Category Archives: Pastors

When something the preacher said doesn’t sound right

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This has happened to me a number of times. I’m sitting in a meeting with hundreds of the Lord’s people representing churches across our state or country. A large number of preachers are in the audience. The speaker is sounding forth on some subject of importance to us all.

Suddenly, the speaker comes out with a statement that gets a hearty “amen,” something profound that reinforces the point he is making. He goes on with the message and everyone in the room follows him but one person. Me, I’m stuck at that statement. Where did he get that, I wonder. Is it true? How can we know?

If “Facebook,” that wonderful and exasperating social networking machine, has taught us anything, it is to distrust percentages and question quotations.

A Facebook friend’s profile contained a quote from President Kennedy. I happen to know the quote and while I cannot prove JFK never uttered those words–proving a negative like that is impossible–I know how the line got attached to the Kennedys. It’s a quotation from a George Bernard Shaw play.

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What the preacher can learn from a speeding motorcycle

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I’m on the interstate, solidly in the middle of heavy traffic, trying to hold my own at a comfortable 65 or 70 or slightly more. Suddenly, from out of nowhere–maybe he dropped down out of the sky!–a motorcycle is all over me, appearing suddenly on my back bumper or just to my left elbow, then swerving around in front. The noise is horrendous and completely unexpected. He zooms past like he was jet-propelled and disappears into the distance.

I am unnerved.

Honestly, I need to exit immediately and find a rest area where I can kill the engine, get out and walk around, and get my wits back.

That was frightening.

The cyclist has no idea what he did. Or maybe he did.

Common sense says the fellow under that helmet drives a car from time to time and surely has had the experience of having a daredevil on a Harley materialize out of nowhere and scare the blazes out of him.  Or maybe not.

If he had, he’d never do that to anyone else.

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Some weddings you never forget. As much as you’d like to.

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(I’m in the middle of my “wedding season.” Did one wedding last weekend, this weekend will marry my granddaughter Abigail to Cody, and have a couple more scheduled for this year.  And that prompted the following.)

Most pastors agree we will take a funeral over a wedding any day.

You don’t have to rehearse a funeral. And there are no formal meals or receptions involved. You stand up in front of the honored guest, and do your thing, say your prayers, enjoy a couple of great songs, and go your way.

But with weddings,  you have these rehearsals where a thousand things can go wrong, where the bride and her mother argue, where bridesmaids sometimes see how risque’ they can dress, and the groomsmen how rambunctious they can behave.  You have a wedding director who may or may not be capable. (I’ll take a drill sergeant from Parris Island any day over a lazy director who has no idea all the awful things that can happen the next day.)

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The most depressing thing about being a pastor, and what to do about it

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“Apart from these external things, there is the daily pressure upon me of concern for all the churches” (2 Corinthians 11:28).

When showing his scars and enumerating his sufferings, the Apostle Paul ends with a mention of the daily care of the Lord’s people.  That too was a great burden.

You don’t bleed from caring for the Lord’s flock. But you hurt as much as if you did.

The worst part of pastoring, the burden that keeps hammering you down into the ground, is the perfectionism.

It’s not something the Lord puts on us–well, not any more than on anyone else–because “He Himself knows our frame; He is mindful that  we are but dust” (Psalm 103:14). He is under no illusions about any of us. The quickest way to divine frustration, I would think, is for the Father to expect perfection from His children.

He’s smarter than that. Thankfully.

Nor is it something most congregation put on us. Most members know their pastors are human, even if some do tend to lose sight of that sometimes.  (I heard of a pastor whose teenage daughter has come up pregnant, and some in the church are calling for the pastor’s resignation.  He ministered to them in their crises, but let him go through one and a few are ready to cut him off.  What is wrong with such people?! God bless the leadership of this church and help them do the right thing.)

The perfectionism that hounds the pastor and nags at him without letup he mostly puts on himself.

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Something pastors cannot do and we should quit asking

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Those of us who counsel pastors and teach future preachers are known to caution them to “study the Bible for itself, just to receive the Word into your heart, and not to prepare sermons.”

We might as well tell Sherlock Holmes to enjoy crime scenes for the beauty of the occasion and stop looking for criminals, tell Mike Trout not to worry about actually striking at the baseball crossing the plate but to relax and take in the inspiration of the moment, or tell Hollywood beauty queens to forsake plastic surgery.

Some things you do because this is who you are.

When a pastor comes across a great insight in the Scriptural text, does anyone think for one minute that he is going to file that away in a personal-edification file, never to be shared in sermons?

Yes, he is blessed by it, and certainly it enriches his own soul. But if it does feed his spirit and call him to realign his priorities, you can bet that he will be off and running to trace out similar teachings in the Word with a view to sharing the results with his flock.

That’s how it ought to be. It’s not an aberration at all. He’s doing what he does, what God called him for.

