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20. Cater lunch for the entire church.
Now, if your name is Clyde Etheridge (a deacon in my church), then you'll not need to cater it; you can feed everyone yourself. I was in the church office this week when Clyde walked in and asked Julie, my daughter-in-law and the pastor's administrative assistant, if the bulletin had been done for Sunday. He inserted a note that next Wednesday night's meal would be a Mexican feast in honor of Cinco de Mayo. He said, "I've never done this before, but it might be fun."
I admire people who can do this. I'm not one of them.
A few weeks ago, as we were completing a five-day meeting at Salem Baptist Church in lovely Brundidge, Alabama, Pastor Bobby Hood informed the congregation that they were all to stay for lunch on Sunday. "Sue and I are providing it for you." They paid to have it catered for the entire church.
I said, "Bobby, how do you do that?" He smiled, "With a check."
Smart aleck.
My siblings and I once did it for the entire church back at Nauvoo, Alabama, on the Sunday following our reunion, but I've never tried it by myself. An interesting idea.
19. Write down the story of your life.
How many churches have stopped growing in this country, in your denomination, of your church-type, in your county or parish or town? It depends on who you ask.
Go on line and you'll soon have statistics coming out your ears on this subject.
In our denomination--the Southern Baptist Convention--the most significant number, one that seems to have held steady for over three decades, is that some 70 percent of our churches are either in decline or have plateaued.
Plateau. Funny word to use for a church. One wonders how that came to be. Why didn't they say "mesa," "plain," "delta" (ask anyone who lives in the Mississippi Delta--flat, flat, flat!), or even "flatline."
Of course, in the emergency room, to "flatline" is to be dead. No one (to my knowledge) is saying a non-growing church is dead, just that some things are not right.
Healthy churches grow. Non-growing churches are not healthy, at least in some significant ways.
If it's true that 7 out of 10 pastors in our family of churches lead congregations either in decline or in stagnation, this is a situation that ought to be addressed.
To my knowledge, everyone is addressing it. Everyone has an opinion.
My single contribution to this discussion is directed toward the shepherd of a stagnant flock: "If your church has plateaued, make sure you haven't."
30. Make up your own bucket list.
These fifty are only suggestions, some of them mine and some from Facebook friends. Not everything will suit you; find those that do.
A friend who works with the Baptist churches across Montana suggested no one should go to Heaven without first visiting the Big Sky state. I'm not sure everyone will want that on their list, but there it is.
Someone else suggested sky diving and bungee jumping. Not for me, thanks. But you will have your own list.
29. Make a will.
You'd be surprised how few Christians have wills stating what is to be done with all they leave behind after their death. I suspect it's because we don't want to think about dying, don't want to have to arrange to see a lawyer, or think we're far too young for this sort of thing.
Read the ages in the people across your newspaper's obituary page today and decide for yourself. I just turned 70 and fully half the people making today's obits are younger than I am.
In most cases, you simply leave everything to your children to be divided equally. But if they're small, you'll still want to name their guardians in case you and your spouse depart simultaneously. And then, the lawyer will think of questions to ask that never occurred to you.
The Baptist Foundation in whatever state convention your church is part of will have a type of kit to assist you in thinking this through. After filling out the information it asks for, you could take that to your lawyer and simplify the process.
28. Wash someone's feet.
Maybe we shouldn't be hating death as much as we used to.
Ever since our Lord Jesus went to the cross and pulled its fangs, descended into grave and recovered the keys, then rose from the tomb as the first fruits of eternal life, the poor ogre has lost his threat.
He still growls but all his rantings are just so much bumping his gums.
Maybe we ought to pity death.
Like a honeybee that has lost its stinger but is still flying around scaring people, death can no longer do any kind of significant damage to all who are in Jesus Christ.
No more fear, Christian. It's all gone.
"O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?" (I Cor. 15:55)
Hebrews 2:14 puts this in an unforgettable way: "He Himself partook of (flesh and blood) that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and might deliver those who through fear of death were subject to bondage all their lives."
Defeat the devil, deliver the hostages.
Big task. Great victory. Huge celebration--one that's still going on.
Thank you, Lord, for that incredible weekend, one that changed life forever on this third rock from the sun.
A few years back, Franklin Graham was speaking to the Southern Baptist Convention in Indianapolis about his wonderful parents. His father, Billy Graham, at home recovering from a couple of major surgeries, was experiencing constant pain. His mother, Ruth Bell Graham, no longer able to walk, was living in a wheelchair. (She has since gone to be with the Lord.)
Franklin said, "The other day, Daddy hobbled into Mother's bedroom and said, 'I feel so bad. I feel like the Lord is ready to take me home.' Mother said, 'That must feel wonderful.'"
