Archives For preaching

A Funeral Sermon…

bob —  September 10, 2012

File this one in “Things they didn’t… and probably couldn’t… prepare you for in Seminary.”

Last night I preached a funeral sermon for a four-year old girl from our community who died unexpectedly this last week. One of the hardest things I’ve ever done.
Part of the hardness for me, and I imagine other pastors in the same position, is the compartmentalizing of grief and personal feelings enough to be able to be present for the family in order to be able to face the hard job of preaching hope in the midst of tragedy and yet remaining, on some level…human. Grieving with those who grieve.
I’ve walked through the last couple of days numb, shaking… and this morning find myself raw and wanting nothing more than to be distracted.
In the midst of all this, I feel incredibly honored to be included, invited into this family’s pain and to have the opportunity to point to Jesus and (I hope) bring a measure of comfort and Good News.

Here’s my sermon, in part. I publish it here in the hopes that it can help others, whether those grieving or pastors who find themselves needing words for a similar occasion.

 

 

We are gathered here this evening to remember Vienne Juliet Piscitelli, to say our goodbyes to one who lived a brief but beautiful life- a life which, if tonight’s attendance tells us anything, touched many. Vienne means- “She who is full of life and vibrance” and truly that described her. As my wife Amy said to me often in the last couple of days- There was something very, very special about Vienne.

So, on behalf of Vienne’s parents, Mark and Jenny, I want to thank each one of you for being here tonight.

Though this is a very difficult day the scriptures make us this promise:

“The Lord is like a father to his children, tender and compassionate to those who fear him. For he knows how weak we are; he remembers we are only dust. Our days on earth are like grass; like wildflowers, we bloom and die. The wind blows, and we are gone— as though we had never been here. But the love of the Lord remains forever with those who fear him.”

He knows. He remembers. His love remains with us.

This is the Word of the Lord.

Let’s pray together:
Father of mercies and God of all consolation, You pursue us with untiring love and dispel the shadow of death with the bright dawn of light and the sure hope of new life and resurrection. You promise in your Word that you are close to the broken hearted- So comfort us we pray in our loss and sorrow. Be our refuge and our strength, O Lord, and lift us from the depths of grief into the peace and light of Your Presence.
Amen.

Homily:

What can we say when someone so young, so full of life and vibrance, is taken from us?
I’ve been asking myself that question for the last couple of days.

In this, as in so many things in life, there are no clear answers, no definitive “whys.” But in this, as in all of life, when we are short on “whys” we turn to a “Who.”

Psalm 16 says this:
“I know the Lord is always with me. I will not be shaken, for He is right beside me. No wonder my heart is glad, and I rejoice. My body rests in safety. For you will not leave my soul among the dead or allow your holy one to rot in the grave. You will show me the way of life, granting me the joy of Your presence and the pleasures of living with You forever.”

In those words are comforts and promises- not just for us here tonight grieving, but for Vienne herself.

First- that God is with us- that He has not abandoned or left us. Even in the midst of seemingly incomprehensible tragedy we can know that God does not simply understand us- but actually joins us in our suffering. The One who gave up His own Son to death that we might have life understands our pain and grief at this moment. And His promise is this: “The LORD is close to the brokenhearted. He rescues those whose spirits are crushed.”

Tonight we grieve, but our grief is tempered by our faith. In the words of St. Paul, we grieve, but not as those without hope.
Because we have a God who does not simply understand our suffering, who does simply join us in our suffering, but one day, in His time, will end our suffering with the dawn of a new life, in a new creation, a broken world healed, our sadness and grief wiped away, and everything, everything, set right.

As Jesus faced the death of his close friend Lazarus, He felt what we all have been feeling these last couple of days. The Scriptures tell us that He not only wept, but it says a deep anger welled up within Him and He was deeply troubled. And the question is: At what was He angry? What troubled Him? And I think the answer is: Death.
Someone He loved had died, and as He saw the impact of that in the weeping faces around Him, felt the impact of that in His own heart, He was moved to tears and beyond.

