When Heaven cracked open and gave us a glimpse

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And behold a voice came out of Heaven. (Matthew 3:17)

There were the more obvious times when Heaven broke through and showed itself to earth.  Such as…

–When the angel appeared to Zacharias in Luke 1 and later appeared to Mary.  Same  chapter.

–When our Lord was born in Bethlehem and the angels appeared to the shepherds in the nearby field. Luke 2.  That was amazing.

–And when Jesus was baptized.  The Father spoke from Heaven and the Spirit descended in the form of a dove.  Matthew 3.

–And of course when Jesus died on Calvary.  God darkened the sky at noonday, tore the temple’s curtain down the middle, and shook the land.

–And when He arose.  Oddly when Jesus came out of the tomb there were no accompanying theatricals–no quaking, just shaking (sorry; couldn’t resist). I’m thinking about the frightened soldiers.

But then–and this is why I came to the laptop this early morning–there were those not-so-obvious times when Heaven cracked the skies and intruded on humanity.  And in most cases, the carnal minded did not notice. They went on with whatever they were doing. Only those of a spiritual mind picked up on what Heaven was doing.  You can almost hear some of them saying, “Wait.  Did you see that?”  “Did you hear what He said?”

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How the preacher can burden his audience

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“God was well-pleased through the foolishness of preaching to save those who believe.” (I Corinthians 1:21)

On Facebook, I asked the question, “How do preachers burden their hearers and undermine their own effectiveness?” The answers poured in.

Now, we start with a few assumptions. First, every comment came from someone who either is a preacher or loves them.  Second, let’s admit that no minister preaches as well as he would like.  We would all love to improve.

So, anyone for whom this is not the case may get up and leave the room now. Nothing that follows will pertain to you.

A full generation after I began pastoring, I was overcome by an intense need to improve my preaching effectiveness. Google my name with “I prayed for my preaching and got an answer” and see how that turned out.

Here then are ways preachers burden our congregations, according to the experts on the subject, the preachers themselves.

1) The sermon has multiple points with sub-points.

The sermon which seems to go on and on with its points and sub-points is hard to follow. The hearer loses himself/herself in details and the big picture gets crowded out by all the undergrowth.

Young, beginning preachers seem to be the primary offenders here. They try to do too much in their half-hour and end up doing far less than they could have. They bring in every pertinent text and answer every possible objection. They literally bury their people under points and principles and lessons.

Haddon Robinson popularized the “one big idea” in preaching, which calls for the preacher to hone his focus to one central theme and build everything in and around that. This encourages the minister to avoid side trips, detours, and complexities, anything that detracts from the main message.

Clarity is everything.

2) We deliver sky-scraper sermons (one story on top of another).

I am a lover of a good story. When Austin Tucker wrote The Pastor as Story-Teller, he had me from the title. Then, when he invited me to read the manuscript in advance and included one of my stories, he became my best friend forever. (Buy it used online.)

A well-placed story that is “just right” can take an average message and make it forever memorable.

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The most valuable person in your church office

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The receptionist–the one who greets the public–is in many ways your most important staffer.

She is the first person most people see when they walk in, the voice they talk with on the phone, and the only one a lot of outsiders will deal with from your church.

Pastor, she can make you or break you.

She can be a light to someone coming in from the dark, lift the spirits of a visitor who ran out of hope miles up the road, defrost the spirit of Jack Frost himself, and protect the beleaguered pastor who desperately needs an hour of study time without interruptions.

She can do all these things and more. But she can also run people off faster than Sunday’s lousy sermon or Wednesday night’s cold ham and peas.

Where does one find a receptionist sent from Heaven?

Answer: Heaven.

Ask God. He knows them all, has full resumes on each person on the planet, and runs the best placement service ever. Pray.

For some reason a few decades ago, I began speaking to meetings of church administrative assistants, a catch-all phrase that encompasses secretaries, receptionists, bookkeepers, and anyone else on the office staff. I’ve been to Alabama’s Judson College more than once addressing that state’s church secretaries, done the same at Louisiana’s Tall Timbers Conference Center and Mississippi’s Garaywa Center. But best of all, for many years, the National Association of Southern Baptist Secretaries (NASBS) invited me to attend (to address them, hold conferences, and sketch everyone) their bi-ennial gatherings, sometimes at one of our conference centers (Glorieta in New Mexico or Ridgecrest in North Carolina, at other times at Lifeway in Nashville and once at the First Baptist Church of Dollywood. Oh, excuse me. Sevierville, Tennessee.

This is not to imply that I know a lot about their work, only that I spend a good deal of time with them and treasure the difference these ladies–they’re almost always women–make in the church’s ministry.

Sometimes I tell them my favorite Lou Holtz story. Sports fans know the legendary Holtz as the former football coach at Arkansas, Notre Dame, and the NY Jets. After retiring, he became a popular speaker at motivational seminars, and that’s where he shared this story.

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Why the world isn’t breaking down our doors to get in on this

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If, as we say, the “Gospel of Jesus Christ” is heaven’s Good News, and if this good news is the answer to mankind’s deepest, biggest, worst problems, and if it’s free and eternal and for everyone, one would think people would be crashing through the church doors to get in on it.

