Yes, pastors sometimes say dumb things. Here’s why.

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“Remind them of these things, charging them before the Lord not to strive about words to no profit, to the ruin of the hearers” (II Timothy 2:14).

The desire to be clever has tainted many a good minister, sabotaged many a fine sermon, and probably messed up a few marriages along the way.

I was listening to a radio preacher while driving home from somewhere. The preacher sounded “live,” and was clearly a biblical conservative, meaning I liked most of what he had to say.  Then, he spoiled it all and said something that “got my goat.”

He mentioned a well-known Southern Baptist evangelist who once preached in his church. “I asked him, ‘Brother, how long does it take you Baptists to disciple a new believer?’”

“He answered, ‘I don’t know. We’ve never done it.’”

Then he, the radio preacher, said, “Shameful!”

From that launching pad, he proceeded to disparage churches for not discipling people while tellling how it ought to be done.

I found myself wondering two things.

Why would the evangelist say such a patently dumb thing–that Baptists have never discipled anyone!–and then, why would the radio pastor repeat it?  Both are foolish statements, and unworthy.  They reflect poorly on everyone involved–the speakers, the churches, and mostly the Lord Jesus Christ.

I suspect I know why the evangelist said it and the radio preacher quoted it.

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How to write boring articles and preach dull sermons

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My friends who read the title will think, “Well! Finally something Joe knows a little about!”

Every preacher, I imagine, knows about dull sermons. Anyone charged with turning out multiple sermons a week over decades will certainly produce his share of messages dead on arrival.

I’m thinking of a Christian leader/professor of past years who turned out book after book and built a reputation as a leader/writer/professor of note.  He was off the scene by the time I was thirty, so I never saw him when he was in his prime or I in mine. But, repeatedly, I came away from his writings thinking, “How dull. Why was he considered such a wonder?” My quick answer is that the standards were different in the mid-1900s. Denominational publishing houses turned out books not for their sharp content or even sales figures but for other reasons. In a word, he was “safe.”

Now! The challenge on penning something about dull writings and boring sermons is to keep from being dull myself. But, always one for a challenge, let’s see how this goes.

My recipe for articles and sermons that are DOA….

1. Spout platitudes.

Given a choice between a catchy turn of phrase and an old saying you’ve heard a thousand times, go for the latter. Faced with telling either something exciting you saw yesterday or an uninteresting rehashing of something Charles Spurgeon said 150 years ago, Spurgeon wins without a runoff.

Never meet a cliche you don’t like.  Pepper your sermons/writings with old bromides, common sayings, and everyday wisdom.  Likewise, shun (like the plague?) any expression that would challenge the reader/listener to question his presumptions, analyze his ways, reconsider his beliefs.

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Some things, my friend, you just do not want to know

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“He leadeth me in paths of righteousness, for His name’s sake” (Psalm 23:3).

Pastor, you do not want to know why that committee turned you down for that position you wanted so badly.

I’m rereading my daily journals for the decade of the 1990s.  Much of it I’d long since forgotten, so in many respects, it’s fun.  One thing struck me, however, about the year 1992.

I was looking for a way out of this church!

By “this church” I mean the one I served as pastor nearly 14 years (1990-2004) and remained as a member through 2016.  It had come through a crisis 18 months before I arrived that almost resulted in its self-destruction.  The Lord sent me to half a congregation, millions of dollars in debt, an odd-shaped sanctuary that had had major problems from the beginning and constantly needed work, and a dysfunctional leadership team of some of the greatest souls in the kingdom mixed with some of the strangest birds ever.

My wife and I were hurting financially and it appeared to be getting worse.  We were living in rented quarters and were cutting into the small savings we kept from selling our house in North Carolina.

Some of the leaders were unhappy with us from the first and looked for ways to undercut everything we tried.

Nothing about this was fun.

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Three cautions before you teach others how to pray

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They invite you to bring a talk, a lesson, or a sermon on prayer. Your first thought, if you are normal, is, “Who me? What little I know about prayer you could put in a thimble.”

There may be some Christian somewhere who considers himself an authority on prayer, but I have yet to meet him. The truly godly men and women known as prayer warriors will tell you they feel they have just enrolled in kindergarten.

I’m confident of this one thing: our Heavenly Father is not happy with any of His children claiming to have the inside track on how to approach Him, how to “get things from God,” “how to make prayer work for your benefit,” and how to get on His good side.

Jesus Christ has done everything necessary for us to enter the Throne Room of Heaven. See Hebrews 4:16.