Here’s what we need to know about this: we live in a broken world where terrible things happen. But… God is not oblivious to our pain. In fact, from the very beginning, He has set in motion the answer to all our sin, all of our brokenness and yes, even death itself- in the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Jesus said to those who were weeping that day: “I am the resurrection and the life. Anyone who believes in me will live, even after dying.”

So tonight, in the midst of our grief and our whys we place our hope firmly in a “Who”- in HIM- the one who is Himself, resurrection and life. And we commit to His sure and steady hands Vienne, knowing that
death is not the end, that this is not goodbye, but that on that great and glorious morning, her Easter morning, the One who says “Behold I make all things new” and “I will wipe every tear from their eyes” will call out her name and with that, call her into new life.
St Paul, speaking of that day, said: “Then, When our dying bodies have been transformed, This Scripture will be fulfilled: Death is swallowed up in victory.
O death, where is your victory?
O death, where is your sting? Thank God- He gives us victory over sin and death through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

In the midst of our grief we find peace, knowing that now, Vienne is whole, at rest and at peace, safe in the arms of the One who created her and who loves her with an undying love. We find peace knowing that death is not the end, that though death may win some battles, the war is already decided and death will not have the final word, but the Creator of Life WILL.

Moments like this teach us to value life, to hold a little tighter to those we love- our children, our spouses, our parents and our friends, because in many ways, we just don’t know. We don’t know how long we’ll be with them.
But the Gospel, the Good News of Jesus adds on top of that wisdom something even better- and that is this: for those who are in Christ, who put the weight of their life, their soul and their future in the hands of the One who called Himself the Resurrection and the Life, the answer to the question “How long will we have each other” is forever.

So tonight, in our grief, I invite you- I urge you, to place yourself in the loving arms of the One who now holds Vienne tight, the One who promises her, and you and me- all of us, LIFE, and that everlasting.

Would you take a moment to silently offer your prayers to God- prayers of thankfulness for Vienne and prayers of comfort for her parents and extended family?

Let’s pray:
Father God, we are grateful to You for the gift of Vienne. We praise you for her life, and the blessing that she has been to so many. We now give her back to You, her Maker, the One who loves her more even than we, in the knowledge that with You is peace. We commit her to You, in the sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.

I will now offer a final blessing to you all from Eph 3:19- the verse that was written on Vienne’s birth announcement:
May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.
Amen.

In evergreen, Funeral, Pastoral, preaching
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From The Archives… and For Bill Kinnon.

bob —  July 6, 2010

Looks like I'll get to meet Bill Kinnon (a blogosphere heavyweight and online friend of mine) next week. In honor of his latest (Preaching doesn't make disciples), I'm pulling this from the archives. 

Because it's true, in the same way that proper nutrition alone (you need exercise, good sleep, a healthy mental/emotional life) won't make you healthy, preaching won't make disciples. But together with good one-on-one relationship, participating in the learning life of a gathered community is (and I think I'll go so far as to say biblically, should be) a big part of the discipleship process. 

But maybe that's what we'll talk about next Monday over a drink?? :)  

preaching… It's kind of like…

How many sermons do you really remember?

I'm sitting in my second Starbucks today, and my old friend Johnny V walks in. Johnny is the Cable Guy, pushing quality digital entertainment all over Southwest PDX.

Anyway, we got to chatting for a minute and he asked me how the whole sermon thing was going…

"Ehhh…" I said. The last few weeks have been tough for me. I'm not sure I've had anything revolutionary or even memorable to say about the passages we've been walking through. 2 weeks ago, it seems like God did something cool in spite of my "ehhh…-ness". Last week, a little less so. This week? I guess we'll see.

Johnny's comment to that was "That's okay. No one remembers what you preach anyway."

Thanks Johnny.

But he's totally right.

And as we talked, I realized that "No one remembers what you preach" is basically what I think too. Preaching (and listening to it) is like taking vitamins. It has a cumulative effect. Few of us remember many of the sermons we have heard, but over a long period of time, we are taught. Few of us remember many of the gatherings we're a part of, but over a long period of time, we are formed.