At some point in a Sherlock Holmes story, someone complimented the sleuth on his brilliant deduction. He said simply, “Of course. It’s what I do.”

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The two-faced church. Both sides are accurate.

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“…a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish” (Ephesians 5:27).

Anyone can criticize the church. It’s the most vulnerable institution in the world, the most victimized, and the most vilified.

Criticizing the church is like clubbing baby seals.  It has no way of fighting back, but just lays there and takes what you dish out. The difference is that, after the beating, the church stands to her feet and goes on about her business, while you the critic walk away beaming as though you have done something heroic.

You haven’t. You have picked on the easiest target in the world.

In this morning’s newspaper, some (ahem) rocket scientist wrote a letter to the editor taking on the church for the Spanish  Inquisition of the Middle Ages and before that the Crusades.  I assume he just discovered these.

No institution on earth has been so targeted for villainy as has the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ.

–Satan and his legions persecute it and when that doesn’t work, they imitate it in order to make people think the wickedness they’re perpetrating is actually done by the people of God.

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How to tell whether you are a leader

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Woe unto you when all men speak well of you, for so did their fathers to the false prophets. (Luke 6:26)

Let’s just come right out and say it up front:  Unless someone is not constantly on your case, mad at you, irritated, and upset with you all the time, you are probably not a leader.

The would-be leader who fails to recognize this will be constantly bewildered by the reactions of the people he has been sent to serve.

A pastor comes into a church with a divine mandate. (This is not pious talk. He has been called by God into the ministry and sent by Him to this church. If that’s not a divine mandate, nothing is.) He proceeds to take the reins and lead out. To his utter amazement, many of the very people he expected to welcome his ministry, to support his vision, to affirm his godliness, to volunteer their service–those very people–stand back and carp and criticize and find fault.  (Want to see it in Scripture?  Numbers 16.)

This was the last thing the pastor expected.

Because he’s human, he begins to wonder many things: Did I make a mistake in coming here? Am I doing something wrong? Are these people not God’s children? Should I stay? Should I leave?

My answer: You’re doing just fine, preacher. Stay the course.

Salt is an irritant. We have been sent into this world as its salt (Matthew 5:13).

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Little things that delight a weary preacher

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Humor refreshes me.  You too? 

I like finding signs with misprints. The sign in front of a local neighborhood center announced: “A DULT DANCE — Thursday 7 pm.” It was repeated just like that on the other side.

I read that and wondered, “What is a dult? And why are they invited to the dance and no one else?”

In a book, this misprint gave me a chuckle: “They are up there hugging one anther.” Someone had written underneath, “I’ll hug an anther. Show me one.”

This brings to mind a bit of graffiti observed on a New York subway. Someone had scrawled on a poster, “I love grils.” Underneath, another had written: “I love girls.” And beneath that, a third person had penned: “What about us grils?”

In Reform, Alabama, after the Sunday morning church service, we were in line for lunch in the fellowship hall when a man gave me one of the best cartoon lines ever. He remarked to a friend, “I told my wife, ‘I’m coming back this afternoon and see if I want to sleep on this pew as bad as I think I do!’”

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Odds and ends from a hoarding preacher

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Pastor, scan through these offerings and see if you find anything of use as illustrations for sermons. Or, just as good, perhaps they will spark an idea inside you.

UNREQUITED LOVE

Want a great love story, one that will inspire every heart listening to you?  This ain’t it!

In 1964, a hitchhiker was picked up on the highway and given a ride by an 18- year-old woman. They chatted, she dropped him off, and they each went on their way. Within minutes, the man decided that he was in love with her. I mean, seriously, head over heels, a real goner.

The problem was that he had no way to contact her. She was gone. But he never forgot her.

Thirty-one years later, he came across her name in the newspaper in the obituary of her mother. So he sent her 5 dozen roses–alongwith all the letters he had written her over 31 years.

Thirty-one years of letters.

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Rescuing the sermon from dead outlines

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Skeletons in the pulpit and cadavers in the pews.  –Warren Wiersbe

Have you ever read something and all the bells went off inside you? The author has been reading your thoughts.

That happened to me.

Dr. Warren Wiersbe’s  book Preaching and Teaching with Imagination is autographed to me, but I have no memory of the occasion when that happened. Mostly, I wonder why I delayed reading this incredible book.

Briefly, what he told was this:

Grandma Thatcher sits in church with a number of hurts and spiritual needs. Although she’s lovingly known throughout the congregation as a saint, she gets nothing but harassment and trials at home for her faith. When she gets to church, she needs a word from God.

On this particular morning, the pastor stood at the pulpit and preached from Genesis chapter 9, the main thrust of which was his outline, with all the points beginning with the same letters. The outline — pastors take note! — was excellent, as those things go:

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