Blah Guy

I think there is a reason God does not speak like a piece of “chain email”? God does not always, and rarely does, speak uniformly to his church. He will give different messages to different people. Not different truth. God does not seem to lie. But he will present truth in so many different ways to so many different people because people hear truth differently. And people always have differing views and opinions on truth. It is like putting a coffee cup in the middle of the room and saying to the people standing around it, “what do you see?” This is okay, yet frustrating at times.

Yves Congar, theologian and overall brilliant guy, argues that the Holy Spirit speaks in two main ways. Personally and institutionally, meaning that he speaks to individuals and groups alike. The problem with this is truth can look so vastly different to both groups.

I have been wondering. Is my preaching an email or a blog?

Do I send people unwanted messages or are they coming to me to learn and sit at my feet? Don’t we always want to create ministries where people who want to come can come in freedom and not oppression?

That is the problem with text-messaging. You can’t text tears. Jesus didn’t text humanity his love. He came and showed it.

So then, what is the preacher’s job?

One guy at our church was famous for saying, when he saw a brother or sister in the faith, “The Jesus in me sees the Jesus in you and says, Hello Jesus!” That sums up preaching.

The preachers job is to find out what Jesus is doing in people and say something about it. That is why a preacher must have a relationship with the people he is preaching to. If he does not, it would be like a fly fisherman loading up his bag, tying a fly, driving to Montana, casting his line in the water, pulling up a big ole’ stick and saying, “Whew! Imagine that”, because he has no dam blabbed idea what a fish looks like. We can’t be fishers of men until we learn to be men and know what they look like. But when we know the struggles of the people, the dirt, the skinny, the jokes, the laughter, the frustrations, those are all things Jesus is desperately dying to teach the people about. So when we preach, we first find what Jesus is doing in people, then have the guts to say something about it.

Practical preaching for the sake of practical preaching is a sin. But practical preaching because the preacher knows that is what Jesus is doing and that is what He told you to talk about is obedience. The difference cannot be told except by the preacher. That is why some of the biggest churches in the world get bigger while the smaller churches in the world keep getting smaller. When people can make their consumeristic choices between some message that is going to be safe and contain something that can help them live better over a very unsafe message that was born out of obedience, they will make the same choice every single time. Not because they are bad, but because Western consumerism is branded into their brain. Buy the best product out there. The problem with prophetic preaching is it is rarely the best product on the market. At least not in their minds because “best” equals “feels or tastes best”. Best does not mean any more “Best” in terms of the truest. Prophetic preaching can be a message of hope like Jonah or a message of wrath like Isaiah. Our job is to be what God has called us to be, no more no less

Here is what I think. I think that God can put a Jonah and a Isaiah in the same city. What? Wouldn’t God want the whole city to hear about salvation or their coming destruction. God has a way of putting more than one preacher in the same city because it will be Jesus inside of them who will draw the hearer to where they need to go. We must stop focusing on how to get people into our doors and focus on what Jesus is telling us to say and he will do the job of drawing people (The Apostle John…”I draw people through the Father”). The magnetism of the Holy Spirit works and we should let it.

The relationship between the preacher and the one being preached is weird. First of all, the preacher always assumes (as I do) that the one preaching is more important than the ones listening. This is an inherent problem with preaching. It sets everyone up (including the preacher) to think that he/she is the most important one in the room. This keeps me up at night. When Jesus came to the Synogogue, he was the least educated and “learned” person in the room. He made chairs and coffee tables. But he was the one person everyone should have shut up and listen to. Secondly, Jesus doesn’t come to church anymore. At least not in person. He comes in persons. He does come, but very differently than he used to. Today, Jesus comes to church inside the people. When we gather, lets stop asking the presence of the Lord. He is there, in you. And when you ask, it’s like saying to your little daughter at her birthday party, “Hey, why don’t you think about coming to your birthday party.” Jesus does not need our invitation to show up, and He really is already there. And thirdly, if Jesus is going to be heard in the community of the church, the preacher must realize that Jesus will fully come out of his costumes if everyone can participate and give their word. Jesus hides himself in the whispers of the pew-warmers. It is in them that he waits, to be heard. It is in them that he yearns to be listened to. Not in the preacher.

Jesus cares about the people that cut us off. Don’t get me wrong. And if people don’t get simple, easy, little things they can do to make God happy, they will go to another church. But…

If my preaching little practical truths is done at the expense of the very large impractical one that nothing I can do will make God love me any more than he does through Jesus, then my preaching has left the building and gone down to the park to pee in the bushes.

“Speak the truth in love”. My problem is I do one and not the other. I once made this mistake. One time I finally spoke the truth that had convicted me for months, but saw people leave so offended they would never come back. To speak the truth in love means that I will speak the truth in such a way that the people I am speaking to know more than the truth that I am speaking, I love them. That is why the guys on the street telling everyone they are going to hell is in as much trouble of hell as the people they are preaching to. Will hell be filled with preachers? If so, I am convinced hell will be for them, a place of unending perpetual preaching, where everyone else is wrong and hell-bound, while they at the same time stand between Lava Ave. and Minion St. in downtown Hades.

I hear more complaints about sermons than anything else. You would think it is the most important thing to Christians in their simple existence, when in reality, preaching takes a much lesser place than preachers like to think. Because preaching is the craft of the preacher, to complain or argue is like standing in front of a builder and his completed home and saying, “Wow, my kid could have done better.” It hurts, no doubt. We take it seriously. And for some odd reason we never seem to learn the all important lesson that preaching was invented by God not to placate or please, but to deride and piss off. Little preaching today does this. And of course it doesn’t have to upset the entire congregation to be effective or “God-breathed”, rather, it appears that preaching has become less and less about the very offensive nature of the gospel than it has about cute little stories of how I can stop cussing at that guy that just cut me off.

Check out WingClips.com.

It is the best site I have ever found that has a wide range of helpful movie clips that are useable for preaching or communicating. Though there is a subscription for the better quality video player, there are free video clips which are of medium quality.

Preaching is alot like Art…you get what you are saying, others rarely do, and it cuts to the bone when someone criticizes it.

One would argue that preaching has lost its value. In some ways, I would agree. It can be watered down, opinion-driven, outdated, and inherently boring. The reality is most people who argue for the relevance of preaching are those who do it, and those who challenge its value are those who have to listen to it. I am one of the first category.

While I preach weekly to a college-group in Eugene, I am one of preachings most ardent critics. I do it, believe in it, but believe it is by and large failing more now than it has since its inception two thousand years ago.

We can’t do away with it. Preaching can change the world.

While preaching might in some ways be a burr in the side of most church-goers, its necesity is clear. The next couple of weeks I will explore this topic.