Jesus Christ has opened the divider between man and God and we have an open invitation to “come on in.” See Hebrews 10:19-22.

If you and I are not entering God’s presence and lifting up our needs and petitions and interceding for those on our hearts, it’s not God’s fault. It’s not the fault of Jesus, who did everything necessary to make it possible for us to pray effectively.

So, come on in. Come in humbly, for this is the Throne Room of the Universe. Come in worshipfully for the One on the Throne is the Lord of Lords. Come in boldly because your Authority is the Blood of Jesus. Come in regularly because you live in a needy, fallen world. Come in with Jesus: in His Name, by His blood, for His sake.

That’s what we want to teach others.

But there are some things we do not want to teach, no matter how great the temptation.

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Where are the sins God has forgiven?

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Yes, You will cast all their sins into the depths of the sea.  Micah 7:19

Gospel song of the 1950s…

You ask me why I’m happy, I’ll tell you the reason why: My sins are gone.

And when I meet the scoffers who ask me where they are, I say, My sins are gone.

They’re underneath the blood of the cross of Calvary, as far removed as darkness is from dawn.  In the sea of God’s forgetfulness, that’s good enough for me, praise God, my sins are gone.

(second verse)  When Satan comes to tempt me, and cause me to doubt, I say, my sins are gone.  You got me into trouble, but Jesus got me out. I’m glad, my sins are gone. (then the chorus)

It’s a good song, take my word for it!

Some lessons God’s children have to keep learning…

She was a faithful member of the church I had gone to right after seminary.  I was 27 years old with a lot to learn about ministry.  But I knew something about her she thought no one else did.

One day the church secretary had blurted out to me that a year earlier Gloria Mae had had an affair with a man she worked with.  “And she thinks no one knows it!”  Well, it’s impossible to unknow something once you hear it.  And I was sorry to know this.  But God used that…

One day sometime later, while making my morning hospital rounds, I noticed that Gloria Mae had been admitted as a patient. I went in to visit her.  “My ulcer is acting up,” she told me.  As we visited, she said, “Pastor, one of these days there is something I need to tell you. Something that bothers me.”

I said, “I’m available any time,” and continued to stand there by her bed talking and listening.  And because I was patient, she began pouring out the sad tale of her sin.  She wept and my heart broke for her.  Finally, I said, “Gloria, has God forgiven you?”

“Oh, yes,” she said, “He has, but I can’t forgive myself.”

I said, “So, you have a higher standard than God. Is that right?”

She was almost offended.  “Brother Joe! Whatever does that mean?”

I said, “Well, listen to you.  Sure, God forgave me.  It’s easy for Him.  But I’m harder on myself than He is.”  I paused to let that sink in and said, “Gloria, if God forgave you, why don’t you forgive yourself?”

We prayed together and left that sordid business at the cross, where it belonged.  One year later, I received a note from her saying, “It was a year ago today that you visited me in the hospital.  And you said exactly what I needed to hear. I am well today. Thank you.”

Her sins were gone.  And how good is that???

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What the embattled pastor prays

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Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known this day that You are God in Israel and that I am your servant…. (I Kings 18:36)

Elijah was confronting the prophets of Baal when he prayed that brief but potent prayer. But his goal was not to win these renegades over. His target audience was the spectators, the Israelites who in their shallow affection were going with the deity who could produce the most dramatic fireworks that day.

I have prayed Elijah’s prayer.

Many a time as I entered the sanctuary for the Sunday morning service, I sent up this plea. “Lord, there are a few people in this church who are roadblocks to us doing anything. They fight me on every proposal. And they do it in Your Name. Father, please–let them know that You are God and that I am your servant.”

Now, you would think it was the second part of that prayer that occupied my attention, that what I wanted most of all was for this bunch of nay-sayers to get clear on the fact that God in Heaven had sent me as His ambassador. But you’d be wrong.

Before anything else, I wanted the same thing Elijah wanted for God’s people that day: for them to settle once and for all that the Living God is Lord and in charge and in this place. That He is “God in Israel.”

I am personally convinced that the trouble-makers in most churches do not really believe in God. Oh, they do, theoretically. If you press them, they can tell you when they professed faith in Jesus and were baptized. Call on them to pray in the service and they will render up an invocation or offertory prayer with the best of them. It’s just that they don’t really believe God is on the premises.

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Clippings on various things from my journal

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Carl Sandburg said, “There is an eagle inside me that wants to soar, and there is a hippopotamus inside me that wants to wallow in the mud.”

