“Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give a reason for the hope that you have.” (I Peter 3:15)

Sometimes you know when your moment is coming but most times you don’t.

Later this morning–what started me thinking about all this–I’m to be interviewed for a national Christian radio hookup. Readers of this blog will recall the “Christian Bucket List” from late April and early May. (The list of 50 required five articles over a two week period.) Someone at Moody Radio saw them and asked if they can interview me concerning them.

Far from “condoning” or “enduring” such interviews, I love them. No one who goes into the Lord’s work does so hoping to keep their ministry a secret. So, let’s do it.

I have no idea what they will ask. But, in preparation, I went back last night and looked over the five articles. And made a little discovery. One item of the fifty is mentioned twice. But this can be edited and corrected, thankfully. One of the blessings of blogging.

For the last week, I’ve had a post-it note beside my computer: “Monday. Interview. Moody Radio. 10 am. Deb.” A reminder to pray for the Father’s presence in this and a prompting to be near the home phone at that time.

It’s not like this is the first time I’ve been interviewed, so it’s not about my having the jitters. (At this point, anyone else would pause to list some of the radio and TV stations/networks I’ve done interviews with. But let’s pass on that. Suffice it to say there have been several. This is not about me.)

What this is about is the need for a minister or any follower of the Lord Jesus to be prepared for that moment when the microphone is poked in his face and he is asked to account for something important.

I recall an article from a newsmagazine in which a consultant was prepping politicians and Fortune 500 big-shots for their moment in the spotlight, for good or ill. Some of his points have lingered with me to this day.

Then yesterday, seeing the CEO of Massey Energy appearing before a Senate committee on C-Span to explain the deaths of the coal miners a few months back in his West Virginia mine brought it all home.

I expect the CEO of British Petroleum has conferred with consultants on how to come across to the public as believable, confident, and yet contrite at the same time. Admit what you can, explain all you must, but do or say nothing to play into the hands of the lawyers who are lining up to clean out your bank accounts.

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Some years back Gene Smith wrote a book about the final years of Woodrow Wilson with the intriguing title, “When the Cheering Stopped.”

Smith told how at the end of the First World War, Wilson was the most popular man on the planet. When he and his presidential entourage traveled to Europe for the Versailles Conference, crowds acclaimed him everywhere. He was hotter than the Beatles or Elvis ever were. That enthusiasm lasted about a year.

Woodrow Wilson suffered a paralyzing stroke on October 3, 1919, and was incapacitated for the remaining five years of his life. His party lost in the 1920 elections. And Congress refused to ratify membership in the League of Nations, a cause dear to Wilson’s heart.

His star had ascended and flared brightly, then had burned out and fallen to the earth. One wonders what he thought about during all those months in which his mind was working but little else. He had much to regret and surely must have suffered great remorse.

The Second World War, it has often been noted, resulted from the botched up job the Allies did at Versailles and over the next few years. (I’m halfway thinking of inserting an apology here for the extended historical allusion. But hey, this was my major and some of my best college papers dealt with this period in American life! But, back to the subject….)

The question before us is “What does a leader do when he comes to the end, hands the reins to his successor, and goes home? When he/she looks back and thinks of the mistakes made, the people hurt, the jobs left undone, how does one handle this?”

Sean Payton, the Super-Bowl-winning coach of the New Orleans Saints football team, has a book coming out at the end of June. “Home Team: Coaching the Saints and New Orleans Back to Life” will give Payton’s take on coming to our city and, particularly following Katrina, rebuilding his team and recapturing the hearts of the WhoDat Nation.

In Friday’s Times-Picayune, reporter Mike Triplett provides an advance peek at the book with something Payton did to fire up the team during the week prior to the February 7 championship game in Miami.

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“My chief objection (to the Christian faith and the church today) is that ninety-nine percent of sermons and Sunday School teachings are so agonizingly dull!”

The critic, Frank Shallard, was a preacher himself, so he knew whereof he spoke.

Except he wasn’t speaking for himself. Shallard is a fictional character in the 1927 novel “Elmer Gantry” and, I’m confident, was voicing the views of author Sinclair Lewis himself.

That line, the final sentence in chapter 28, must have elicited a million cheers and “amens” from across the landscape as readers “heard” the renegade preacher voicing their own gripe about the church.

Boring preaching and dull Bible lessons are no recent phenomenon.

However, knowing that tiresome, uninspiring preaching has always been around does not make it any easier to take or to deal with.

