The excitement factor in worship

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“Pastor, the minute you decide church must always be exciting is the moment you begin turning the worship services into pep rallies. After that, it all goes downhill.”

When I said that on Facebook I enraged a few people.

“Worshiping the Lord should always be exciting,” one person insisted. I replied, “I’m doing the funeral of a 53-year-old man today. It will be comforting, but not exciting.”

I understand where the guy is coming from.

Truth be known, my post probably ticked off the young me, the person I was a half century ago.

At the age of 33, I moved to the pastorate of the First Baptist Church of Columbus, Mississippi, a great old church in a historic town, but a congregation that had declined somewhat during the last years of the previous pastor. So, the young energetic visionary that I was (I’m bending over backward to avoid saying “whippersnapper”), I asked the church to erect some billboards around town urging people to visit “The exciting First Baptist Church of Columbus.”

I admitted to our staff that mostly I was hoping to convince our own people.

These days, when I see churches announcing that they are exciting or friendly or dynamic or whatever, I figure that for the most part they are trying to convince themselves.

Shouldn’t a church be exciting?

You are involved in the greatest work in the world, serving the Lord of the Universe, the Savior of the world, the King of Kings, in a ministry that changes lives and results in a blissful eternity for those who believe.  What could be more exciting than that?

It is exciting. But not always.

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I hate to be criticized. However….

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“Behold, my son who came out from me seeks my life; how much more now this Benjamite?  Let him alone and let him curse, for the Lord has told him” (2 Samuel 16:11).

There’s something about us preachers that loves compliments and runs from criticism.

We preachers can be the biggest wimps on the planet.

Maybe it’s that way with everyone, I don’t know.

Let a preacher receive an anonymous note outlining what he’s doing wrong or a phone call dissecting last Sunday’s sermon and he is done for the week. He will be needing the attention of a good therapist.

We could learn a lot from politicians and others in the public arena. I’ve read that President Eisenhower enjoyed something like a 65 percent approval rating all eight years of his presidency, the highest of anyone since.  This means 35 percent of the America public thought he was a failure.  And yet, he is lauded as a winner.

Let 35 percent of the typical church give their preacher a vote of no-confidence and he’s enduring sleepless nights, unable to focus on anything, and scheduling himself for career counseling at his denominational headquarters.

All of this was prompted by two things.

As sometimes happens, an online magazine for preachers picked up an article from our blog urging pastors to slow down their staccato delivery style in order to be heard by thoughtful listeners.  The metaphor I used was the speed demon on a motorcycle who frightens interstate motorists by suddenly appearing at their elbow doing 90 or 100 mph.  The faster you go, the more invisible you become.  I said, “You don’t see our Lord preaching this way, overwhelming His audience with His oratorical skills, leaving them no room to think, no time to absorb what He’s saying.”

Well!  You should have read the comments.  (I read them out of curiosity, mostly.  And occasionally, will leave a response. I’ve developed a tough hide about these things, and mostly smile at the put-downs.)

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Pastor, please don’t lie to us.

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“Do not lie to one another, since you laid aside the old self with its evil practices” (Colossians 3:9).

“Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord” (Proverbs 12:22).

Lying is almost unforgiveable in a pastor.  Not acceptable  in anyone else, of course, but in a politician it’s almost expected.  When he was running for President, Jimmy Carter promised to never lie to us.  But he did.  He found out it’s a necessary part of the president’s job.  As Churchill once said, “In wartime, truth must be protected by a bodyguard of lies.”

But not in a spiritual leader.  Not in a Christian.

1. Do not lie to us about your resume.

If you say you went to school there or pastored that church, we want to believe you.  If you earned a degree, say what it was. If the degree was honorary, but not earned, say that also. What you must not do is give the impression you attended a school which you did not or served a church which you did not serve or possess a degree you  don’t..

Why would anyone lie about their resume? Obviously, to enhance their prospects for a job. But any position acquired as a result of a falsehood is worthless in the long run.

Regularly, we hear of high-profile executives, educators, and coaches being caught for padding their resumes, for claiming degrees they did not have, for professing honors they did not earn.  Perhaps the most shameful is the man who claims to have been a war hero, who wears the uniform and sports the medals, but who, it turns out, is a consummate liar.

Tell us the truth, pastor.

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Mistakes the beginning pastor will probably make

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“Let no man despise thy youth.” (I Timothy 4:12)

You’ve finished your formal schooling or you’re trying to continue your education while pastoring. Whether the congregation is fifty people or five hundred, your plate is full and you wonder how you could ever pastor a larger church since there are not enough hours in your day.

