This is a hodge-podge of things floating around in this preacher’s mind this morning while I get ready (mentally, physically, emotionally) for an hour or two in the dentist’s chair at noon today.

Shall we darken the sanctuary during the sermon?

Yesterday at our church, the lights were bright on the platform but dim on the congregation. Honestly, I will admit to you that I was relieved after the service to find the problem was a malfunction in the lighting. I really had feared that someone–perhaps our pastor or another leader–had decided the lights on the audience should be dimmed, and that bothered me.

The background to this is that recently I was preaching in a church that had intentionally lowered the lighting on the congregation. When I saw early in the service that this was the case, I sought out a layman and asked him to find the tech person and insist that when I get up to preach, the house lights are brought up. He did and they were.

If we are having a concert or performance in this room, turn down the lights. But if this is meant to be interactive–and worship is nothing if not interactive–the congregation must be able to see to read and write.

“I know God has forgiven me, but I can’t forgive myself.”

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I know a preacher who writes small books, which is good, and publishes them himself to give away, which is even better. However, it has occurred to me that all his illustrations are dated. Some stories he tells I used and overused forty years ago. I think I know what happened.

He pulled them out of memory or some old file of clippings in his office. This is the kind of illustration file we preachers of the 1960s used to maintain. (I’m assuming young pastors keep their illustrative treasures in computer files, not those green metal monsters that used to sit in the corners of all our offices.)

There is nothing wrong with an old illustration. For those seeing it for the first time, it’s sparkling new.

What’s wrong with an old illustration is that it bores the writer/speaker. He needs something fresh to spark his creativity, to ignite his imagination, to send him down fresh avenues.

I have the solution. A solution, I might add, which will seem paradoxical.

For fresh illustrations, the kind no one else is using, read an old book.

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You are a minister about to walk into a church situation that’s new to you. Either you have been pastoring a small church and are about to join the staff of a larger church where you will serve under the authority and direction of an accomplished veteran or you are young in ministry and your first assignment is to be a member of a church staff.

And you’re wondering what the pastor will expect from you.

I suggest you ask him.

Take good notes because these will be on the test.

You have requests for him–support, sufficient finances, days off, etc.–but at the moment, your bigger question is What does he want from me?

I don’t know all the answer, but I know much of it.

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A cheap shot in sports is when you catch your opponent off guard and give him an illegal hit that hurts him badly. The referee usually flags you for it and the crowd boos. Even your own fans are embarrassed that you would stoop to such.

Preachers do it all the time.

Not all preachers, but some of us make a practice of finding a weak spot in our targeted sinner, one undefended, in his most vulnerable area, and letting him have it.

We had a case in point this weekend: Super Bowl Sunday.

A friend on Facebook messaged me privately about his intended sermon. He was going to let the congregation have it that day about their addiction to sports, football in particular. He was upset and wanted to accuse his people of a form of idolatry.

I did not accuse him of hitting below the belt–the very essense of a cheap shot–but I could have. (We might say I avoided a cheap shot myself by not doing that.) Instead, I suggested an alternative approach.

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“Nothing can keep the Lord from saving, whether by the many or by the few.” (I Samuel 14:6)

It doesn’t matter to the Lord whether He saves by the many or the few.

Now, you could make an argument that that is not pure scripture since the line was uttered by Jonathan, son of King Saul, and not by a prophet or some inspired writer. But you would be fighting a losing battle on that, since it’s a truth found all through scripture from beginning to end, Genesis to Revelation.

God has His crowds, to be sure. In Heaven, the guest list–the family reunion, choose your metaphor–seems endless. “…a great multitude which no one could number” was standing before the throne praising the Lord (Revelation 7:9). That was sure some crowd Moses led out of Egypt, whether a few hundred thousand or 2 million as some say. Either way, God knows how to work the big numbers.

However, being God, He does not need big numbers. He does not call off anything (so far as we know) because only a handful of nobodies showed up.

In fact, God told Gideon he had too many soldiers in his army. Defeat the Midianites with that crowd, He said, and your people will take credit for the victory. So, the Lord had him whittle the assault team down to a manageable 300. (Judges 7)

God loves small things. Ordinary people. Insignificant gifts and undramatic acts.

It does not matter to the Lord whether He saves–and works and transforms and wins the victory–by a few people or by a crowd. It’s all through Scripture.