As we laughed, Franklin said, "He won't get any sympathy from Mother!"
I feel bad enough to die. That's awful.
When I die, I'm going to Heaven. That's wonderful.
That's how it is with believers in this age: "caught betwixt the two," as Paul expressed it in Philippians 1:23.
Today, Sunday, was a day of funerals.
Our family gathered at the family church near Nauvoo, Alabama, and laid to rest my 41-year-old nephew, Russell McKeever, who died last Thursday of pneumonia and heart failure.
Two hours later, the convention center in Beckley, West Virginia, was packed as families and friends of the 29 miners killed in Coalmont, WV three weeks ago gathered for a memorial service. President Obama and Vice-President Biden spoke and did well. The most touching part of the service may have been the president simply reading the names of all 29. Then family members walked by the 29 miners helmets and turned on each of the lamps.
I sat there taking it in, feeling as though I had an apple stuck in my throat.
When a man sang "Go Up High Upon the Mountain," that did it for me. In 2006, that Vince Gill song played a prominent role at the funeral of my youngest brother, Charlie, the father of Russell. Charlie had for a time been a coal miner, too. When he left the mines, it was to drive trucks on the open highway, an equally hazardous career.
Raleigh County, West Virginia, is where we lived when my dad and all his brothers worked in the mines just a few miles from Coalmont. Dad's father, George McKeever, and all his brothers were miners too. George died of a heart attack in his mid-40s. All his brothers died too young, including one named Joe McKeever, who barely made it out of his 40s.
Furthermore, all my dad's brothers with the possible exception of the youngest battled emphysema--black lung--the rest of their days.
When we no longer had a family member inside the mines no one shed a tear. It's a cruel, scary life. Many a night as a child I lay awake, praying for God to keep my dad safe down inside that mountain.
After working inside the mines for 35 years, Dad took disability when he was 49, then lived into his 96th year. I'll never quit thanking the Lord for that.
The Coalmont miners ranged in age from young adults to nearing retirement.
Russell hardly made it out of his 30s.
"Life really is fair," someone said after the unexpected death of his wife. "Sooner or later it breaks the heart of every person."
Recently, while reading "Appetite for America," the story of Fred Harvey's restaurant empire across the southwest in the late 1800s and the first half of the 20th century, I was struck by how young these people were when they died.
Now comes word that this generation's most beloved historian, Stephen Ambrose, made up stuff.
In the April 26, 2010, issue of The New Yorker," writer Richard Rayner faults Ambrose for making claims that were not so and inventing conversations that never took place.
Evidently, if the sources Rayner quotes are accurate, he can back up what he says. Ambrose, who died in 2002, is not around to defend himself.
Those who love history, and I'm one, and those who love America, I'm among those also, tend to have numerous books on their shelves by Stephen Ambrose, fpr many years professor of history at the University of New Orleans. He directed the Eisenhower Center on the UNO campus. Out of that came the idea of the D-Day Museum which morphed into the National World War II Museum, rapidly becoming one of this area's greatest draws for tourists.
The interstate between Slidell and the Mississippi Gulf Coast is the Stephen Ambrose Highway. He had a home at Diamondhead, MS.
Clearly, he was highly respected and well-loved around here.
I've heard Ambrose tell how he came to write the definitive biography of Dwight D. Eisenhower. He told the story again and again. Quoting from the New Yorker article:
"I was a Civil War historian, and in 1964 I got a telephone call from General Eisenhower, who asked if I would be interested in writing his biography." That was taken from a 1994 C-Span interview. Later he said, "I thought I had flown to the moon."
According to Ambrose's account, Ike had read his biography of Lincoln's chief of staff, Henry Wager Halleck, and decided he would do a good job on his story.
"I'd walk in to interview him, and his eyes would lock on mine and I would be there for three hours and they never left my eyes. I was teaching at Johns Hopkins and going up two days a week to Gettysburg to work with him in his office."
The only trouble is it wasn't that way at all.
In looking over the ten items-in-our-bucket so far, it occurs to me that I may be stepping into a little trap here: listing only what I've already done. I've been to the Holy Land, memorized chapters, that sort of thing. How convenient for me this would be, and how pointless.
So, I promise to try to keep it honest here and speak to myself as well as to the rest of us.
40. Pay off everything and get out of debt.
Is this a "Christian" goal? Or just something that would be good for everyone to do? In Scripture, one reason for believers having money in the first place is so that we may be generous. One of the great hindrances to our generosity is the heavy debt load we stagger under. We'd like to give to help those poor people or to support the missionary, but we don't have it to give.