But you’re excited.  This is what God called you to do.  You can barely restrain yourself.

Here are three things lying in wait for you, young pastor.  Three potholes? Three comeuppances?  Three lessons you may expect to have to learn the hard way.

1) The beginning pastor can expect his sermons to be too heavy as he attempts to cram into them everything he has learned on the subject.

The young pastor cannot yet bring a sermon on one word in the Bible or even one verse. Not yet.  So, in order to fill the allotted sermon time, somewhere between 20 and 30 minutes, he overstuffs it.

Since he has been studying all week on this message–his notes on the text fill five pages!–he dare not leave out any of the great stuff he has unearthed. Some commentators had fascinating things to say on this scripture.  So, he uses it all.

The young pastor typically uses far too many scriptures, cites too many texts, and brings in too many stories from other places in the Bible.

Over time, he will learn to streamline his sermon, to pick a single theme and stay with it, and will learn how to recognize great ideas and exciting illustrations which do not fit this message and will need to be laid aside for another time.

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You and I are running this race. It’s most unusual.

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“I have finished the course” (2 Timothy 4:7).

“But flee youthful lusts and pursue righteousness….” (2 Timothy 2:22)

If you think of life on earth as a race, the Christian life is the strangest one ever.

Okay, let’s think of life as a race.

And we don’t mean ‘rat race.

I conducted the funeral of a 53-year-old man whose death was sudden and completely unexpected.  Weeks later, the coroner had still not figured out why he died.

This gentleman was a runner and a longtime member of a local track club which oversees dozens of races of all kinds every year.  Several members of the club eulogized him during our service.

While they were speaking, something occurred to me.

Imagine a race where you have no idea how long it is or when it will end.  You don’t know whether it’s a sprint or a marathon.  It could be short, it could be long.  You would not be so foolish as to save your energy for that final burst at the end, that sprint to the finish line, the way so many runners do. 

In life, we do not know where the finish line is located. This is simply another way of saying with God’s Word, “Boast not thyself of tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring forth” (Proverbs 27:1). Or, the statement in James 4:13-14 which emphasizes, “You do not know what your life will be like tomorrow.”  Life’s race may end at any time.

For that good gentleman, the race ended at 53 years, 2 months, and 6 days.

Life is like that: a starting line here, obstacles up and down the course, a pothole here and a detour there, and eventually the finish line, however unseen and completely unknown until you hit it.

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The three special ladies in my son’s history

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i’ve not asked my son’s permission for what follows.

I wonder whether Neil ever gives thought to the debt he owes to three very special Christian ladies whom God used to do good things in his life.

Neil is my firstborn son.  Joe Neil McKeever, Jr.  Born to a 20-year-old mama (Margaret Ann Henderson McKeever) and me. I was 23.  This newborn son was nine pounds nine ounces.  Big from the first.  He got his size from Margaret’s dad. J. W. Henderson, a career Greyhound bus driver, was six foot three.  Neil ended up close to six five.

I’m going to skip over his upbringing and growing up years.  He was the pastor’s son, raised in a Southern Baptist church. He sang in the youth ensemble, sang in the college ensemble, and took an active role in church life.  At the same time, he also was being drawn into the world. He struggled some in his later high school and college years. (Yes, didn’t we all?)

When he finished college, Neil tried different things.  He lived away from home, worked in various enterprises, was searching. And was not going to church.

A year or so after he finished college, we moved to a church in Charlotte, North Carolina.  Our sons Neil and Marty and daughter Carla came too.  The boys rarely if ever attended church, busy with jobs and who knows what.  Carla, a high schooler, attended but made few friends.

That pastorate did not go well and four years later, Margaret and I relocated to New Orleans to lead a church by the airport. Large church with a huge debt and a troubled past.  I took a cut of over thirty thousand dollars in salary.

The church had a Christian school that went through the eighth grade.  Our principal was Pam Mancuso. She’s the first of the three special ladies.

Pam was a prayer warrior.  Sometimes in the mornings she would tell me what God had told her in her prayer time. At first, my thought was, “Oh boy.  I’ve got one of those!”  Then I began to see that everything she said was on target.

One morning during my first year there, Pam said, “Brother Joe, the Lord told me this morning he wants Neil to teach in our school.”

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Stories and jokes that are unworthy of Jesus’ people

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This fellow stopped me after church where I had just brought the evening sermon. I was about to walk out the door and drive home, a good 90 minute task. I was tired but he had a joke to tell me.

“You seem like a together person,” he said in my direction. “Comfortable in your own skin. Good sense of humor. So, I have a joke for you.”