The only problem is you don’t believe it. And something inside me resists it, too.

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As far as I know, no college or seminary has a course in how preachers are to deal with search committees. It’s a skill you acquire by trial and error. Mostly trial, I can hear someone say.

Recently, on this website, we’ve been addressing this subject. (There are, scattered throughout the nearly 2,000 articles on this blog, occasional writings on pastors and search committees.) Last week we talked about what the search committee looks for when they show up in your congregation on Sunday and then, prompted by a pastor’s wife, what the pastor is looking at when visiting that church “in view of a call.”

Another friend mentioned something we’ve never addressed: What about a beginning preacher–not necessary a youngster–who is about to become a pastor? He finds himself sitting across from that search committee for the first time with a hundred questions eating at him. How does a beginning preacher deal with a search committee?

Since the world has changed in the nearly half-century when I sat in that boat, I asked my friend (David) to jot down specific questions. (Did he ever! He sent an even dozen. He’s serious about this!)

So, here, in the order in which David posed the questions, are my responses–such as they are–regarding a beginning pastor squaring off against a search committee. (Athletic, competitive terminology tongue-in-cheek.)

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Each denomination has its own approach to pastor-finding. Most Protestant churches will have variations of the way we Southern Baptists go about replacing preachers.

The church selects and commissions a small group of its finest as the Pastor Search Committee. Their job, in brief, is to sift through the resumes and letters of recommendations coming their way in order to find a few good men (in our denomination, pastors are almost always male) and prayerfully whittle the number down to the one they present to the congregation as “God’s man.”

Now, you’re a pastor. You’ve been serving the Middlesize Baptist Church in Smalltown, USA, and mostly loving it. You’ve been there several years, your wife is settled in, your kids are well-established with friends and activities, and the church seems reasonably satisfied with you. You have no reason to want to leave. But something happens.

A phone call informs you that the pastor search team from Bigtown is interested in you as a possible pastor since Doctor Reverend Powers retired. At their request, you send your resume, they follow up your references, and phone calls are exchanged back and forth. The committee visits your services several times, and last Thursday night, they met with you and your wife.

Today, the phone call from the chairman informs you the committee wishes to invite you to Bigtown. If you agree, one Sunday soon, you are to preach in their pulpit, after which the congregation will vote on you becoming their next shepherd. The salary, which you are just now learning, is only slightly more than what you’re making now. But that’s no matter.

You and the family begin making arrangements to be in Bigtown that weekend. You secure a pulpit replacement for that Sunday, you tell one or two of your leaders what you’re up to (pledging them to silence!), and you get serious about praying.

The decision you and that church are about to make is critical. Since one road leads to another and there’s no returning to this spot to start over, you want to act cautiously and to seek God’s will in every detail.

When you get to Bigtown Church, here’s what to look for.

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My wife and I were being shown around town by two ladies who were members of their church’s committee assigned to locate and sign-up the next pastor for that congregation. I will never forget something Jane said from the front seat where she was driving.

“I told our committee, ‘I want us to bring in a handsome pastor, someone who will look good behind our pulpit.'”

Had she slapped me, the blow would not have hurt more.

That shallow assessment of what they needed in the next pastor turned out to be rather symbolic of where most of the committee stood.

How does that old line go: “Too late smart, too soon dead.”

Most search committees, I want to assert with no evidence at all other than my own convictions, do not take that superficial an approach to their task. Most of them–at least in their own minds and hearts–really do want to find the person God has chosen for their church.

Just as long as God’s person is a male, between the ages of 35 and 50, with a doctor’s degree from somewhere official-sounding, and with a beautiful wife by his side who clearly adores him.

Sorry for the little cynicism there. I’m really not disparaging what they do. Most committees, once they find “the” person, even if it’s not what they originally set out for, are willing to change their requirements and go for it. That’s why sometimes a committee will bring in a 27-year-old as pastor and sometimes a 70-year-old. Sometimes they decide this preacher is so fine the absence of a doctorate is not that big a deal. And once in a while, all requirements are jettisoned and they really do go “outside the box.”

All that being said, there is one huge reminder which needs to be passed along to pastors now at the point in their ministry where they are courting search committees.

Here is what the pastor search committee is looking for when they visit your church.

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