Here is the backstory. Some years ago, while I was still pastoring, I gathered my books and drove 100 miles north to spend a few days in a friend’s camphouse to study and pray. I stopped for lunch at a family-style restaurant in the next town and soon found myself seated across from two older gentlemen in faded overalls. I was trying to read, but the one directly across wanted to talk politics. I said I was from New Orleans and had no idea what Mississippi was doing. He didn’t skip a beat, but asked who we were going to elect as governor. That led to a discussion on a candidate who had been a leader of the Ku Klux Klan. I assured the man he had no chance, that he believed things our people do not hold. “For instance?” he said.  I said, “He believes in the superiority of  the white race.” “Well, that’s a little hard to argue with,” he said. I laid down my book and said, “I’ll argue with it.” All around us, people of both races were tuned to this discussion.

He wanted to know why it was that through history whenever blacks and whites lived together, the blacks ended up as slaves of the whites. I’d heard that before. I said, “Sir, you’ll be happy to know that didn’t happen often. But if it did, it speaks more to the inferiority of the whites, that they would make slaves of their neighbors.” He didn’t miss a beat. “That brings up the matter of slavery. I see you have a Bible there.” Yes? “You know there is nothing in the Bible against slavery.” I said, “Are you serious?” He said, “Give me one verse in all the Bible that says slavery is wrong.”

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“My cup runneth over” (Psalm 23:5).

A child rushes into the kitchen to tell his mother something going on in his life. He’s so excited he’s about to explode. His words gush out in torrents, the story appears in no particular order, and mom gets a tale she will remember forever but which the child could not reproduce in the same way for love or money.

Something similar happens when a pastor “preaches out of the overflow,” as we say.

He is so full of his subject, has so many great insights and stories and convictions and burdens to relate, and excitedly pours them out all over the congregation. No one is bored, no one goes to sleep, but some have a little trouble following his train of thought.

Granted, such a sermon is a vast improvement over the kind of dead monologue some ministers inflict on their dozing flocks, as though the sheep weren’t getting enough rest at home and needed a sedative. Given a choice, most of us would take the “explosion of joy” any day of the week.

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After decades of ministry, I’m abandoning a longtime practice.

In the past, when a pastor invited me to guest preach for some occasion, I would say, “Now, tell me about your church.What’s going on. Anything and everything you think I ought to know.”  If they had a weekly mailout, I wanted to receive it.

The theory was that the more I knew of his situation, the better I could address the various needs.

Whether I did or not is arguable.

I’m changing for two reasons. One, knowing about the church does not seem to have made that much difference. Honestly, I cannot recall a time when a pastor said, “Those messages were exactly what we needed.”

Two, the times when I knew nothing about the church, it appears the Holy Spirit addressed the needs of that congregation far better than I could have planned or expected.

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