He began, “Did you hear the one about Billy Graham, the Pope, and Oral Roberts all dying and going to Heaven at the same time?”

Now.  The question is how do I tell the guy, “Yes, I’ve heard it a few dozen times and didn’t like it the first time”?

You don’t. You stand there and try to look like you’re interested.

It took the poor guy forever to tell the story, of how God said they had arrived unexpectedly, that their mansions were not quite ready yet, and would they mind if He sent them to purgatory for a bit first. He told of a conversation between God and the devil, in which the Lord was asking permission from hell’s warden.

That’s bad enough, but it went downhill from there.

Finally, I said, “Is this where they air-condition hell?”

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What it means to “see through a glass darkly”

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The epitaph for this generation could read: “They Didn’t Know.”

Nothing new about that, however. Reading the New Testament, one is struck by how often significant players in the Lord’s drama were said to have not had a clue.

On the cross, the Savior summed it up when He prayed, “Father, forgive them. They do not know….”

Here are instances throughout the New Testament where that can be said.

Prayer. Matthew 20:22

The disciples did not know what they were asking for.

Ever pray that way? I have. I’ve asked the Lord to grant me success in this or that venture without ever checking to see if it was His will in the first place.

The brothers James and John wanted the places of honor in the Kingdom. And, who knows, they reasoned–perhaps it will be given to the ones with the moxie to ask. After all, isn’t it true that “you have not because you ask not”? And, they further reasoned, the worst that could happen was that the Lord would say, “No.”

He said, “No.” And more. That it was reserved for those whom the Father chose. And that they did not know what they were asking.

One wonders if a few weeks later when they saw the two thieves dying on crosses–one on the Savior’s right hand, the other His left–did they remember this sad conversation?

The Apostle Paul said, We do not know how to pray as we should. Boy, is that ever the truth. Where is that?  That would be Romans  8:26.

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The pastor’s greatest burden is a gift from God

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When the prophets Nahum, Habakkuk, and Malachi stood up to preach, they began with the words, “The burden of the Lord.”

That was a dead giveaway this was not going to be a sweet little devotional filled with funny stories and touching vignettes. The men of God were about to drop a heavy load from their hearts into the laps and onto the shoulders of their audiences.

It took me a long time laboring in the Lord’s vineyard to figure something out. The burden God gives His preacher for some problem, some people, or some cause is every bit as much a gift from Him as the blessings of salvation. And it becomes my starting place.

Starting place for what? I’m glad you asked.

The burden God gives you, pastor, is your beginning point for three things….

1. The vision God will give you for your work begins with a burden.

I like to think of the time we wrestle with a problem (i.e., the burden) as the equivalent of digging downward for the foundation of a mighty building. The deeper we dig–the more the problem burdens us, the longer we struggle with it, and the more it pains us–the greater will be the structure that eventually gets erected there.

You’ve seen the signs: “Watch this site. A new office building will be erected here.”

Well, post one of those signs on the burden God has given you: “Watch this site. A new visionary structure will go up here.”

What is your burden, pastor? What bothers you most in your community, your church, your world? What robs you of sleep at night and will not leave you alone?

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The fatal mistake of the casually religious

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One of a thousand reasons the Psalms are so well-loved is that once in a while, we will be reading along and come to a place where that psalm nails a truth so dead-on, we sit there gasping for breath. Case in point for me, Psalm 50.

You hate instruction and cast my words behind you. When you saw a thief, you consented with him, and have been a partaker with adulterers. You give your mouth to evil, and your tongue frames deceit. You sit and speak against your brother; you slander your own mother’s son.

And then, the clincher:

These things you have done, and I kept silent; you thought that I was just like you. (Psalm 50:17-21)

That is stunning.

Thinking that the Eternal God is like us is an ancient tradition with a noble heritage. Every culture has done it, every generation has adapted the art to its own idiosyncrasies, every worshiper struggles with the temptation to pull it off.

It’s been said, “In the beginning, God made man in His image. Ever since, man has been returning the favor.”

Some years back country music legend Johnny Cash paid to have a Hollywood movie made on the life of Christ. In the film, Jesus was depicted as a blue-eyed blonde. On our trip to the Middle East, the only blue-eyed blondes I spotted were in our tour group. Everyone else, all the natives, seemed to be of a sun-dried dark color with jet black hair.

As prevalent as that is–the way we picture Jesus as looking like someone who would easily blend in with our group–a far worse thing it is to think of God as carrying our own prejudices, hemmed in by our narrow-mindednesses, burdened by our brand of negativities, and limited by our own personal convictions.

The Bible’s favorite word to describe God is needed here. God is holy.

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