Johnny told me about hearing Jack Hayford talk about this once (on TBN!). Hayford likened reading God's Word, listening to others teach us, etc to eating. Novel, eh? But keep reading.

He said that every once in awhile, we have a really memorable meal. But most of the time, when we are hungry, we eat. It's not earthshaking, it's just what we do to keep our bodies functioning. We don't really remember what we had for lunch two saturdays ago, two months ago, two years ago. But somehow, eating every day keeps us alive. It would be silly to expect it to rock our world every time. 
Images_1

Same with reading God's Word, with "going to church", with discussing Scripture with other people… Every once in awhile, something amazing jumps out at us and changes us. But mostly, it's the every day discipline of coming to God's Word, it's the every week submission of putting ourselves under God's Word… that's what keeps us alive.

That's good news to those teaching a community… we don't have to hit one out of the park every time at bat. It's enough to put together the singles, the doubles, the occasional strike out and the occasional home run. And when the whole community is practicing the discipline of bringing themselves to God's Word regularly… I guess the Holy Spirit can take it from there.

In preaching
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Preaching….

bob —  June 3, 2009

Dustin (one of our elders, and the main teaching elder at our Hawthorne gathering) has a great meditation on preaching here. I feel you, bro!

Here's a sample:

When I was in high school I was captivated by the art or preaching. I loved listening to a good preacher, thankfully I was in a church that had a great one from whom I've learned much! I loved the storytelling, the comic timing, the intentional use of words. It would be that preacher that I listened to for three years who would give me my first opportunity to preach and that man's encouragement that pointed me down the path I am on.

In college I slowly and painfully learned the nuts and bolts of preaching as I did a B.A. in the subject (you probably didn't know that existed huh?). I remember preaching classes where we would deliver sermons that would be instantly critiqued by our peers and the two preaching professors (one gracious and gentle, another more like a lion) although I loved and respected them both. I'm not sure how many bad sermons these guys have had to listen to, but I'm fairly sure it amounts to more than the bad singing Simon Cowell has put up with. Plus Simon doesn't have to listen to someone dying for 30 minutes at a time!

As the college years went on, my friends and I started doing "pulpit supply" on Sundays which basically meant we were rented out to small, dying churches who couldn't afford a full time pastor. It was in these small country Illinois churches that I started to learn what it meant to "die to self". One time I remember preaching at Irish Grove Presbyterian Church to four people, all in the front row! (one of which died about three weeks later). A second memory I have is a church where the same woman would get up every week, someone would start the tape and she would sing "Majesty". Strangely it seemed that people enjoyed it just as much every week…

Read the rest here
In preaching
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The Death of Preaching

bob —  February 19, 2009

21church.span
It's a pretty bold statement to say that video venues will eventually mean the death of preaching… but I think I can make the case. 

In his new book, Flickering Pixels (which I encourage you to check out!), Shane Hipps makes this point:

"Every medium, when pushed to an extreme, will reverse on itself, revealing unintended consequences. For example, the car was invented to increase the speed of our transportation, but having too many cars on the highway at once results in traffic jams or even injury or death.
The internet was designed to make information more easily accessible, thereby reducing ignorance. But too much information or the wrong kind of information reverses into overwhelming the seeker, leading to greater confusion than clarity. It breeds misunderstanding rather than wisdom…
In the same way, surveillance cameras, when there are too many that see too far, reverse into an invasion of privacy."

In other words, what was originally meant to make us go fast now slows us down, what was meant to make us smart now increases our ignorance (well, never our ignorance… just other peoples', right?) and what was meant to make us feel safe now makes us feel exposed. 

This is the rule: Technology, taken too far, creates the opposite of what it was intended to create. 

Still doubt it? Ask yourself- Email was meant to keep you in touch and ease communication, right? But when you are trying to process 100 emails a day, you don't feel in touch, you feel crushed. You're not communicating- you are wading through spam, forwards, fyi's… Your emails get shorter and shorter, more and more terse, and mis-communication happens more often than not. 

