Van Halen had only been together eight years when they went their separate ways. Aerosmith’s been this exact same band for four decades! It would be like The Who touring with Bryan Adams as their lead singer or The Rolling Stones cutting an album with Peter Frampton on lead vocals.

If they do this, they can’t call it Aerosmith.

Joe Perry plays a mean guitar. But he already tried the Joe Perry Project on his own. Yuk. Steven Tyler IS Aerosmith! He’s the face (and the lips!) of the whole Aerosmith franchise.

A moment of silence, please. Somebody hum “Dream On.”

Peace,

Allan