Mediocrity in the pulpit

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“…you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold…” (Revelation 3:16)

Mediocrity is a warm blanket.

Mediocrity is remaining with the bunch that finishes neither early or late, that turns in work much like everyone else’s, that is satisfied with pretty good.

Mediocrity is the head in the sand when the storm is raging around us.

Close your eyes until it all blows over.

Mediocrity is the coward’s way out when life-or-death decisions are being made.  “Well, let’s give this some more thought.”  “Let’s not be too hasty here.”  “We don’t want people to think we’re extremists.”

There’s safety in mediocrity.  We’re like everyone around us.  We don’t stand out.  No one criticizes us. They don’t even see us.  We blend into the landscape.

Our English word mediocre comes from two Latin words, medi meaning “halfway,” and ocris meaning “mountain.”  Somewhere there is a list of everyone climbing to the crest of Mount Everest.  But no one ever bothered to note those who got half way up and turned around for home.

As a pastor, I’m tempted to criticize those who choose mediocrity rather than daring, who play safe and avoid risks.  Yet I often live that way too.  In my personal life and church leadership, I tend to choose the conservative, safe way.  The outcome I fear is not so much failure as criticism.  I’ve refrained from writing to the editor of a local paper on a controversial subject for fear of becoming the focus of criticism.  My ego is too fragile.  I’m confident I could not take it.  Or, is the caution I feel actually maturity telling me not to squander hard-earned trust on some cause not worth the price?  We’ve all seen foolhardy people who rush in where angels fear to tread, when they should have been quiet and stayed at home. Hard to know.

We want God to do a work in our midst, but we want Him to leave us alone. We desire seeing people saved and homes united, but not if it means God gets hold of us and insists on changing us. Work around us, Lord, we seem to say.  Not in us and through us. Self-defense mechanisms are all working overtime. If we would be or do anything for the Master, we must face and overcome this gremlin.

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Going into the ministry? Bring a healthy curiosity.

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I came by an active curiosity honestly. My dad, a coal miner with a 7th grade education, was interested in everything. He read and learned and talked to us of all kinds of subjects.

In college, I changed majors from physics to history because the history professor had the most wonderful imagination and made history come alive.  Every class was a delight.

Nothing is off limits to history. It deals with the grand scope of humanity on this small planet.

That did it for me.

In 2012 I made a life-changing trip to Southern Italy.  After several days of ministering to pastors and spouses from churches of numerous countries, some of us spent several hours touring the ruins of Pompeii, the Italian city devastated by the eruption of Vesuvius in August of A.D. 79. It was truly unforgettable. So much so, that….

After arriving home in New Orleans, the very next afternoon I was in our public library reading up on Pompeii. I checked out a Robert Harris novel titled Pompeii, and finished it the next night.

Since then, I have read a half-dozen books on Pompeii.

Question: Of what possible use was this in my ministry?

Answer: It’s impossible to know.  Just as God uses all our experiences from celebrations to suffering in ministry, so He uses what we learn from everything we read.

A great curiosity is a wonderful thing for any Christian to have, but particularly for preachers. Why?

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The unexpected Christmas (Gomer: “Surprise! Surprise!”)

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“That is one of the reasons I believe in Christianity. It is a religion you could not have guessed.” –C. S. Lewis in “Mere Christianity”

Nothing about the Christian faith is as we might have expected. Think of it: Jesus Christ led a sinless life, died a vicarious death, and was raised physically to be seen by hundreds of people.  All of this happens to a Jew in First Century Roman-dominated Judea, and you are straining at credulity!

Consider just the unexpectedness of the Christmas event itself, the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ.

1) Surprises from Matthew 1

–The lineage of Jesus contains an interesting lineup of characters, including several women of questionable character: Tamar who seduced her father-in-law, Rahab the prostitute of Jericho, Ruth who was the subject of gossip in Bethlehem, Bathsheba who was the “other woman” of David’s fall from grace, and of course, Mary herself, the target of malicious gossips throughout Nazareth.  Consider…

–The bride-to-be of Joseph is found to be “with child by the Holy Spirit.”  (You can just hear the gossips: “Oh yeah! Likely story!”)

–Joseph is told by an angel that this is a God-thing, that his wife will bear a Son, the Son was to be called Jesus, and that He would “save his people from their sins.”  (God has to deal with Joseph’s natural conservatism caused by his high standards!)

–This was all in fulfillment of Isaiah 7:14.  (No one had the slightest notion that the prophecy would be fulfilled 700 years later!  To us, that’s like the 1400’s.)

Was any of this to be expected? Would you have guessed any of it?  No one did.