Reversal.  

So, what about technology in preaching? 

First came architectural improvements to increase the range of a speaker's voice. Then microphones to throw the voice even further. Then radio, television, tape and CD ministries, podcasts, vodcasts… and the seed of the video venue, the "overflow room."  All with the goal of taking the gift of preaching and extending its reach and impact. 

So far, so good, right?

But now, we have all this technology. We're not only recording the sermon, we're video taping it and we have discovered we can send that video, not just to the next room, but to a building across the campus, across town, across the state, around the world…

Now, the preaching gift of one person has the ability not simply to reach the back row, but the next town, state, continent. And we're not just talking about Spurgeon publishing his sermons or Schuller putting his on TV or Driscoll putting his on iTunes… 

NOW we're talking about not just influencing local preachers by making the "best" communicators' sermons available… we're talking about replacing those local teaching elders. 

Talk about pushing something to an extreme. 

The technology that once enhanced the preaching of others, influenced and enriched it? It's making it superfluous. Start up churches and smaller churches that used to have a team of three or four elders (or in our case, seven) who would be called on to teach on a regular basis now have a video screen and a "campus pastor" that gets to preach at most once a month. 

The technology reverses on itself. What once extended and enhanced the gift of preaching now effectively begins to strangle it, as fewer and fewer actually get the chance to ever do it. Raphael - Cartoon for St. Paul Preaching in Athens

If we're not more thoughtful about this, soon, every city and town will have the Driscoll franchise… maybe even two or three. And the Andy Stanley, Ed Young Jr franchise as well. Is Joel Osteen too far behind? Hybels, Warren, Groeschel… the market is going to get crowded. 

Sure, smaller churches will still exist, but in fewer and fewer numbers as dying churches are replaced not by vibrant church plants full of people forced to build a community from the ground up and so learn all the lessons along the way, but by video venue franchises- prepackaged church-in-a-box. And I'm telling you- there will be fewer and fewer men and women (most certainly fewer women) who ever learn to preach, who ever get the experience of working with others to discern what God is saying to their local body through Spirit and Word and prayerfully struggle through how they can creatively communicate that as well over the course of weeks, months and years of life together. 

We're talking about the death of preaching in evangelicalism by all but a small handful of Celebrity Communicators who have little knowledge about those they teach from such far distances.

Sound like a bleak vision of the future?  Yes, it does. But we don't have to go there…

If the Church will just learn to pay its taxes. 

Stay tuned to see what I mean by that…

to be cont'd.


(And since I know it will come up in the comments, let me just address it now: No, I don't think preaching is the end-all, be-all of ministry. I don't think it's even the most important piece of ministry. But I do think it's vital and necessary for the continued health of the Church.) 

In preaching, Video Venues
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My sermon prep…

bob —  October 2, 2008

Someone asked about my sermon routine… I give this with the caution- if you are in school or just starting out, do what your teachers told you, not what I do. I think it's important to work through the mechanics and science of sermon prep for a good long while… as you do that, it becomes second nature and the art starts to appear. Try to start with art before learning mechanics and you'll be very frustrated. I think it's that way with most skills, and homiletics aren't any different…

Here's what I do

1. I meditate on/read/reread the passage looking for the "preaching point", which is generally where the main point of the passage and what God/the author were trying to communicate and where the community I pastor is currently at intersect. 

2. When I feel I have that direction nailed I start writing out my intro and my conclusion- how I'm going to point us in that direction and how I see us landing. I spend more time writing the conclusion than the intro, and generally want to write it out first. When I don't do that, I find myself repeating things at the end. When I've already written the end and said what I want to say there, it makes for much less repetition in the body. If you find you're the kind of preacher who can't "land the plane" consistently, try writing the end first. 

3. I start working verse by verse through the passage, writing as I go, connecting that intro and conclusion. This is where I generally compare translations and check the Greek and commentaries, working out any hard interpretive issues.