If we paid off our debts and did not incur additional financial burdens, think how liberating that would be.
The question is how.
Answer: live simply, get everyone in the household behind this goal, say no to expensive choices such as eating out or purchasing entertainment centers or new cars, and double up on the existing payments. If you have too many credit cards, cut all but one or two up and close the accounts. The way I understand Galatians 5:22-23, discipline or self-control is a part of the fruit of the Spirit. You'll be needing it to get control of your finances, so it's good to know the Lord wants to produce it in us.
39. Find your spiritual gift and put it to use.
According to the Bible (Romans 12 and I Corinthians 12), every believer is gifted by the Holy Spirit with a spiritual capability. We can only dream of how effective the Christian community would be if we all claimed our gift and put it to use for the Lord. My hunch is less than one-third of the members of a typical church even make an effort toward this.
Rather than take some kind of printed inventory that purports to tell you what your spiritual gift is, my suggestion is rather that you try a lot of things. To find out if your spiritual gift is teaching, sit in on Bible study classes, then volunteer either to substitute for the teacher or to assist him/her. To find out if your gift is in "helps," volunteer to assist in some kind of project--a church banquet, a Vacation Bible school, a youth camp--and try your hand at it.
The best way to recruit people to the place where the Lord has prepared them is simply to expose them to various kinds of ministries. Their spirit will respond to the right one.
38. Develop some latent talent such as for music or art.
Often when I'm sketching people, someone will say, "I used to enjoy art. I just got away from it." I suggest that they get back to it.
When churches began having orchestras in worship services, members remembered their old high school saxophones or clarinets gathering dust in closets. They cleaned them up, began practicing, and now they play in church every Sunday. For some, this has opened up a new world.
I've known retirees who began taking piano lessons for the first time. "I've always wanted to play," they would say. They'll not turn into concert pianists, and that's not their goal. It's something for their own growth and fulfillment.
Take a cooking class. Find out when your local plant nursery is having classes on growing roses and sign up. The local art store has postings for new classes all over town, from beginners to intermediate to accomplished. Ask the Red Cross about classes for CPR and lifesaving training.
This has become a popular parlor game and a best-selling theme for all kinds of books--places to go, things to do, foods to eat, scenes to see, before you leave this world, or "kick the bucket." That's what gave it the name "bucket list." Hollywood made a movie about this a few years ago.
Today was evidently a morning of slow news because one of the television shows ran a feature on beer, "50 brews on our bucket list." "Oh great," I thought. "Just what some beer-guzzling couch-potato needs, an excuse to indulge himself even more."
So, let's try to do the right thing here and come up with some positive, non-alcoholic deeds which every disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ should do before departing this earthly sod.
Everyone will have his/her own list. This is mine, with a little help from some Facebook friends whom I've asked for contributions. Since we're going for 50 things to do, we'll break this article down into several manageable segments.
Putting them in any kind of order would be impossible since I don't know what we'll end up with. So, just because one item is low on the list and another is high says nothing about their relative importance.
You're invited to click on "comments" at the end and give us items on your bucket list...places to go, experiences to have, things to see or taste or hear, before the Lord sends His angels for you.
50. Visit the Holy Land.
Margaret and I went to Israel once, over 20 years ago, and found it life-changing as well as ministry-altering. Honestly, I probably would not have gone then had it not been a 10th anniversary gift from the First Baptist Church of Columbus, Mississippi. For months after returning, I ran a low-grade fever just thinking of where we had been and the sights we had seen. I'd turn a page and there would be a photo of Jerusalem or the Sea of Galille and my eyes would tear up. It had that kind of effect on me.
So, go. Traveling to the Middle East is as safe right now as it has ever been, and you're not getting any younger. I'm thrilled to see the occasional seminary program that allows young preachers and missionaries to visit Israel as a part of their education. Wish I'd gone when I was 25. But on the other hand, I got far more out of it by going when I was 44. Best solution: go twice.
Oh, and send your preacher. Even if he's reluctant to go.
49. Win someone to Jesus.
(This is a reprint of an article I wrote for Leadership magazine several years ago, maybe 2001. It was later picked up and included in "The Art and Craft of Biblical Preaching," edited by Haddon Robinson and Craig Larson, published by Zondervan, 2005. In conversations with pastor friends, I've learned that many never saw the article and some have asked where they could get a copy. Please feel free to copy and pass along to other servants of the Lord.)
I had been preaching for more than two decades, and I should have been at the top of my game. The church I served ran up to 1,500 on Sunday mornings, and the live telecast of our services covered a fair portion of several states. Most of my colleagues thought I had it made, and if invitations to speak in other churches were any sign, they thought I could preach.