So why aren’t they?

Not only are they not breaking down our doors to partake of God’s free offer in Christ, most of our neighbors act as if the church is completely irrelevant to anything that concerns them. And, when we do try to enlighten them on Christ’s wonderful blessings of grace, some laugh in our faces or even scoff and dismiss us as nuts.

What’s going on here? Why are people not clamoring to get in on this wonderful thing God has made available for all mankind in Jesus Christ?

Here are some possible answers…

1. Many do not know.

A pastor friend introduced me to a young man named Bill. “Bill was baptized last Sunday night.” When I expressed appreciation, Bill said, “I had a real hunger in my heart.”

What happened is that Bill, a carpenter, mentioned to some of his co-workers about his inward spiritual hunger. One of the men, a believer, invited him to church. He was not prepared for Bill’s response.

“How do I do that?”

The friend said, “How do you go to church? Simple—you get in your car and drive down there, you park, and you walk inside.”

Bill said, “You mean just anyone can walk inside a church?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Anyone.”

The next Sunday Bill heard the Gospel of Christ and responded by going forward during the invitation time and giving his hungry heart to the Lord who alone could fill it.

I said to my friend, “We make such assumptions. We just assume that everyone knows they would be welcome in our church. We assume they know when we meet and what goes on, and so we never tell them.”

He said to me, “You know my story, don’t you?” I didn’t.

When Mike was dating Terri, who would become his wife, he attended her Methodist church on Easter Sunday and for the first time in his life, heard the story of the resurrection. That week he called his dad, a lifelong Baptist.

“Did you know about the resurrection, Dad?” “Oh sure, son,” he said. “Everybody knows that story.”

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Some people make up the truth as they go along

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“For we did not follow cunningly devised fables when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses….” 

“For prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:16,21).

I’ve been reading books again.

Uh oh.

–I’ve been reading “The Story of Ain’t.”  Mostly this is the story of struggles to decide what goes into dictionaries, culminating in Webster’s Third Edition.  Author David Skinner brings us into the inner offices of G. and C. Merriam Company and tells how decisions are made concerning the English language.  Anyone who enjoys that would love watching sausage being made.  (It’s a difficult book to read and only the wordsmiths among us should “rush out and buy this book.”)

–I’ve been reading “The Refiner’s Fire: The Making of Mormon Cosmology, 1644-1844.”  Author John L. Brooke takes us back into the context of the birth of this American-made religion to show that almost everything about it was the product, not of revelation, but of ideas floating around when Joseph Smith was a young man.

–I’ve been reading the Bible.

The contrast in these three is enlightening.  Reflecting on them resulted in the following observations….

1) Some things we make up as we go. Language is that way.

I’m the product of an educational system (1946-1973) that taught students to turn to the dictionary for “the real meaning of that word.”  English teachers assured us that “will” and “shall” are used in different ways, and that educated people knew the difference.  Infinitives should not be split and prepositions should not end sentences. Nouns must not be used as verbs, otherwise they might (ahem) impact us wrongly.

We were left with the impression that these things were set in stone, that somehow somewhere a high council handed down iron-clad rules on proper English usage.

And then we learned otherwise.

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It’s good Peter did not walk a mile on water. Here’s why.

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“But seeing the wind, Peter became afraid and beginning to sink, he cried out, ‘Save me, Lord!’ And immediately Jesus stretched out His hand and took hold of him….” (Matthew 14:30-31).

You’ve seen the video of the Boston Red Sox first baseman letting that World Series game-winning single run through his legs. It’s iconic.

It was the 1986 World Series and the player was Bill Buckner.

Had Buckner caught that ball and stepped on first base, the game would have been over and the Red Sox would have ended that so-called curse a full fifteen or twenty years earlier than they did.  Ask the Buckner family.  The video has run a zillion times on Youtube and in the minds of the fans.  They have enshrined his failure.  Most Red Sox fans forget all the thousands of put-outs Buckner made at first base, the hits he got, the runs he produced.

That is how the Apostle Peter must have felt.

Think of Simon Peter walking on the water to Jesus that night when the winds howled and the sea raged and far from being impressed–as one would think we should be!–we see only that he took his eyes off Jesus and put them on the wave, and began to sink.  As though we would have done better!

Actually, we should be glad Peter did that.  Yes, we should rejoice that he walked those few steps on the Galilee and yes, we should be impressed.  But everything inside me gives thanks that after that, Peter had a problem with what he was doing and messed it up.

Just imagine…

Suppose Peter had spent 30 minutes or an hour outside the boat, walking and then dancing and then pirouetting across the sea!

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The time God spoke to me. Clearly, amazingly.

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I have a very simple reason for believing in the living God.  And it has nothing to do with all the philosophical things people come up with. Nothing to do with science or the universe.  It’s personal.

He spoke to me.  Simply, clearly.

The year was 1989.  Margaret and I were being harassed by a number of people determined to get us out of their church.  I’d been pastor of this church for three years and it was flourishing.  We were reaching people for Jesus and running ahead of the budget and finally–I had thought–the Lord had shown the naysayers that He was in charge.