That having been said, some weeks step 2 and 3 are reversed, particularly with tougher passages- I don't see that intersection point (and thus my destination) until halfway or more through the process. Those are harder sermons to write and (I'll bet) to hear.

4. When I have a completed draft, I ask myself the 5 questions:

 Where in this message do I clearly point to Jesus?
 Where in this message do I speak to non-Christians?
 Where in this message do I speak to Christians?
 Where in this message do I speak to the heart?
 Where in this message do I give people something to do right now- rather than later‚Ķ

5. Then I do the final draft, making revisions where prayer and the five questions tell me I should…

6. Go over it on Sunday morning making corrections and changes, often adding any missing interactive elements which seem to come easier to me when I've sat with/slept with a completed sermon for awhile. 
All in all I'd say I spend an average of 10-12 hours a week on sermon- 8-10 hrs mon-thursday and 2 on Sunday morning before the gathering. Sometime less, sometimes more…

In preaching
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From the Archives: The Cowardly Preacher

bob —  August 8, 2008

Awhile ago I published this piece I called The Cowardly Preacher. 

I thought of it, and writing the other side, Bravery in Preaching, while working through a sermon on 1st Cor 11 this week. I'll let you connect the dots. 

Anyway, from the archives…


"If you are a coward by nature, don't worry. We can still use you. You can get down behind the biblical text. You can peek out from behind the text saying, 'I don't know if I would say this, but I do think the text does.'"- Walter Brueggemann (as quoted by Will Willimon)

This has been a go-to concept for me. The longer I have been doing this preaching thing, the more I see in the text that is at odds with modern sensibilities—things so outsized and seemingly indefensible… commands to kill, commonly accepted actions declared as heinous sin (seafood anyone?), descriptions of awful, awful actions held up as praiseworthy (Psalm 137)…So many texts I‚Äôd just rather not preach. 

The preacher has two ready choices: either declare it as 'The Word of God which Must Be Accepted Without Question!', or hemm and haw, apologizing for the text, explaining it away into irrelevance. 

The first option leads to rabid fundamentalism, particularly as it often gives no alternative, no interpretive method for sifting the timeless from the time-bound. If the Word says it, we do it. End of discussion. No, you can't ask a question about it… I said "End of Discussion!" And beyond just the kooky externals that inevitably work their way into the life of a community that lives this way (NO! Of course women can't wear pants to church! The Old Testament forbids it!), something happens inside. Questions are stifled, left unasked (at least out loud), doubt is seen as a sign of lacking true relationship with God and with the text ("You just don't value God's Word!"). And eventually people are divided into two groups: The fully accepting who stay, and the doubters and questioners who leave. This last group, in their leaving, often leave Church and God completely, thinking that if that's what it's all about, then I want none of it. 

The other option, explaining the text away into irrelevance leads to the kind of bloodless religiosity that rarely does anyone any good. Church takes on a social function, the Bible is patronizingly accepted as a necessary inconvenience… any religious book would do, this just happens to be ours… and because they are bound together in the same Book, in the losing of the difficult parts we necessarily lose all the rest- the power of God's Word and the Gospel itself.

But there's a third option, one which I use as necessary… and although I've titled this "the Cowardly Pastor" and Brueggemann's quote does nothing to counter the notion, I tend to think that approaching the text this way, especially in our preaching, is actually a courageous choice. 

It's courageous because what we are saying to our community is: "I don't understand this. I have wrestled with this all week. I have read commentary after commentary and none of the 'answers' offered satisfy. There's no getting around this… this is a hard text." And if any of you have ever preached, you know that the last thing you want to stand before the people and say is "I don't know."

But between asking the community to accept blindly and asking them to disregard casually lies the third option, asking them to wrestle. 

This begins when we ourselves wrestle with the text. When we walk shakingly up to a passage that threatens to shipwreck us, to do us in and we stand before it, determined not to give way. Like Jacob wrestling with God, we approach these most frightening texts and say "I will not let you go until you bless me" and we wrestle, as individuals and as a community with the words that we know hold truth and meaning for us, a blessing for us, a communication from God Himself, if only we could understand them.