But I didn't think that.
My confidence was taking a beating as some of the leaders let me know repeatedly that my pulpit work was not up to their standards. Previous pastors carried the reputation of pulpit masters, something I never claimed for myself. To make matters worse, we had numerous vacancies on staff and my sermon preparation was suffering because of a heavy load of pastoral ministry. But you do what you have to do. Most days, my goal was to keep my head above water. Every day without drowning became a good day.
That's when I got serious about praying for my preaching. Each night I walked a four-mile route through my neighborhood and talked to the Father. My petitions dealt with the usual stuff--family needs, people I was concerned about, and the church. Gradually, one prayer began to recur in my nightly pleadings.
"Lord," I prayed, "make me a preacher." Asking this felt so right I never paused to analyze it. I prayed it again and again, over and over, for weeks.
I was in my fifth pastorate. I owned a couple of seminary degrees. I had read the classics on preaching and attended my share of sermon workshops. I was a veteran. But here I was in my mid-forties, crying out to heaven for help: "Lord, make me a preacher."
I knew if my preaching improved, if the congregation felt better about the sermons, everything else would benefit. I knew that the sermon is a pastor's most effective contribution to the spiritual lives of his members. To do well there would ease the pressure in other areas. So I prayed.
Then one night, God answered.
Recently, as my son Neil and I were returning to New Orleans from visiting my mom in north Alabama, I said, "Let's try to make church at Eutaw. That's where Grandpa Henderson grew up."
We called ahead and found out that their Sunday morning service began at 11 a.m., ideal for us. We walked in at a quarter till, and took our seats.
We had a drive of some 7 hours that day, but I had told Neil, "If anyone other than the pastor invites us to lunch, we'll say 'no.' But if he does, I'd like to do it."
Anyone who knows me knows my love for pastors. I'm always glad to meet a brother laboring in the Lord's work.
Not that we knew anyone at that church. But I figured that my son had distant relatives in the congregation, for one thing, and for the other, I know small-town Southern hospitality.
We ate with the pastor that day. Rick Williams assured us his wife had made a great lasagna and salad, and that she and her mother and their adult daughter would not be there, that they were attending some function at a nearby town immediately after church. She had even suggested that he invite us to lunch.
Hospitality. It's a great concept, particularly if you are away from home and on the road.
In the old days, hospitality was an essential of life. In a time when and in countries where few hotels and restaurants existed, you depended on the kindness of strangers.
Pastor Adrian Rogers was speaking for a week of services in a church I pastored. At one point, he said, "Joe, do you ever get up to Memphis?" I said, "Once in a while." He said, "Well, my friend, when you come to Memphis, don't ever worry about a place to stay or a place to eat."
Long pause.
"We have some of the finest restaurants and hotels you've ever seen."
Great line. Not what I was expecting.
He was just making a funny, but the joke makes a good point: with the hospitality industry (that's what it's actually called) occupying such a prominent position in the economic life of this country, we're no longer dependent on people opening their homes to strangers as in the old days.
That's good. And yet we've lost something.
God said to Israel, "An alien living with you must be treated as one of your native-born. Love him as yourself, for you were aliens in Egypt" (Leviticus 19:34).
In the New Testament, the word translated "hospitality" is "philoxenia," literally "love of strangers."
Our English word "hospitality" is uncomfortably close to "hospital" for good reason: they go back to the same parent, the Latin "hospitalis," originally a place of rest and entertainment. Other offspring of this parent are "host," the one extending this welcome treatment, and "hostage," which formerly meant entertainment. "Hospice" and "hostels" retain some of the original meaning of the Latin word.
Missionaries tell us the concept of hospitality is alive and well in many countries of the world, and constitutes a vital element in their ministry.
Have you ever learned a lesson early in life, promptly proceeded to forget it, and then had it driven home to you years later?
Happened to me this weekend. What the lesson reinforced concerns a strength of small churches, something they can do far better than big ones can ever do.
First, the strength: small churches can do the personal element so much better. Their members are few in number, everyone presumably knows each other (or can, if they will make an effort), and therefore they can do things in a worship service the larger churches cannot because of their size.
Woe to the small church that tries to be a clone of the big one. They're turning their backs on one of their greatest strengths and copying the weaknesses of the Goliaths in town.
All right. Here is what happened this weekend, then I'll tell you the first time the Lord sent this lesson my way.