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Solitary conceit: “I can do this by myself! I don’t need help.” (Famous last words)

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C. S. Lewis was fielding questions from his audience. Someone asked how important church attendance and membership are to living a successful Christian life. From his book “God in the Dock,” his answer:

My own experience is that when I first became a Christian, about 14 years ago, I thought that I could do it on my own, by retiring to my rooms and reading theology, and I wouldn’t go to the churches and Gospel Halls; and then later I found that it was the only way of flying your flag; and of course, I found this meant being a target.

It is extraordinary how inconvenient to your family it becomes for you to get up early to go to church. It doesn’t matter so much if you get up early for anything else, but if you get up early to go to church it’s very selfish of you and you upset the house.

If there is anything in the teaching of the New Testament which is in the nature of a command, it is that you are obliged to take the Sacrament (John 6:53-54), and you can’t do it without going to church. I disliked very much their hymns, which I considered to be fifth-rate poems set to sixth-rate music. But as I went on I saw the great merit of it.

I came up against different people of quite different outlooks and different education, and then gradually my conceit just began peeling off. I realized that the hymns (which were just sixth-rate music) were, nevertheless, being sung with devotion and benefit by an old saint in elastic-side boots in the opposite pew, and then you realize that you aren’t worthy to clean those boots.

It gets you out of your solitary conceit. It is not for me to lay down laws, as I am only a layman, and I don’t know much.

Yeah, right. C. S. Lewis doesn’t know much. Oh, that I knew as little as he.

Solitary conceit. That one has snagged my attention and will not turn me loose. I see it in Christians who stand aloof from church attendance, in pastors who will not associate with other ministers, and in myself.

The Christian who stands aloof from identifying with a specific church suffers from solitary conceit.

“The churches today just don’t meet my need.” “They aren’t as warm and welcoming as churches ought to be.” “I find I can worship better at home with my Bible sitting in front of a blazing fire in the fireplace with a cup of spice tea at hand.”

Then you are smarter than God.

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Envy: The sneakiest sin of them all

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Let us not become boastful, challenging one another, envying one another. (Galatians 5:26)

It’s funny that the Old Testament’s references to envy focus on God’s people looking outward to the world (“sinners”). They were not to envy wrongdoers.

The New Testament’s references, by contrast, are directed inwardly, warning believers against envying each other. For those of us who know the inner workings of church life, we fully understand the change.

Now, a confession first.

As I reflect on the seven deadly sins (pride, envy, avarice, anger, sloth, gluttony, and lust), the one that interests me least is this one: envy. What’s exciting about envy? Nothing. No funny stories to tell, no dramatic scriptural stories to relate.

Something inside me insists that envy is not a problem in my world. I honestly don’t know anyone sitting around stewing over the neighbors having a car and wishing it was in their own driveway. I know of no preachers fuming because another pastor received a doctorate which he should have rightfully received. So, maybe envy is no longer a problem to moderns.

The reason for that strange–and erroneous–conclusion is the narrow definition I was applying to the concept.

If to envy means to wish we owned something another person now possesses and only that, few of us would be guilty. But that’s far too thin an interpretation of this obese transgression.

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Nostalgia: Not all it’s cracked up to be!

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A few years back, a young friend in our church became hooked on Happy Days, the television series. She envisioned the 1950s as the golden age in American life. She thought it was all Elvis and sock hops and soda fountains.

Finally, I did something really mean.

I popped her bubble.

I said, “Melissa, I became a teenager in 1953. In the ’50s, America fought the Korean War, then went through the Cold War. Our people feared being bombed by Russia every day, and racism was rampant. We were poor, cars were completely undependable, and there were no interstate highways. I wouldn’t go back there for anything.”

Okay, I should have left her alone to her daydreaming. She wasn’t hurting anyone.

The truth is I’m as much into nostalgia as anyone I know.

Nostalgia: Fantasizing about an earlier time in a way that denies the reality. That’s my definition, not one you’ll find in a book somewhere.

The passion for Sherlock Holmes owes its popularity to an idealized love for the 1890s as much as to an admiration for the observation and reasoning skills of the great detective, I wager. This fictional creation of Arthur Conan Doyle is more popular today than ever, and that’s saying something.

In The Sherlockian, Graham Moore plays to the fascination for all things Sherlock.  The protagonist of his story, Harold White, sizes up the nostalgia thing perfectly.

At one point Harold says to his friend Sarah:

I understand. There’s something….incomplete about our vision of Holmes’ time. I know it’s not real. I know that in the real 1895 there were two hundred thousand prostitutes in the city of London. Syphilis was rampant. Feces littered most major streets. Indian immigrants were locked up in Newgate on the barest suspicion that they had committed a crime. So-called homosexual acts were crimes, and they were punishable by years in prison. It was a racist culture, and a sexist one, too.