And so we wrestle. As a community we say, "We know this doesn't sound good, and we're not particularly sure that we really get this…" and we pray, and we ask, and we discuss… and we don't back away. Perhaps understanding comes quickly. Perhaps it comes after many months. Perhaps it never does. But we keep on wrestling.

And we keep on wrestling, because we want, we need to hear from God…and we know that God does not always speak things which we will like, nor does He always speak things which we will easily understand… but He never speaks things which are unnecessary. We refuse to write off His Word. God speaks to us for reasons, His own reasons, reasons which may not be readily apparent, but reasons. 

And so we neither say "We just accept it, la la la!" and to hell with those who can't quit manage that mental trick, nor do we say "Well, no matter… let's just move on‚Ķ"

As preachers, we can stand and say, "No, I wouldn't have said it that way myself, but the text certainly does say it. Now, what will we do with it?"

And then we wrestle.

In preaching
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Preaching: This might hurt a little…

bob —  July 3, 2008


“A person emerged from our church a few Sundays ago, saying to me at the door as she left, ‘I know you would not intentionally hurt anyone with what you say from the pulpit, but I was hurt by what you said today in your sermon.’


And I thought, ‘Where would you have gotten the notion that I would not want to hurt you? I’m a preacher. Some infliction of pain goes with the job!”

-Will Willimon, Pastor

Bloch-SermonOnTheMount
One of the things I hated most about ministry in more the more traditional, baptistic churches I started out in was the social pressure to preach what certain factions wanted to hear. Better give an invitation this week- it’s been two weeks and so-and-so gets grumpy if I don’t do it regularly. Can’t say much about this verse- so and so thinks this and that about tongues and that would just get them riled up.¬†

I think we in the emerging church might be tempted at times to think we left all that behind, but of course… that’s a fantasy. You never leave that behind.¬†

Now, the issues are simply different- it’s not the pressure to include invitations and speak about charismatic gifts a certain way- it’s different issues.¬†
It’s a regular emphasis on the poor. It’s toning down the passages on sexual sin. It’s an emphasis on God’s love and a de-emphasis on the idea that God will someday judge all of humanity (except when we’re talking about how we relate to the poor.)

Don’t get me wrong- I’m not saying anything other than that the reality of preaching is that we who regularly lead our communities through the Scriptures will always face these issues- mainline, evangelical, emerging.¬†
Or at least we should. 

My sense is that no matter who you are or where you are at, the Bible is a challenging book and God wants
¬†not only to comfort you in your affliction, but to do the converse as well. And when we sermonizers wake up one day and find that the idea of actually challenging our communities on the things that maybe they or we would prefer not to have to address is far down our list of priorities, we probably need to realize that all we’re doing is duplicating the sins of our fathers and mothers that bothered us so much we had to leave and start all these new churches.¬†

Yes- I heard plenty of sermons on sexual sin and few if any on the sin of ignoring the poor when I grew up. 
But I’m fairly sure the answer to that problem isn’t to preach a lot on the sin of ignoring the poor and leave off the messages about sexual sin.¬†It’s as easy to preach a sermon on God’s heart for the poor in an emerging church as it is to preach on purity in a Baptist one. And that should tell us something.¬†

I’m in no way advocating weekly poking people with a sharp stick. But… is preaching for the nod, and nothing but soothing and comforting, even soothing and comforting disguised as “challenging” but that’s really just hitting a pet issue or two of certain people in the community any better?¬†

If you never have to lead your community through a text or preach a sermon that leaves you quaking, that you wish wholeheartedly you didn’t have to preach, you really aren’t doing anyone any favors- not your community, yourself and not the God who wants to rescue and renew all of creation. I mean seriously- how could that not sting even a little?¬†


“If you don’t trust the Bible enough to let it challenge and correct your thinking, how could you ever have a personal relationship with God? In any truly personal relationship, the other person has to be able to contradict you. For example, if a wife is not allowed to contradict her husband, they won’t have an intimate relationship…


Now what happens if you eliminate anything from the Bible that offends your sensibility and crosses your will? If you pick and choose what you want to believe and reject the rest, how will you ever have a God who can contradict you? You won’t! You’ll have a Stepford God. A God, essentially, of your own making and not a God with whom you can have a relationship and genuine interaction.”

