One day last week, I found myself across the table at a fast food place from a friend who ministers to college students. Before taking this position, he was a student minister in various Southern Baptist churches, and from all reports, was a roaring success in each one. So, for no other reason than curiosity, I posed a situation to him.

“Alvin,” I said, “let’s say I’m the new student minister at a church. And let’s say I have only a handful of young people, maybe ten. Tell me how to build a great program.”

He was ready for me. You’d have thought we’d planned this. I imagine he’s done it so much the response is second nature to him. Like asking me how to drink a glass of iced tea!

Focus on middle-schoolers. If they buy into your vision, they will grow your ministry.

He does not mean to neglect the older high-schoolers. But two realities affect the new student minister coming to a church: the youth often have a hard time changing their allegiance from the former minister to the new one, and soon, these will graduate and move on to college and no longer participate in the work. So, common sense dictates that focusing on the younger teens is right.

Put people around you who are better than you.

Continue reading →

My friend’s story last Monday could be told by every preacher in the land.

“When I stepped off the platform Sunday morning, I knew I had laid an egg. The sermon seemed to have been still-born. It just didn’t work. I felt awful.”

“But the most amazing thing. People were down at the altar praying, and ever since a number of people have come up to me saying how it ministered to them.”

Just goes to show, I said.

Goes to show what?

I raised that question on Facebook this week. I asked pastors who have felt that they bombed and then heard from church members that the sermon had special meaning to them, what they learned from the experience. The answers were all of one theme: “That God can use anything.” “God can speak through a donkey.” “How unimportant the messenger is.” “Christ is everything.”

Recently a friend and I visited another church. She was visiting in our home and there is a pastor she loves to hear, so I drove her there. That day, the sermon was not up to his usual standards, I felt. He is normally one of the finest expositors anywhere.

In the car, on the way to lunch, my friend said, “That was a wonderful sermon. Just what I needed to hear today.”

Goes to show.

Continue reading →

From time to time, as I’m sketching at a church or school, the question arises: “So, have you had training for this?” Or, maybe, “Are you self-taught?”

I don’t answer what I’m thinking.

What I say is usually a variation of, “I’ve had some formal training. But mostly, I’ve just worked at it. And I’m still trying to figure out how to draw better.”

But what I think is, “So, you think my stuff looks so amateurish I could not possibly have learned this from anyone?”

Can you imagine someone saying to Picasso, another artist of some renown (!), “Did you take training for this?” Or to Pavarotti or to Frank Lloyd Wright?

Today, my friend Mary Baronowski Smith told me how she made herself learn to sight-read a hymnal so she could play anything she wished on the piano. Even though she was taking lessons, this skill was self-taught.

Here’s what happened.

Continue reading →

Those old enough to remember the 1960s do not need a reminder on how divided this country was. The war in Vietnam was tearing us apart as surely as the Civil War had done a century earlier. This time, however, it tended to be a generational thing, with the oldsters defending the government’s handling of the war and the young ones marching in the streets against it. Related to this was the entire generational rift in the culture, with the clothing, the music, the hair styles (beards!), drugs, sex, and the list goes on.

Everything not nailed down was coming loose.

On October 22, 1968, former Vice-President Richard Nixon brought his campaign for the White House to Deshler, Ohio. There, Nixon spotted a 13-year-old girl named Vicki Lynn Cole holding up a sign that read “Bring Us Together.” He mentioned that message and later adopted it as the theme of his administration. The Cole family was even invited to the inauguration. After that, Vicki Lynn faded into obscurity.

Sadly, so did the concern for national unity.

The Nixon administration was one of the most divisive in American history, ending, you will recall, with the president resigning in disgrace, Vice-President Agnew resigning earlier because of kickbacks he had taken as governor, and a number of the highest advisors going to prison. It was a shameful period in our nation’s history.

Unity was a clever idea, Nixon thought. But only that and nothing more.

We’re back at a time when our nation is divided. Hopefully not as severely or as deeply as in the 1960s, but the rift between the “reds” and the “blues” is drastic.

Within religious denominations, division is a constant threat. Doctrinal differences are a constant, social trends inject themselves into church life, and the world exerts its pressures for churches to conform. Personalities complicate negotiations and division often results.

