A pastor of a small but growing church tossed a question my way.

“My small church is growing, and our people do not want to lose the family spirit of a small church. But how do we maintain that without becoming a clique?”

By clique is meant an enclosed group, a circle of friends that will admit no new members.

We’ve all seen Sunday School classes where the members have been together for years and know everything there is to know about the others, and where the intimacy is deep and lasting. They know birthdays, the names of each one’s grandchildren, and they relate to one another like sisters.

Yes, sisters. It’s almost always a women’s class that does this.

But, women or men, we’re all guilty to some degree.

Let a newcomer show up in our little group of select friends one Sunday, and everything changes: the balance is threatened, conversation freezes, and the fellowship becomes more restrained.

Now, churches are liable to this affliction, too.

So, what do we tell the young pastor of the small-but-growing church? How can he help his people retain that new car smell even after putting a few thousand miles on the vehicle? (Oops. Sorry. The metaphor inserted itself.)

Readers are invited to suggest steps the church can take in the comments section.

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Warren Wiersbe calls the sermon outline the “recipe” for the message. If you have that and nothing more, he says, you do not have a meal for your people; you have a recipe for them. Still lots of work to do before they can be fed.

I like to think of the outline as the skeleton. It will need fleshing out, and then, most importantly of all, it needs the breath of life to be breathed into it. And, let us not make the mistake of thinking the first part–the fleshing out of the message–we can do on our own while the second part–giving it life–is God’s. It’s all about His presence and power and equally about our faithfulness.

An influential pastor, writing in the most recent issue of a popular preaching magazine, shares some great insights regarding the sermon outline which I’d like to pass along and comment on. (Notice that I’m not naming him or the magazine. If you’d like to know, send me a note–joe@joemckeever.com. We should not get hung up on whether we agree or disagree with a pastor on everything in order to learn from him.)

1. The notes your people take in church will be mainly your sermon points.

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Anyone reading this blog even occasionally knows of my love for old books. Recently, while revivaling with Pastor Rob Dowdle in Ocilla, Georgia, I noticed “Memoirs of John R. Sampey” (1947, Broadman) in their church library. And borrowed it. (I promise to return it, Rob!)

Sampey was for over a half-century a professor of Greek and Hebrew at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville and for many years, its president. I figured his autobiography would be memorable and it’s proving to be so.

First, a funny story he tells.

At the age of 22, on finishing his basic seminary degree, Sampey turned around and became an instructor and at the same time, pastor of a small country church. He writes:

“Deacon Thomas W. Scott, a graduate of Georgetown College and an old Confederate soldier, handed me a list of seventy-three church members. Opposite fifteen names I found the notation ‘N.C.,’ and I asked its meaning. ‘No ‘count, parson, no ‘count,’ was his reply. Most of them for the work of the church were (indeed) of no account.”

You and I look at that and think, “Hey, that’s 15 out of 73. Pretty good. I’ll take that any day!”

And the other story, the one that prompted this article. About apologizing to your preacher/teacher.

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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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