I was preaching at the Delacroix-Hope Baptist Church downriver from New Orleans in the community known as St. Bernard in the parish of the same name. Before Katrina, nearly 5 years ago, this church was actually located on Delacroix Island, a fishing village. The hurricane ruined the community and the church building disappeared. So, when the people regathered, they started meeting in a little Presbyterian church that was eventually donated to them. Their pastor for the past ten years or so, James "Boogie" Melerine, a native of the island community, has just retired and they've asked me to preach last Sunday and next.
There might have been sixty people in attendance. When the children left for their own service just prior to the sermon--I always hate that; they're my favorite group!--I was left with 35 or 40 adults. The song service was fine, but nothing indicated this was going to be an unusual hour for all of us.
Then we came to the time of the public invitation.
They came to Jesus with two things on their minds. They sincerely wanted to know how He would answer their question; if in the process they could trip Him up, so much the better.
"Lord, which is the Greatest Commandment?"
Jesus replied, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, soul, mind, and strength." He was quoting from Deuteronomy 6:5, a verse known, loved, and memorized by every faithful Jew.
"Good answer," the questioner said, and began walking away.
"And the second one is a lot like it," Jesus called after him.
Second one? Did anyone hear us asking the Lord what was the second greatest commandment? I didn't, did you?
What's going on here?
As the man turned back to the Lord, Jesus said, "The second commandment is: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." A far less familiar verse taken from Leviticus 19:18.
With this word, the Lord Jesus sent a message down through the centuries to His people of every generation: God will not allow us to turn the Christian faith into a vertical, me-and-Jesus-only kind of thing.
My relationship with Jesus Christ provides salvation. My relationship with other people proves my salvation.
Vertical, horizontal. The sign of the cross, the perfect symbol of the Christian faith.
The dual relationship which Jesus commands is taught all through Scripture.
"What's the worst thing about being a pastor?" she asked. "What is your worst nightmare?"
She and I were Facebooking back and forth about the ministry when she threw this one in my direction.
She gave me her own ideas. "People writing nasty letters complaining? giving you advice? criticizing what you wear?"
I laughed and thought, "Oh, if it were that simple. No one enjoys getting anonymous mail trying to undermine your confidence in whatever you're doing, but sooner or later most of us find ways of dealing with that."
"It's worse than that," I typed. Then I paused to reflect.
Hers was such a simple question, one would think I had a stock answer which had been delivered again and again. But I don't remember ever being asked it before.
Now, I have been asked plenty of times variations of "What's the best thing about pastoring?" My answer to that is not far different from the response most other pastors would give: the sense of serving God, the joy of making a difference in people's lives for Jesus' sake, that sort of thing.
You knock yourself out during the week counseling the troubled, ministering in hospitals, visiting in their homes, conducting funerals and weddings, all while you are working on the sermons for Sunday, meeting with staff members planning upcoming events, and handling a thousand administrative details. Then, you stand at the pulpit twice on the Lord's Day and give your best. And you see doubters begin believing, the fearful becoming courageous, the lost getting up and coming home to the Father, people saying God has led them to join with your flock, and broken homes restored --it doesn't get any better than that.
You are in your glory.
Worst nightmare? Thankfully, I don't have those. But I suppose my friend was asking for the scariest scenarios, the most frightening circumstance for a pastor. I have an opinion on that.
Here's my response.
I have the strangest thing to tell you.
Yesterday, as I write, I spent four hours sketching employees for an accounting firm at which a good friend is a partner. I'm a cartoonist and enjoy doing quick sketches of people. So my friend Larry asks me to come out each year on April 15--D-Day for his profession--and to draw their office force. It's a little thank-you for their hard work during the tax season and a celebration for its end.
I'm not sure how many people I drew, but let's say seventy-five. Most were women, probably one out of five was a man. They ranged in age from the early 20s into middle-age. And every one was great looking.
I'm tempted to say each one was beautiful. And in a way, that's true. But it's probably closer to the mark to say that there was a beauty about each person.
The person plops down in the chair opposite you, looks you square in the eye and flashes a great smile. I say, "Okay. Now, hold that for one minute!" Some do it more effortlessly than others. But no matter who they are, when they turn loose with that great smile, you see how really attractive they are. It's at that moment I send up a prayer, "Lord, help me to capture some of what I'm seeing in them."
I'd love them to see how they really look, to know something of the beauty they possess. So few do. They look in mirrors and see what their minds tell them they're seeing. Often it's not close to reality. They compare themselves with airbrushed-celebrities and surgically-enhanced beauties and give themselves failing grades.
It's enough to make a Creator groan.
Do preachers know anything about beauty? Are we entitled to our thoughts on this subject?
The Apostle Peter thought so. His message in our text is as clear as anything you will find anywhere on the subject of real beauty.