You know what the problem is in addressing boring sermons, don’t you? That one will be boring in doing it. I’ve already started, deleted, and restarted this piece for that very reason.

Google “boring sermons” and pull up a chair. The internet has plenty on the subject.

Here is my little contribution to the discussion. I’ll try not to bore.

Boredom in anything–whether preaching the revolutionary gospel of Jesus Christ, playing third base for the Yankees or Red Sox, or being married to the most beautiful woman in the world–is part of the human condition.

The human being is constitutionally unable to stay excited all the time. The adrenalin would burn up our nervous system and we would be dead in six months from sheer exhaustion and sleeplessness.

God has created us so that the human brain adapts to every situation. The preacher of the world-shaking gospel settles down into a routine he can live with, the third-baseman grows accustomed to the adulation of the crowds and the television lights and the overflowing bank account, and the fellow married to (insert name of your favorite starlet here) finds that one day is pretty much like the next.

That’s why preachers grow lazy, third-basemen drop the ball, and husbands of starlets stray.

But we’re talking about the preachers here.

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You are about to encounter some of this pastor’s and I suspect every pastor’s pet peeves. These are comments from church members that irk us, get our goat, try the limits of our patience, drive us up the wall–and a whole bunch of other metaphors for provoking us.

Ready? We’ll get right to it….

1) “I’m not being spiritually fed.”

2) “I have a right” or “I deserve….”

3) “Lord knows I’m not one to gossip but….”

4) “I’ve been paying my tithes for years and I think I’m entitled….”

5) “Sorry. I just don’t have a gift for that.”

6) “Why don’t they do something about that?”

7) “The pastor is a dictator.”

8) “Before we do that, let’s have a word of prayer.”

9) “There’s no use trying to talk to the preacher. He won’t listen to you.”

Some years back, Pastor (also Evangelist, Author, and a lot of other things) Jack Taylor wrote a book he titled “Which Being Interpreted Means.” His thinking was that, just as Scripture sometimes will give a Hebrew or Aramaic word and then tell the reader what it means, we should do that with a lot of expressions we use around the church. It was all tongue-in-cheek and a lot of fun.

Since Brother Jack had me illustrate this creative little book, I spent a lot of time with each point, so I remember a number of them.

A friend greets you with, “Hey, I’ve been praying for you.” That, being interpreted, usually means, “I haven’t prayed for you at all, but on seeing you just now I sent up a quick ‘Lord, bless this brother/sister!'”

Someone at church says, “The Lord just isn’t leading me to do that.” Which being interpreted means, “There is no way under God’s heaven I was planning to do that and nothing you say will ever change my mind!”

(I still see Jack’s book available from online book sources in case you’re interested in getting a copy.)

So, let’s apply the little “Which being interpreted means” rule to the above expressions which I hope to never hear in church again.

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If someone were to give a brief speech as to why you deserve a position of greater acclaim or responsibility or exposure, what would they say? The speaker would highlight the accomplishments of your ministry. And what are those?

What if he asked you in advance to write them out?

This week, a search committee assigned to find the successor to Dr. Morris Chapman who wears the interesting title of “President of the Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention,” gave its recommendation. Dr. Frank Page is their nominee, and will be made official at the annual meeting of our denomination a month from now in Orlando.

In their presentation on Frank Page, the committee hit the highlights of his ministry over these years, specifically from his last church, the First Baptist Church of Taylors, SC. The church runs about 2,300 on typical Sunday mornings, baptized 145 last year, and contributed some $6 mil of which 10% went to denominational missions. That sort of thing. They told of the two years he served as president of our denomination and of the missionary work dear to his heart.

Why did they do that? Why tell what he has recently done when the next assignment is completely unlike any aspect of that? Answer: it’s all we have to go on. The best indicator of future work is past production.

Everyone I know likes and respects Frank Page. We expect him to do well, and are blessed to have someone of his caliber in this slot for these days. But for our purposes here, I’m more interested in the way they assessed his ministry’s success by listing accomplishments.

What would they have said about you and me?

Would they list the attendance in my church as a sign of my success? The size of the offerings? The mission contributions? The denominational offices I have held? The books I have published? The buildings we’ve constructed? The mission teams we’ve sent out?

If so, a lot of us would have come up short. And yet–and this is the point I’d like to drive home–a lot of people who are having a successful Christ-honoring ministry will not have big numbers to post. (Incidentally, Frank Page would hasten to agree with that, for what that’s worth.)

The question before us, class, is: How do we go about assessing the success or failure of our ministries?

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