Harold takes a deep breath while he thinks of how to proceed with this line of thought.

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No place for Crybabies: The pastorate

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It comes as a surprise to few people that pastoring a church can be extremely hard work. Rewarding, yes. Fulfilling, challenging, and blessed. But there are times when it taxes the child of God to the core of his being, when it tests his sanity, and drives him to question everything he ever believed about the faith he is proclaiming and the people he is serving.

Only the strong need apply.

They used to say that only the hardiest of stock settled the early American west. “The cowards never started and the weak died along the way.”

There’s something about that which fits the ministry.

Watching a football game on television, I noticed the quarterback had an ankle injury.  Yet, he was making every effort to play on in spite of it. The commentators were impressed: Isn’t Big Ben great! He doesn’t give in to a little injury. He knows how to play hurt!

Playing hurt.

I’ve played hurt. You too, pastor? In fact, every pastor who stays in the Lord’s work for any period of time sooner or later will “play hurt.” He will have a serious burden or strong opposition or major trial or some kind of massive handicap which would destroy a lesser individual (“a career-ending injury” it’s called in sports), but he still stands in the pulpit preaching, still goes to the office, still leads the congregation.

I hear from pastors and/or their wives with similar stories of great upheavals in their ministries. A recent letter said, “I perceive that you too have had troubles and trials in your life. That’s why I decided to write you.”

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Humorous observations from a veteran 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!’”

A critic said, “Reverend Jones’ sermons have too many points. Pastor Smith’s sermons are pointless.” You just can’t please some people.

The following bit of silliness embodies some of my peeves.  It’s not funny so much as vexing….

HAVE YOU EVER NOTICED…

–that the cheaper the preacher’s doctorate, the more gaudily he displays it?

–that the better prepared a sermon is, the less time it takes to deliver?

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The missing element in the Christmas story?

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I sat in the congregation listening to the Christmas sermon.  Something was missing and I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

The minister had selected one aspect of the Christmas story and read a text supporting it, then brought his sermon on that subject.  His points were properly related to the text and no doubt most people left the worship center satisfied they had been spiritually fed.  It was only later that something occurred to me, what was the missing ingredient in that morning’s service.

The worship leader and musicians and the pastor all drew our attention back to that night in Bethlehem over 2,000 years ago, and they did a fair job of opening the text, explaining its message, and praising the Lord. But they omitted one major element as far as I could tell.

They forgot to give us the “so what” of the Christmas message.

They failed to drive home the continuing aspect of this most wonderful of all events in the history of our world.

He’s still alive.  He is with us.  He is Lord of the here and now. 

They told us He was God and the Son of God. They reminded us of the prophecies and told how they were fulfilled. They gloried in the appearance of the angels and we sang the same song they did, although presumably not as well or as big.  We praised and loved and enjoyed and worshiped. But then…

We left with the understanding that that’s all there is, that it was a history event and “wasn’t that wonderful!”.

They failed to tell us the “So What” of Christmas.  They omitted the lasting and eternal difference that this earth and its inhabitants have lived under ever since the Incarnation.

1) Jesus was born in Bethlehem, yes–but He is still alive and among us.

Even though this is historical and fixed to a date and time and place, it’s far more than that.  The church is not a Jesus Memorial Society. Jesus Christ is alive and He is in this place and we are His children forever.

Immanuel translates to “God with us.”  Present tense!

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The little Christmas prayer made famous by a king

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On Christmas Day, 1939, Britain’s King George VI, the father of Elizabeth II, decided to do something he detested.  He would speak publicly on the radio.

King George had a speech defect known as a stammer, but determined he would revive a custom his late father had started and deliver an annual message to the British people. This being the first Christmas of the war with Germany, he rightly thought they could use the encouragement.

While the king and his staff were working on his broadcast message, someone sent a clipping from the Times of London to Buckingham Palace. The little article contained a prayer of sorts that had been found on a postcard in the desk of a deceased Bristol doctor. That man’s daughter had used it on greeting cards, one of which was received by a Mrs. J. C. M. Allen of Clifton, who had kept it. Realizing the words were appropriate for her country at the outbreak of the war, she passed the postcard on to the newspaper.

Just after 3 pm on Christmas Day, King George began with these words to his people–

A new year is at hand. We cannot tell what it will bring. If it brings peace, how thankful we shall all be. If it brings us continued struggle we shall remain undaunted. In the meantime I feel that we may all find a message of encouragement in the lines which, in my closing words, I would like to say to you.

Then, he delivered the lines which had come their circuitous route, from the doctor’s office to his daughter, to Mrs. Allen who sent it to the Times, and thence to the palace. Now, those words were shared with the world, spoken by no less than the King of England.

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