Happy Friday Pastor! Is this your day off? Jonny and I take Fridays off. Well, mostly. You know. Today we are working like maniacal henchmen on our final assignments of the semester at Bethel Seminary. Other than that, we take Fridays off. Hey, I wanted to remind you of a great opportunity! Are you preaching this weekend? Yeah, I know. I tricked you. THAT''S the great opportunity. Except I do hope that you see it that way though! And, as you look to Saturday night, or Sunday morning, I thought I would gently remind you of a few things in anticipation of your message:
Thing #1 - You are using the Bible, right? Several years ago, I actually got so excited for a few weeks talking about the Bible (Bible study), that I didn't actually teach the Bible itself. It's always good to preach from the text itself. God says it better than us. And yes, someone did let me know! :) Thing #2 - What is it you want to say with your message? Could you tell me your message/talk/sermon in just one succinct sentence? It's always nice when you can do that. Thing #3 - How about illustrations? Stories cannot go in one ear and out the other, like facts, points, and information can. Stories get stuck between our ears somewhere when we connect pieces of them to our own life stories. We can't not do that. Tell appropriate, illustrative stories. Thing #4 - This is a question... will you be more concerned with your message, or your delivery than you are about the people sitting around you? They long to know that they matter to you, that you care about them, that you see them, that you know them, and that you would have come to church even if you knew they were the only one showing up!. Thing #5 - Oh yeah, how about prayer? Have you sat with God this week and just talked to him about your message? Then, did you sit and listen? If you haven't, there's good news... you've still got time! Yes you do. Do. It. Sit yourself down. Be quiet for five minutes. Then tell God what you think your message is supposed to be about. Talk to him. Can you handle one more thing? (Reminds me of Dr. Suess' "thing one or thing two, which thing are you?") Here's the final thing: Thing #6 - Jesus loves you and he likes you, and he's so happy that you will share his love and his truth with people this weekend. He's rooting for you. He will make sure his Spirit will be with you and in you, and with your people - helping them to understand it all. You are a preaching team with the Trinity this weekend. The triune God and you. So be confident, passionate, and joyful. Listen, just have a blast this weekend! It isn't brain surgery or rocket science (is that even a thing anymore?) and you're not in charge, Jesus is. His yoke is EASY and his burden is LIGHT. Have a wonderful weekend. And if you've read this far, thanks for hanging out with me and Jonny at 200churches. Really. Thanks. Okay, I know you are a pastor, but are you boring as a speaker? How’s that question fit into a Friday blog post – when Sunday’s a comin?! I think it fits well, because Sunday IS a comin! If you have been boring your people, yourself, and maybe even the Holy Spirit – there is something you can do to immediately up the interest level of your messages. When I do what I am about to tell you, I can visually notice the crowd I’m speaking to lean into my message, lift their heads, and make eye contact with me. They are sometimes literally hanging on every word when I do what I’m about to share with you.