The more I work with people, minister in churches, and observe the Christian community, the more convinced I am that unity is the rarest bird on the planet.
Disunity is the norm.
Unity is the plan of the Lord for His people, the essential to getting anything important done, and the last prayer on Jesus' lips in the Upper Room.
I once created a furor in a deacons meeting with the revolutionary suggestion that after they voted to put a matter before the congregation, all the deacons should support it, no matter how they voted earlier. For some, you would have thought I was suggesting they give up their citizenship.
"I am an American citizen. I have my rights. And one of those rights is to speak up and voice my convictions." I can hear him now.
"You're asking us to compromise? Never."
I tried to explain, "We're not talking about your rights; we're talking about your responsibility as leaders of this church. There has to be a reason you're trying to hash these matters out in here before taking it to the church."
The day we began electing mature deacons the church began to have unity.
Leaders are to desire and pray for and model and protect the unity of the church.
Paul said to the Ephesian leaders, "Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace" (Eph. 4:3).
We have to work for it. Unity within a body of a hundred people is not normal or natural, must be sought for, and can be a fleeting thing. Unity is fragile.
In a class of seminary students, I wrote on the board one word: "Different."
I said, "You would think that a congregation made up of disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ would automatically be of one mind. Instead, conflict seems to be the norm. The main reason seems to be that the people in the pews are all so different."
"My question for you is: how are they different?" I began writing as they suggested ways in which the church members differ from one another.
Different sexes, generations, races, ages, views, experiences, theology, politics, background, education, socio-economic levels, likes, dislikes, goals, preferences, tastes, intellects, Bible knowledge, holiness, prejudices, fears, appearances, height, weight, body chemistry, values.
We could have done that all day.
Unity in a congregation of Christians is a miracle as surely as any healing or resurrection of the dead.
Unity among a people so diverse has to be a God thing.
No one enjoys second-guessing himself, what Warren Wiersbe calls "doing an autopsy on oneself."
It's possible to work ourselves into the psych ward or even an early grave by analyzing every single thing we do and questioning the motive behind every word.
No one is advocating that.
And yet, there is much to be said for looking back at what we did and learning from our mistakes and failures and omissions.
That's what this is all about.
It's best done in solitary. (The worst thing we preachers do is ask our wives, "How did I do?" Poor woman. She's in a no-win situation. Leave her out of it.)
A recording of our preaching helps. (But we have to promise to stay awake during the playback.)
That said, I'll get to the point of this article.
What I hate most about my preaching is the tendency to intrude too much into the sermon.
I hate realizing that in a sermon I was trying to co-star with Jesus when the Holy Spirit called me to be a member of the supporting cast.
I did it yesterday.
At a funeral of a dear friend who was a longtime deacon in a former pastorate, I filled the message time with too much of me.
Now, I adore his family and, if I'm any judge, the feeling is mutual. So, feeling at home and among friends, I shared their grief at our loved one's death and rejoiced in their confidence that he is with the Lord.
Instead of delivering a formal message that had been well thought out in advance, I shared memories of my friend and insights from Scripture that say so much about death and eternal life.
Nothing of this was wrong or out of place. If there is one thing I believe strongly, it's in the integrity of the Lord Jesus Christ and His assurances for life eternal.
But the sermon was just "too much Joe."
I can hear my voice now. "Let me share this verse with you that means so much to me. Honestly, I've never heard another preacher use it." Then, trying to be cutesy, I said, "Psalm 17:15 is my own discovery. In the future, when you read it, think of it as 'Joe's verse.'"
Where did that come from? Groan.
I talked about my dad and his death and how our family copes with missing him.
That was unnecessary. It wasn't offensive to them, but in retrospect seems to have been out of place.
I made a couple of half-hearted attempts at humor. Now, no one is against healthy laughter in a funeral service and I hope that when one is held in my honor, there will be plenty of it. But the preacher doesn't need to try to force the humor. Let it come naturally.
My prayer today has been that the fifty or sixty in the congregation did not notice the ever-present reference to I, me, and mine. And, if they did, that they did not mind, or have forgotten it altogether.
It might even be that I'm the only person at that funeral who was bothered by that aspect of the message. I certainly hope so.
No preacher wants to be a distraction. We all want our messages to point people to the Savior and strengthen their faith in the promises of God.
There are those who are said to be "filled with faith," but I'm not one of them. I'm guessing you're not either.
In Scripture, Stephen is given this accolade in Acts 6:5, as was Barnabas in Acts 11:24. If anyone else qualified, I can't find them this morning.
Most of us are mixtures of faith and something else. Like the fellow who admitted to Jesus, "Lord, I believe; help my unbelief" (Mark 9:24).