Within your own church membership, the enemy is always at work, looking for wedges to drive between members and the leadership. He walks to and fro, to paraphrase the Apostle Peter, looking for an opening in the wall he can enter to create havoc.

In our never-ending concern for unity within the body of Christ, let’s make a few points here.

Continue reading →

In a typical Southern Baptist church–if there is any such animal!–the pastor and other ministers handle most of the pulpit duties. The times when a deacon can be counted on to lead in public prayer is more likely to come before the offering and in the Lord’s Supper.

When a layman approaches the pulpit to lead in prayer, there is no telling what will happen then. If it’s true that most pastors have never had training in public praying, it’s ten times as sure that the laypeople haven’t.

What we get when the typical layman comes to the microphone to lead a prayer is some or all of the following:

–trite statements he has heard other people pray again and again

–vain repetitions

–awkward attempts to be genuine and fresh

–awkward attempts to admonish the congregation about some issue, usually their laxity in giving

–a total unawareness of the time element. He/she may be too brief or go on and on and on.

The typical layman feels out of place doing this. There are exceptions, thankfully, and some wonderful ones. But in most churches, the deacons and other lay leadership would rather take a beating than to pray in public.

A pastor friend announced to his deacons that they would no longer be leading offertory prayers. He expected resistance and was prepared to respond to it. Instead, without exception, they cheered the news. “They felt like a burden had been lifted off their shoulders,” he said.

I understand that. But I regret it. In truth, this could be a wonderful time for a man or woman of the Lord to render service of an unusual nature to the congregation and indirectly to the Lord.

Here are ten suggestions on how any of us–preachers, staffers, deacons, laity–can improve our public prayers.

Continue reading →

I pray that they all may be one…that the world may believe that You sent Me.(John 17:21)

I have a strong suspicion that the Lord is almost the only One among us who truly knows the value of unity within His Body.

To put it another way: Even those who love the Lord with all their heart, who treasure His word and work to obey Him, seem not to place a high enough value on unity within the Body.

Mr. Burger King pulled into town one day and decided to check out his franchises. Driving up Route 45, the business district of the city, he spotted one of his fast-food restaurants. It seemed to be doing okay, so that pleased him.

Something was badly wrong. Some district manager was in bad trouble.

One day, the Lord Jesus came to our town. He spotted the First Baptist on one corner, First United Methodist on the other corner, the Presbyterians across the way, and the Assembly of God down the block. In the next block was the Catholics, the Latter Day Saints, and the synagogue.

And of course, each one claimed to be using the original recipe.

Continue reading →

Okay. Don’t anyone tell the preacher we’re all going to encourage him.

Let him think it was spontaneous on your part.

What I want you to do is something you’ve almost quit doing. No, I’m not talking about praying for him, although there is that.

Write him a letter.

Handwrite it. Make it two pages, no more. Make it positive and uplifting.

And when you do, I can tell you several things that are true of that letter once it arrives at the pastor’s desk….

—It will be a rarity. He gets very little first class mail these days. Everything is done by computers.

—It will bless him (and possibly his family members) for years to come, particularly when he comes across it years from now.

Case in point. Last night, I ran across a letter from Christy dated July 15, 1997. Here is what this young lady–perhaps a high school senior–wrote to her preacher.

Continue reading →

“Grandpa,” little Leigh Anne asked, “How do I know when it’s God talking to me and when it’s just me talking to myself?”

Pastor James Richardson told his beloved little one, “Honey, that’s one of the hardest questions you’ll ever face in this life.”

Someone asked me the same question the other day.

Here is my attempt to answer it.

First, let’s identify the wrong answers. I know it’s of God because of the warm feeling inside me. I’ve had several Mormons tell me that. Bad answer. A dangerous one, even.

Some of us remember the Debbie Boone hit from a generation ago. “This can’t be wrong; it feels so right.”

All over the world worshipers in a thousand religions read their holy books and come away with warm feelings. Doubtless, many interpret the inner emotional reaction as a verification of their faith’s validity. They go forward into the day, assured that their faith is solid, their belief well-anchored, their lives well-lived.

I know it’s of God because it fits my convictions. This hardly deserves comment.

I know it’s of God because it’s something I was wanting to do anyway. Ditto.

There has to be a better way.

Continue reading →