You don’t need to take a remedial Homiletics course to learn this principle of communication – YOU can start this weekend to make any message you prepare just a little bit more engaging and interesting. When I do this, I enjoy preaching/speaking more, and my people get more out of it. Here’s my secret, it’s so simple… you need to tell more compelling stories that illustrate the big idea of your message, lesson, or sermon. Notice the two examples below, and tell me which is more interesting: Example A: Jonny and I record podcasts. Yesterday we recorded one. It was about small churches. It was fun. Example B: Yesterday Jonny and I recorded a podcast at my house, in our opulent and luxurious second floor 200churches Studio, which is, by the way, my daughter’s old bedroom! She laughs when I remind her of that! Jonny and I got acquainted when we sat together in our very first class at Bethel Seminary, and we talked and joked most of the day. I knew that first week we met than I would have to hire him at my church. Now we record weekly podcasts in the studio together. Whenever Jonny comes in, he always takes a diet Coke from my little white fridge next to the loveseat. The one we recorded yesterday was with an old college friend of mine and two of his ministry leaders – it was a blast! Of course example B was more interesting. I added more information, and told a little story, about how Jonny and I became friends and colleagues. There has been a lot of neuroscience research in the past twenty years on how the brain receives information. Dr. Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D., an internationally recognized authority on brain development, said this: “Only four to eight minutes of pure factual lecture can be tolerated before the brain seeks other stimuli…”** For too long so many pastors would preach like that – pure factual lectures! One word: B-O-R-I-N-G. Research has shown that the brain can just tune out facts, figures, and principles. BUT, the human brain simply and absolutely cannot tune out narratives, anecdotes, or stories! When you tell a story, people have to follow it. They can’t help it. All you need to do, and this is so much easier than you’d think, is prepare a couple short stories/illustrations that will highlight and explain the content of your message. Be real. Tell the truth. Paint a picture with your words. In Matthew 13:34 it says that Jesus “spoke all these things to the crowd in parables [stories]; he did not say anything to them without using a parable [story].” You and I are certainly not more interesting than the Son of God! We also need to use stories when teaching our people spiritual truth. About two months ago I was in Sioux City with my wife, and just as we were about to drive the 50 minutes home, I got an email. I noticed on my phone that it was a long email. So, I handed the phone to my wife and asked her to read it to me while I drove. The email was from a person who listens to the 200churches podcast. This person wrote about the difficulties her and her husband were having in their ministry, and how she came upon the podcast online, and listened to several hours of episodes that afternoon. She said that when her husband came home, they both listened to more episodes together, and their entire day was turned around because of the joy, honesty, and helpfulness of the podcast episodes that Jonny and I recorded. While I was driving down the expressway, I was so moved by her email that I began to cry. These were tears of thankfulness and joy that God actually used what we created, to encourage others in ministry! That’s why we do them, but we don’t always get to hear about it from our listeners. In turn, her email made my day! So that’s my short story at the end of this blog post. A story is more interesting, isn’t it? You should use at least one this Sunday. Go crazy and use two! Your people deserve it. ** http://teacher.scholastic.com/professional/bruceperry/brainlearns.htm Are you completely exhausted as a small church pastor? Are you doing it all? Are you running on empty? Do you just need a month off from preparing weekly sermons so that you can get 1) caught up, and 2) ahead on your ministry prep? Well, there is a way that you can do it, without paying one penny for a special speaker to come in and cover for you. Jonny mentioned it in this week's podcast. It's called www.lifechurch.tv. Being Rich, a five week series by Craig Groechel, would be a great set of messages to share with your church family! You can find this series at www.lifechurch.tv, in the resources area. This series comes complete with Talk-It-Over notes, and companion videos available online and on YouTube to show to your small groups. These printable Talk-It-Over pdf's and videos will guide your Sunday School classes or small groups through the five week series. Of course, Being Rich is not the only series to select, there are many. You'll need to create a free account, and then you'll sign in and have access to tons of free content. There are too many mega-church sites to mention, but a few would be:
Saddleback Church Northpoint Church Willow Creek Community Church Woodland Hills Church Experience Life Now Northridge Church These sites, along with LifeChurch.Tv have full length video message series available to view online. Maybe you'd feel better emailing or calling the church and asking permission to show these to your church family. If you would, I know that these churches want their messages to be seen and that they would gladly allow you to use them. I do not guarantee or approve of every message or series you might find, but hey, you're smart, right?! You don't need me to clear stuff for you. Would it not be so cool to kind of have a month long sabbatical from preparing weekly messages? And, would it not be equally cool for you to sit with your church family and guide them through these messages from other great pastors? Most of these sites also have online message notes or small group material to use as companion material to the messages. Speaking of mega-churches, here is how you could partner with some of them to accomplish wonderful ministry in your church, and give yourself time to refresh and get ahead before the busy fall season comes. You could show a message series sometime in the summer and get a much needed break. Again, you would incur ZERO cost while you took this break! Next week we are going to be talking about the issue of burnout in ministry. We'll be talking to a 200church pastor from Lincoln, Nebraska about how he managed to survive burnout, only to now thrive in his urban ministry, while equipping his church family to lead and serve. We also talk to him about the issue of race, and multiethnic churches. Next week, on episode 66! Jonny and I decided we should end the week with a very practical blog post. So here goes… Around the first of the year I started a series on the Minor Prophets at my church. Who’s bright idea was that?! Yeah, I think it was mine. I had a few good reasons to do this:
Have you ever selected a topic or book of the Bible to preach on and you thought, before you started it, that it was going to be kind of boring – but then once you got into it, you realized that this was actually so good it might end up being your favorite message or series? Yeah, me too! That is exactly what is happening to me in this series through the minor prophets. Go figure. We are calling this series, “Message in a Bottle”. Because pulling out these minor relics is like finding a message in a bottle, that no one has ever read before. Now we are reading them. I’m so glad we meandered to this section of the Bible. It’s out of my comfort zone. I have nothing to fall back on. And I am finding so much great truth that connects the testaments and us to the whole Bible. How do you select preaching topics or series? Do you tend to walk close to familiar books like, oh, any of them besides the prophets, Kings, Chronicles, and, um, Job? Oh yes, and who can forget to forget the Song of Solomon. Steer clear! Could I just encourage you to wade into the deep end? That’s where all the water is! When you move out of your homiletical comfort zone, you do a couple of things:
Do you know what you’re preaching on this weekend? Why not pick an arcane, obscure, and “untouched by human hands” passage? Dive in, dig in, and find the treasures! One final, extremely helpful, suggestion:Finally, one very important suggestion – study with someone else as you become acquainted with the passage or book or section you are moving into. Two heads are better than one. Find someone in your church, or even another pastor who is willing to tackle the same series with you – you can meet with him or her one afternoon a week and you can study together! Hey, don’t trash it until you’ve tried it – I’m tellin’ ya, you will love this. Just find the right person. It would be a phenomenally strategic idea to find another pastor not too far away who is likeminded with you. Meet at a quiet restaurant or diner in the afternoon, and prepare messages together. (Just buy coffee or soda/Coke/pop, but leave a big tip. You'll be heros!) It could be just what you need to jumpstart your passion for discovery and study in relation to sermon prep! Expect to try this with a couple pastors before you find the one that is a right fit for you. Don't get discouraged. Have a wonderful weekend with your people. LOVE them to death. Well, at least right up to the edge, then back off a bit. P.S. My mom thought it was appropriate and funny to give me a spiritual joke book for my birthday. I thought it was cheap. Anyway, a quote from that now deceased theologian George Burns fits the topic of this post: “The secret of a good sermon is to have a good beginning and a good ending, then having the two as close together as possible!” Amen. I attended a large church yesterday. It wasn’t a mega church, but it was large, probably around 2,000 people. Is that a mega church?? It might have been twenty years ago, but not today. Anyway, I attended a large church yesterday! There was a large parking lot, greeters at the door, and the next door, and the next door. There was a very spacious “welcome mall” with great signage and helpful volunteers stationed about here and there.