Some people do not care about God though. And they keep being put in leadership places in church.  So, here’s what happened.

Margaret and I would sit on the screened-in back porch and discuss matters.  We had a little agreement that we could say anything out there we pleased, but we would not bring it in the house.  And I was about to read Scripture.

For reasons I do not remember, I was about to read Psalm 67.

And God spoke.

“No.  Read Psalm 66.”

That’s what He said.

Now, I could not have told you the difference.  These were not familiar scriptures.

So, I read Psalm 66.  And got down to the middle of that psalm and could not believe what I was reading.  It was describing what had been happening to us.

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How I overcame my fear of public speaking and learned to love it

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Good title, right?

Now a confession. It’s a misnomer.

I was never afraid to stand in front of a group and speak. Not ever. In fact, quite the opposite.

As a fourth grader in our little West Virginia schoolhouse, teacher Margaret Meadows would periodically invite class members who had read an interesting story to stand and share it. I recall Violet Garten (love that name!) was so good at it. But when she called on me (I’m the guy frantically waving my hand) and I walked to the front of the class, I broke the rules.

I did not relate a story I had read somewhere.

I made one up on the spot.

That is serious something or other, I don’t know what. Was it a love for being the center of attention? Self-confidence on steroids? Not given to introspection, I’ve never tried to answer that, but I am confident that little snapshot reveals a world of insight on who I later became. Positive and negative.

In high school, one of the requirements for presidents of local chapters of the FFA (Future Farmers of America) was the ability to address an audience of our members for a full 30 minutes.  As president, I don’t recall actually doing that, but addressing audiences 30 minutes at a clip would end up describing my life. I’m a Southern Baptist preacher, you understand. The Lord called me into the ministry in April of 1961, so you do the math.

When friends tell me they hate public speaking with a dread, that they would rather take a whipping than stand in front of a group and speak about anything, I’m speechless and cannot begin to identify.  So, I did something.

I asked my Facebook friends who dislike public speaking to tell us why.

Most of the responses boiled down to variations on one theme: fear.   They feared forgetting their speech in the middle of their presentation, being rejected by the audience, boring them, and outright failure.

Several dreaded the attention being on themselves.  One or two said they are intimidated by crowds. More than one feared tripping while ascending the steps to the podium.

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What I miss most about pastoring

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Not one thing.

As much as I loved pastoring, I do not miss it.

That might need a tiny bit of explaining.

I’ve not pastored since 2004, when I became the area-wide “director of missions” for the SBC churches in metro New  Orleans, a Southern Baptist position similar to the Methodist District Superintendent or some minor bishop (but, as we tell our Catholic friends, “bishop minus the authority and funny hat”).  After 5 years, I retired to a ministry of itinerant preaching, writing, cartooning/sketching, and honey-doing.

I do not miss pastoring, even though I put in 42 years serving six churches and by all reports, did a fair job of it.

I do not miss the stress.

I do not miss the constant demands placed on a pastor and the sleepless nights that result.

I do not miss the relentless return of the Sabbath with its requirement for several new sermons and fresh presentations at every level.

I do not miss deacons meetings and monthly church business sessions.

I don’t miss hospital visitation, even though I still do that occasionally.

I  don’t miss weddings or funerals, even though I still get asked once in a while.

I don’t miss the administrative details, the long staff meetings, the occasional interstaff bickering and competition, or  the endless impossible-to-meet expectations placed on me by a few high octane  members (but mostly by myself).

But I did love pastoring.  As a new seminary grad in the summer of 1967, I had to get straight with the Lord whether I was to pastor churches or teach history in college (this was the original plan) and be a bi-vo pastor of small churches.  While on my knees in a hotel room in San Antonio, my wife asleep nearby, I heard from the Lord in no uncertain terms: I was to pastor churches.

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Our strong leader is first of all, a servant

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“I am among you as one who serves” (Luke 22:27).

I did not know the man who was texting me.  He had been dismissed from his second church in a row, and was beside himself with grief and frustration.

“Joe, I have to lead,” he said.  “God made me a leader.”

I did not have time to be gentle with him.  So, I laid it on the line.

“No, He made you a servant.”

I never heard back from him.

Please understand that I am pro-pastor. Always and forever. Anyone who reads my stuff and knows me will agree that I honor the pastor.  God made me a pastor at the age of 22, and I’ve been one ever since.

However, many of us have a problem.

In churches across our land tyrants can be found who call themselves pastors and demand to be obeyed. Such men should be dealt with by courageous men and women in the pews. Otherwise, they will corrupt the gospel, destroy the church, wound the weak, and drive away many who need Christ.

In the Kingdom of God, leaders are required to be servants.

If you serve well, in time He might let you be a pastor/shepherd.  But the serving comes first.

You arrive as the new pastor of the church.  The congregation, however, is not ready to follow you for one simple reason:  They do not know you.  They need to learn you can be trusted.  And the way to show them this is by serving them.

Many a pastor misses this, and if he learns it at all, not before he has made many a bone-headed mistake and left a lot of good people bleeding in his wake.

We lead by serving.

We do not lead by dominating.

That’s it.

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