I do love a good story.

The only thing I love more is being the one telling it.

I’m clearly not alone in my devotion to the story. It forms the outline of every television soap opera, sitcom and cop show and most of the movies. It fells forests to supply paper for an unending outpouring of novels, all with a story to tell. It connects with people as nothing else does.

In “My Reading Life,” novelist Pat Conroy drops story upon story upon the reader, supplying me with more writing-or-sermon illustrations than any single book I’ve read in a year.

Last night, I came across Conroy’s tale of the time an agent for his publisher took him as a young, up-and-coming writer as he called on booksellers to market their latest line. On the third day out, the agent suddenly turned to Pat and said, “You’ve seen me do this. Now, let’s see if you’ve got what it takes…. We know you can write a book; now let’s see if you can sell one.”

Conroy was game. He gave it a try. Addressing the bookseller, he launched into the chatter he’d heard from the agent, making the case for each of the new works coming from the publisher. Then he came to his own book, “The Water is Wide.” He described it.

The store owner said, “Who gives a d–n?”

Conroy was stunned. The man said, “What should my readers care what happened to a bunch of black kids on an island no one’s ever heard of?”

Conroy said, “Well, the book is well written.”

But the owner was not swallowing that. “I don’t want to order a single copy of the book. It’s not for me. I can’t think of a soul who’d buy it.”

Conroy says, “I finished selling the list in a barely controlled rage…. By the time I left that bookstore, I was ready to whack the living daylights out of that smug, hostile bookseller who had taken such grotesque pleasure in my humiliation.”

Later, over dinner with the agent, he found out what had happened.

Continue reading →

Remind them of these things…. (II Timothy 2:14)

If you have pastored for more than four or five years, or if you are in your second (or more) pastorate, you have learned the hard way that saying something one time to your people does not suffice. Some lessons–the most important ones, particularly–have to be said again and again.

Some of the most foundational messages–such as salvation by faith in Christ, the adequacy of the Word, and the importance of the cross–we continually work into sermons and lessons. These cannot be over-stressed.

Other lessons have to do with how the Christian faith is applied in our daily lives or in the operation of the Lord’s church. These too need to be iterated and re-iterated.

Each minister will have his/her own list. Here are my top ten principles to stress to your congregation again and again.

I suggest that we run these in the church bulletin, figure out how to get the gist of them onto the sign in front of the campus, print them on posters and post around the church, and speak them repeatedly in committees and classes and sermons.

Eventually, if you say them often enough and strong enough, people will begin to remember them. They might even tease you a little, as though you made these up and no one else in the Lord’s work says this. When they tease you, take pride. You’re finally getting through.

1. If you have a problem with change, you are not going to get along with Jesus very well and you are going to be unhappy in this church.

Continue reading →

Have you ever met a children’s worker who hated kids? I have.

Have you ever seen a preacher who did not believe in God? My friend John attended some divinity school classes with such people at Berkeley.

Have you ever met a Bible teacher who did not believe the Bible? The woods are filled with them.

It takes all kinds, they say. I reckon so.

I thought of some of the weird people we meet in the ministry this week while reading Pat Conroy’s latest book, “My Reading Life.” For everyone who loves to read, I cannot recommend this too highly. Every chapter is a delight. And for anyone who loves to write, ditto; every sentence is a wonder.

As a military brat, Conroy’s family moved around a lot. When they settled in Beaufort, SC, he found it hard to form new friendships and while dodging the campus bullies discovered the school library. This became his favorite place. The odd thing however, is that the librarian resented him coming in and reading books.

I thought you’d appreciate Conroy’s story about the librarian who hated readers. Here’s the story….

Continue reading →

This morning a pastor friend told some of us the sermon he is working on for next Sunday. The challenge, he said, was that part of the text is very difficult. “How to convey its message without getting too theological is my problem,” he said.

My own skeptical nature translated that as: “How to preach it without boring my people to death is what I’m up against!”

Earlier this week, on this website we addressed the question of what a pastor is to do when his guest preacher is boring the congregation. But there is a more urgent question….

What should the preacher do when his own preaching is boring the people in the pews?

If he discovers that in the middle of a sermon, there’s little he can do other than to shoot up an emergency prayer-flare for divine help.

But if he is preparing adequately for his pulpit work, he will know early on that this sermon has great potential to bore his people and can take steps to head off that peril.

Question: How does a pastor know on Tuesday that next Sunday’s sermon will be boring?

Continue reading →

When it comes to sheep, the shepherd wants to protect them from wolves and other predators.

But when those sheep are the members of a church, the shepherd–aka, the pastor–has two groups to safeguard them from: predators who would take unfair advantage of the people and ruin a church and the dullards who would kill a good congregation by sheer boredom.

Protecting them from one group is as big a challenge as from the other.

Two stories today. One tells how on one occasion I determined to protect my people from a boring Bible study, and the second reveals how I learned that lesson the hard way.

Continue reading →

Say you’re a pastor. And let’s say a pastor search committee is all over you, believing that you are the man for their church, God’s own choice. And they want you to travel to their city and preach in their pulpit and give their people a chance to “call” you as their new shepherd.

And let’s say the church is much larger, the salary provides a hefty boost in your income, and the prestige is twice what it is where you are. This has to be of God, right?

Oh, one thing more. Let’s say your wife is unhappy about it.

What does a pastor do in this case?

Most of us in the ministry have been there at one time or another, in one way or the other.

In my case, it was the opposite. My wife thought the committee was correct, that relocating to the bigger church was of the Lord. I was the holdout, the one who could not decide.

It wasn’t that I was opposed to moving. I just wanted a word from God that it was the right thing to do.

A friend counseled me on how to pray in this matter. I did as he suggested, and a half-hour later rose to my feet and picked up the phone and called the chairman of the pastor search committee, asking them to remove my name from consideration. I called Margaret and told her, then buckled down to becoming the best pastor for my people I knew how to be. It worked out.

Or did it? To this day, Margaret is not so sure we did the right thing.

The main reason is that one year later, we accepted the call to another church–yes, a larger and more prestigious church–and it did not turn out well. After a very hard three years, we took a paid leave of absence and walked away from that pastorate, ending up in metro New Orleans.

This is one of those things which every husband and wife have in their relationship attic somewhere: an issue on which they simply agree to disagree.

The other day a pastor’s wife e-mailed me about a similar situation she and her husband were facing.

Continue reading →