Tim Keller- The Reason for God

Update: This post comes mainly out of my experience of preaching 1st Cor over the last few months. There have been a number of times when I felt like a cowardly preaching approaching these texts and wished I had stuck with something easier- you know, like Revelation. 
Another thought- whenever I talk about preaching about sexual sin, one thing I want to make really, really clear- Paul is adamant in 1 Cor 5: we don’t judge those who aren’t followers of Jesus. When I talk about sexual sin, I’m in no way meaning to imply I’m shaking a finger at the city around me and all their sexy, sinful ways (though at times, they pretty clearly overdue it). My emphasis is solely on those who claim to be Christians and yet are willfully choosing not to live like it. And even in that, I approach the issue with the humility of one who hasn’t live a perfect life, still doesn’t, and leans totally on Jesus for any sense of righteousness I might have, as opposed to my faithfulness to the Christian ethic I try hard, but imperfectly to live by.¬†
In preaching
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Top 5 Reasons Preaching a Poor Sermon is Good For Me (in the Long Run)…

bob —  April 30, 2007

200517998001When I preach well, it’s easy to say "It’s not about me." When I preach poorly, I quickly and painfully realize how little I truly believe that. And I need to realize how little I truly believe that.

When I preach poorly, I see more clearly the area(s) in which I need to work harder. When I preach "well", those areas of my weakness are masked and hidden by my strengths… and may remain hidden, yet nonetheless performing sabotage on me and the community I’m helping to teach.

But even if I know the areas of my weakness, I may be content to let them be or make excuses for them if I know I am doing well in other areas. Preaching poorly actually motivates me…moves me… redoubles my resolve to pray well, study well, discuss the text well with my community in advance and preach it well. "Failure" motivates me to think more and more creatively about what I’m doing than "success" ever could.

I can take heart that it worked for/was helpful to someone (it’s always helpful to someone) and in this case I know that it was the Holy Spirit that actually moved someone- not me… definitely not me… (also known as "God’s strength is made perfect in my weakness")

And when I do redouble my resolve (yet again) to pray well, study well, discuss the text well with my community in advance and preach it well, and  God chooses to honor that by using in the lives /life of my community, what I feel is not  pride in my gifts or even my hard work- but the feeling of having humbly submitted to the Spirit, done my real, absolute best… and thankful amazement that God would allow me to be a part of the spiritual journey of members of His Body.

In preaching
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Preaching with Dialogue… pt 3

bob —  April 27, 2007

Jesus131It’s been a while since I wrote on this… And much of what preaching with dialogue is can really be inferred from my post on what it is not. But let’s think for a bit on what preaching with dialogue is, and sometime next week, we’ll talk some mechanics… some lessons I have learned (and am still learning!)

1. I said in my last entry that preaching with dialogue ‘is not a small group discussion writ large." What it is is an entire community coming to the Word of God in a listening pose.
Now, I know that (at least in theory) that’s no different than a sermon anywhere, in any church… and that’s my point to the critics of this method. A whole community coming under the Word of God, together, is no different whether one person speaks, 2 people or 20. And the reason why this is specifically different than a small group discussion is the intentional driving towards the point of the text. Generally, in small group discussions, there’s discussion around a theme or a question, and it tends toward the open-ended. That’s fine in that context centered more on getting to know one another, but for the whole-community gathering, this is not what I’m advocating at all…