For some of us, the blend is faith and unbelief.
For others, it's faith and ignorance which co-exist and battle for supremacy in our minds and hearts.
Then there's faith and doubt, which is a tad different from unbelief. Unbelief is negative whereas doubt can be a healthy expression of a reasonable mind that requires just a little more evidence.
Faith and fear appear to be opposites that occupy space in the minds and hearts of some of us at the same time. Jesus said to one group, "Why did you fear? Where is your faith?"
Faith and sight is another set of odd companions. Faith covers what we cannot see but which we believe, while sight has to do with knowledge from what we see and can verify. Astronomer Carl Sagan wrestled with questions of God in his lifetime. Someone asked his wife, "Doesn't he want to believe?" She answered, "No. Carl wants to know." (See Romans 8:24.)
Faith and presumption are a twosome forming a bad marriage in some. Faith hears the promises of God and goes forward; presumption goes where the Lord never sent, claims what He never instructed, and expects what He never promised. Pity the preacher who can't distinguish the two; pity more the people who sit under his ministry.
And then there are some of us, Lord help us, who are a confusing blend of faith mixed with unbelief, ignorance, doubt, fear, sight and presumption.
Sometimes that's me. I suspect it was my dad.
My pastor, Mike Miller, tells of the time he was about to go into a church business meeting where the natives were restless. The inmates were about to riot. Members of the flock were ready to fleece the shepherd.
And a lot of metaphors like that.
It was going to be bad.
Five minutes before the meeting, Mike picked up the phone and called his former pastor in Texas for a word of counsel. As he tells it, Mike was loaded for bear that night and ready to wage war.
His pastor heard him out, then said, "Mike, I want you to go in there and stand before those people and tell them how much you love them."
Mike said, "But you don't understand." And he went through the situation again.
The pastor said, "Mike, stand before them and tell them how much you love them."
As Mike stammered, the pastor said, "Let me lead us in prayer." He prayed that Mike would stand before those people and tell them how much he loved them.
A minute later, Mike walked into the sanctuary, looked out at his congregation, and began, "Folks, regardless what happens tonight, I want you to know that I love you very much."
Nothing happened. Nada. Zip.
The meeting was uneventful, no one had a contrary word, and they got out on time.
Mike Miller believes in the concept of mentoring.
Today, at the start of the masters' level seminary class Dr. Loretta Rivers and I team-teach, I spent a good half-hour or more trying to convince the 22 students on the importance of putting themselves into a mentoring relationship. At the conclusion, Dr. Rivers said, "I'd like to ask a question. How many of you have a mentor?"
Over half the class raised their hands.
I was stunned. Not what I had expected.
In planning this lesson and delivering it, I had fallen into a time-worn trap of teachers and pastors through the ages: projected my own experience onto the audience. I assumed they were as reluctant as I would have been to put themselves in a mentoring relationship.
They're not. They're wiser than I ever was.
Mentoring is all through Scripture. Elijah mentored Elisha. The Lord Jesus mentored the 12 apostles. Barnabas mentored Saul. After he became Paul and took the lead in the relationship, the two friends split and mentored others: Paul took Silas and Timothy; Barnabas took John Mark.
According to Wikipedia, in Greek mythology Mentor was an old teacher asked by Odysseus to look after his son Telemachus while he, Odysseus, went off to the Trojan War. The old gentleman contributed his name to the process whereby an older, more experienced person guides and shapes a younger one.
The nomenclature varies and is probably irrelevant: mentor and mentee, teacher and pupil, master and apprentice, senior and junior. One is the role model, the other the imitator or learner.
Sure wish I'd had one early in my ministry....
Have you ever seen a firestorm? The flames are shooting skyward to unbelievable heights. As the air heats and rushes upward, cool air rushes in at the lower level to fill the vacuum created. Now, you have winds blowing toward the fire and winds inside the inferno shooting upward.
Get out of its way.
The word "maelstrom" comes to mind here. It's a Dutch word that literally means a "grinding stream." (I keep wanting the "strom" to mean "storm," but Webster says it's "stream.") Think of a whirlpool that is sucking everything into its vortex.
Think: church fight.
Ever been in one? If you have, you'll never want to be in another. Once is enough forever.
There is only one who enjoys a knock-down drag-out among the people of God and he is the original fallen angel himself, the great dragon, the accuser of the brethren, Lucifer, the father of lies and the sire of everything unholy.
I have never personally been a warrior in a church fight. However, I know far more than I would like about them. As pastor I have a) observed neighboring churches waging war among themselves, b) dealt with the aftermath of fights in churches I pastored, and c) heard countless horror stories from the walking wounded who had come through the religious wars.