There was helpful literature with great graphics and cool flat panel monitors broadcasting all manner of helpful pictures, video, and promotions. In the auditorium there were well padded seats, a kickin’ sound system, colored stage lights, fog machines, a very cool worship team with awesome music, an amped up well-worded introduction to the morning theme, a series intro video, casually dressed staff and a casually dressed pastor presenting a very dynamic, but down to earth, message. Oh yeah, and he had a very cool bar stool to sit on, with a padded round seat that could really spin! I knew the message would be soft pedaled and light on Scripture. I knew it would be interesting, but not too convicting, funny, but with enough content to make a person think, short, but long enough to validate a pastoral paycheck. I knew it would be church-lite, Bible-lite, and God-lite. Okay, not really. I didn’t really know these things about the message. But, here’s what it was really like… It was unbelievably excellent and effective! The message was from 1 Corinthians 6 and contained about the most straightforward warning against sexual sin one could present. It was Andy Stanleyesque, in the very best sense. The pastor used story, and self-deprecating humor when necessary, to draw the congregation in. He asked the questions out loud that they were thinking silently. He piqued their interest for an answer to the question “Why?!” Why in the world would God demand that people in the 21st century live by an antiquated and prudish notion that sex should be reserved only for marriage?! He politely asked for 30 minutes of their attention and then assured them at the end that if they would commit to living by God’s design for sexuality, they would be so glad they did! The service concluded with a very powerfully played “Forever Reign” which includes the lyrics: Oh, I'm running to Your arms, I'm running to Your arms. The riches of Your love Will always be enough Nothing compares to Your embrace Light of the world forever reign It was one of the most powerful conclusions to a service that I have ever experienced! At this large church, we were given a very powerful, focused, culturally needed biblical message, wrapped in a winsome and gripping delivery, wrapped in a very crowd-appropriate musically dynamic service. It was an amazing experience. I walked out hating my small church and my life as a small church pastor. Wait a minute! No, I didn’t!! I walked out thankful to God for a church like this that will reach a lot of people and connect them to their loving God. I was thankful for the pastor and staff that God has equipped to do their Kingdom work. And, my friends, I walked out so thankful for my 200church! In my church, it’s different. Not better or worse, just different! I am so thankful for the people at my church, and the opportunity we have in our community to reach people, join them to God through the Gospel of Jesus, equip them to serve God and others, and connect them in meaningful and healing relationships with each other. I was challenged and encouraged yesterday morning in a number of ministry areas, areas where I can up my game, and attempt just a little more for the Kingdom in my own 200church. Dan Reiland wrote a Pastor’s Coach article a while ago that talked about the three dangers that large churches face:
This Wednesday on the 200churches Podcast, episode 63, Dan joins us for the entire episode to talk about those three dangers. It’s a great, personal, and free-wheeling episode that is sure to encourage and challenge you, and of course, make you laugh! You should attend a really large church sometime when you are able. It was fun. It really was. And I lived to tell about it! This past week Jonny and I spent more than ten hours working together on a message from the book of Hosea. We studied, researched, cussed and discussed, turned over every exegetical rock, and brainstormed homiletical approaches to Sunday morning. It’s an amazing experience when you study with others who are likeminded in their love for God and his Word. You actually accomplish more together, you know, that exponential discovery that neither of you could do on your own? So we studied.
We read through the fourteen chapters together out loud three times, and categorized the content. Only when we had dissected the passage with vigor did we go after the commentaries. But, yes, we did check the commentaries. J We then put together a message plan, replete with eighteen message slides to augment the message. We also cross-referenced the contents of Hosea with other biblical passages, and tried to understand the Bible from Genesis 12 with God’s covenant with Abraham to the book of Hebrews where the Law is declared “obsolete”, and even Revelation 19 and the great battle. Galatians 3 was turned over as well as Romans 9,10, & 11. Again, we left no stone unturned. We understood the book backwards and forwards, and even knew the wonder of the oath and promise that begins with Isaac and culminates with Christ. BUT – there was one thing, when we were finished, when it was all said and done and practiced, that we did not know. This one thing was bugging me. I knew we needed to nail it down before we could step onto the platform. That one thing was… the BIG IDEA! Some call it a proposition, and Andy Stanley calls it “the phrase that pays.” I said to Jonny, “what’s the big idea?!” Well, we had figured out way better and much more than the big idea – we knew the whole idea, the entire thrust of the book and the Bible, for that matter. But we had not nailed down the big idea. So we entered my office one last time, to find that elusive big idea. It had to be there somewhere. Guess what?! It was. There it was, sitting right in my office. Once we started to talk, brainstorm, and ask God to help us, it jumped right up into our conversation. Yup. That crazy big idea just appeared, and like a bright red bow, it completed this gift of a message and calmed my homiletical heart. We found it. All would be right on Sunday morning. It was the question, the challenge, that we would pose to the congregation. Nice. So you’re preaching this weekend, right? Well? What’s the big idea? If you haven’t found it yet, there’s still time. I think you need a bow for that gift! Next week's podcast features Dan Reiland with Six Words for Small Churches! |
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