I’ll describe more of how it looks for us in a bit, but suffice it to say, when I lead out in our discussions on Sunday, there’s a point I want to get to- a place I want the whole community to go to, derived from the text.  People are free to speak, to ask questions, to make points… but not to redirect, to hijack, to grandstand. The text, what it says and where it takes us is the determining factor, not "what everyone thinks." (and yes, the charge could be made by those who dislike the whole exercise of preaching that all of it is merely grandstanding- that the discussion is not so much driven by the text as by what one person thinks the text said, which ultimately is no different than a discussion driven by what 10 or 20 or 30 people think the text says. Here’s where I think the value of things like Seminary and study and  having a sermon dialogue led by someone who has poured hours into the prepapration and who is listening both to the needs of the community and to God comes in to the picture and keeps (ideally) the whole thing where it needs to be- centered on the text and what God is saying to the community)

2. I also said in my last post on this that preaching with dialogue is NOT a pooling of ignorance, as some high-profile preachers have called it. What it is, is believing not only that Jesus is the pastor of the Church, but the Holy Spirit is its teacher. And it is believing that the Holy Spirit has taught more than one person in the room. And it is making room for the Holy Spirit to speak through and teach the community through more than one person.
I recognize my role as teaching pastor in the community. I take it seriously. But in the same way that I as pastor take a back seat to Pastor Jesus, the real Shepherd, so I take a back seat to Teacher Holy Spirit, the real instructor of our community. And in the same way I as under-shepherd exercise my gifts to pastor the people, I as a teaching pastor do the same to teach them, to keep things on track, to proclaim and push us towards the truth.

How this works out is that we as a community-
(Ideally) Meditate on and discuss the passage ahead of our gatherings/during the week. Solomon’s Porch does that in a meeting on Tuesday nights I think. We do it on our forum. Either way, people know the basic content, the basic direction, have a chance to prayerfully meditate, to ask and answer questions, to soak in where God is taking us and what He is telling us.
Come Sunday with some work already done in the text, and in their hearts (again, ideally… I recognize that the number of people who actually take advantage of this is far from 100%. It’s something I want to continue to hold up as the ideal, though) we come together and continue our interaction over the text.
And that discussion is generally led by a pastor/elder who has prayerfully considered all week (or longer) what God is saying to our community through the Scripture.

Consider too that a community like ours is made up of not just people who are new to faith and exploring, but many who have been following Christ for years. We have an abnormal amount of people among us with deep Bible knowledge- a lot of people who have spent time at schools like Capernwray and Multnomah and Golden Gate and Western… MA’s, MDivs, a Dmin or two… not to mention a lot of people who, while not having an advanced degree in Bible or Theology, have a hunger and thirst for God’s Word and actually read it, study it, etc.
So when we come together, when I ask questions that do more than just set up the discussion or get at feelings, but actually ask them to do some of the interpretive work, I do so with the confidence that the Holy Spirit is among us, moving, teaching, guiding and that many of us have spent much time in the Word. I ask those questions with confidence that our community, together, can answer them.
So, you can see how someone calling what we do a "pooling of ignorance" really gets me a little upset, can’t you?

3. Not an abdication of declaration, but in fact, helping the whole community to declare to one another.
That’s where we’ll pick up monday, okay? And then we’ll move on to practicalities and do’s/don’ts

In preaching
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Preaching with Dialogue… pt 2

bob —  April 19, 2007

What It Ain’t…

94305ststephenpreachingpostersWhen I hear people criticizing the concept of preaching with dialogue, 99 times out of 100 what I am hearing bears little relationship to what I have personally seen and done in this area. Somehow, the straw man of a group of people with little knowledge of Scripture, sitting around in a circle with everyone expressing “what it means to me,” no right or wrong answers, and certainly no expectation that anyone would proclaim anything has crept in…

I really, really want to kill that ridiculous mis-characterization.

In part, that’s why I want to spend some time processing this concept on the blog this week. As well, I tend to be a verbal processor (remember that term- it will be important later), and want to suss out some thoughts and concepts in my head.
But first, let’s get medieval on that straw man, eh?

What preaching with dialogue is NOT.

Continue Reading…

In preaching
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