Before dealing with the scriptural instructions on what our response should be to these battles of the faithful, let me issue the one overwhelming principle which should guide all of us:
Walk away from it.
No issue is worth tearing up a church.
Even if truth is at stake--and it always is, if we are to believe the parties involved--and even if the eternal destinies of people hang in the balance, the way to resolve a conflict is not by tearing a church asunder.
A famous line from the Vietnam War era, uttered by those who wanted to stop that no-win conflict and pull our soldiers out, asked, "What if they gave a war and no one came?"
If no one will fight, there's no battle.
It's a great idea.
You will want to drop back and read I Peter 2:21-25 (we included it in the previous article). Now, ask yourself one question: "Can anyone looking at how Jesus endured the cross think for a moment that He wants us to take up arms against our brother or sister in the congregation?"
But, pastor, you don't understand! We're in the right here. The other side has done wrong. They're unbiblical, ungodly, immature, headstrong, stiff-necked, and on top of that, they're taunting us. We can't let this go unaddressed.
You are a fool if you believe that.
All the right is on one side and all the offenses on the other. Give me a break. It's not true of your marriage, not true in the Second World War, not true in our present struggle against radical Islamic terrorism, and not true in your church fight.
That is not to say--let me rush to make this clear or some will read no further!--that each side has as much claim to right and truth and justice as the other.
Rather, no one in a church fight ever thinks of himself or herself as the aggressor, but always the aggrieved.
So, in a church conflict--and that's our subject here--do not buy the lie that your side has all truth and the others are a bunch of evil-doers who want only to run roughshod over the lovers of all that is good and holy.
If you forget for a moment that you are a sinner saved by grace and deserve to spend eternity in hell, you are a goner. You get pulled into the maelstrom and caught up in the firestorm that is consuming your church's peace, destroying its unity and killing its missionary heart.
According to Scripture, here is what we should do....
If you like your religious faith shallow and thought-out for you without you being required to use your brain for any aspect--in other words, you require a manmade religion--you're not going to hang around in church long.
The Christian faith is a lot of things, but shallow and neatly systematic it is not. Rather, it's historical and complex and true. It is true-to-life. And it has been revealed to us in such a way that we are required to put our thinking caps on and engage the brain in order to appreciate what we have been given and how it all fits together.
Take suffering, for example.
A recent critic of the Christian faith--these Christopher Hitchens and Bishop James Pikes have always been with us, so don't let the latest "smarter than God" genius upset you--says the fatal flaw to our theology is suffering. We're told that the Bible does not adequately answer the question of suffering and pain in the world.
You read that and shake your head. Scores of books from Christian writers pour off the press every year dealing with just that subject, particularly after disasters like hurricanes and earthquakes and tsunamis.
But even if we ignore those books, we're faced by the fact that the Bible deals with suffering from one end to the other. It's almost correct to say that human suffering is "the" constant theme of the Bible, it's so prevalent throughout.
The history of Jews is a story of suffering. The Book of Job is devoted entirely to this subject. The sermons of Jesus are saturated with examples and instructions concerning suffering. His very life and death illustrate the subject better than any textbook. That's why, when comforting the Lord's harassed people, Peter thought of just that.
The Apostle Peter writes to suffering believers,
"For you have been called for this purpose, since Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example for you to follow in His steps,
"Who committed no sin, nor was any deceit found in His mouth,
"And while being reviled, He did not revile in return; while suffering, He uttered no threats, but kept entrusting Himself to Him who judges righteously;
"And He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you have been healed;
"For you were continually straying like sheep, but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Guardian of your souls." (I Peter 2:21-25)
If we had nothing else in the Bible on the subject of suffering than this single passage, we could conclude several things:
--suffering is the lot of God's Best in this world
--there is a right way and a wrong way to bear up in suffering
--we are to emulate Jesus. One of the many reasons Jesus was allowed to suffer in this world was to provide us with a pattern, an example. Here's how it's done.
--God always has His purposes for the suffering of His beloved.
--Our task when suffering is to commit ourselves to Him, trusting that He will "judge righteously."
C. S. Lewis called it "pain." The Scripture generally calls it "suffering" or "tribulation." We experience it as "conflict."
It's no fun, I'll tell you that.
But when done right, our suffering/pain/conflict can produce marvelous results. "Fixing our eyes on Jesus....who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame...." (Hebrews 12:2) See that? There was joy on the other side of the cross. To get there, He "endured."
I've made a little list of what believers may expect regarding pain and suffering and conflict in this life. See what you think.