We all get to choose–have to choose!–every day of our lives which it shall be.

(1) Chuck Colson once asked a prisoner on death row if he wanted a television in his cell. “No,” he said. “TV wastes too much time.”

We get to choose–have to choose!–what to do with our time each day.

(2) Thomas Merton said, “There were only a few shepherds at the first Bethlehem. The ox and the ass understood more of the first Christmas than the high priests in Jerusalem. And it is the same today.”

We choose what to do with Jesus.

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My sin is just a little thing

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A pastor in Haiti tells about a fellow he knew who wanted to sell his house for $2,000. In time, he found a buyer, but the man could scrape together only half the asking price. The owner agreed to sell for that amount but with one reservation: he would continue to own one nail above the front door.

A couple of years later, the first fellow decided he wanted to repurchase the house. The new owner declined, saying, “I like this house; I don’t want to sell.”

The previous owner found the carcass of a dead dog on the street and hung it from the nail he still owned above the front door. Soon the stench became so strong no one could go in or out of the house, and the family had to leave. They sold the house to the former owner.

The Haitian pastor said, “If we leave the devil with even one small peg in our life, he will return to hang his rotting garbage on it, making our lives unfit for Christ’s habitation.”

–I sure am enjoying my new life in Christ. Bible study is great, my new friends at church are wonderful, and I’m loving the new relationships. I wish I’d done this years ago. Some nights I’m down at the church til 10 o’clock with my friends there. Sometimes we are praying, studying the Bible, or working on various projects. I hope no one finds out what I’m watching on the internet at home. I know it’s called pornography, but it’s such a little thing and as long as no one knows, what can be wrong with it?

–My wife and I have this wonderful relationship. After 20 years of marriage, we know each other completely and have learned to work together as a team. I don’t know what I’d do without her. She’s so good with our kids, and I’m always proud of her when we go out in public. I don’t want her to find out about the harmless little flirtation I’m having with this girl at the office, though. She wouldn’t understand.

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When the stiff, inflexibles are in control of the church

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“You stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart….”  (Acts 7:51). 

“No one puts a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch pulls away from the garment and a worse tear results.  Nor do men put new wine in old wineskins….” (Matthew 9:16-17).

Let’s start with an intriguing quote from a great churchman….

“The church recruited people who had been starched and ironed before they were washed.”  –John Wesley

Not sure of the context of Wesley’s quote, but I like it because it so accurately sums up the situation of a small contingent within every church.  Now, I have to say this conjures up memories of my childhood.  Mom did her own washing and ironing, and often, to starch a shirt or blouse, she would soak it in a bucket into which she had mixed up the dry starch with water. These days, anyone starching at home uses a spray, I expect.

There’s nothing like a great starched shirt.  I love them. Trace Cleaners does mine. My wife loves me but not enough to do that!

Now then, some church members have been starched and ironed before they were washed.  A great metaphor!  But what does it mean?

“Starched and ironed” means they are now–

–prim and proper

–firmly set and fixed in their ways

–but they are missing something essential: An experience with the living God by the blood of Jesus Christ.  Scripture promises “the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin” (I John 1:7).  But these people have bypassed that experience for one reason or the other.

As a result, they are–

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What the Roman world was like when the Gospel came

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Robert Harris is the best historical novelist on the scene today. He puts you in the time period.  You come away knowing those people.  Everything he writes is so readable.

Conspirata is a sequel to Harris’ novel Imperium, which chronicles the rise of Cicero in ancient Rome.  He sticks to the facts and to the actual speeches of Cicero as much as possible, which is what make this so valuable.  You feel you know these people afterwards.

Conspirata  tells of Cicero’s consulship in which he ruled over the Roman Empire for a brief period, his work as a senator, and his brilliance as a lawyer and orator.  It’s impossible to recommend this novel too highly; I loved it.

I was struck by the conditions in Rome at the time the story begins, which is 63 B.C. This was the most civilized and progressive society known to western man at the time.  We still speak of “the glory that was Rome.”  It was glorious, but only to a point and dependent on the strata of society you occupied.  Not everyone had it good.

Into this world, Jesus Christ was born. Into this culture the gospel came.  To these people, God sent a Savior.

Here is an excerpt. As you read it, ask yourself, “Man, did these people ever need a Savior?”

Such was the state of the city on the eve of Cicero’s consulship–a vortex of hunger, rumor, and anxiety, of crippled veterans and bankrupt farmers begging at every corner; of roistering bands of drunken young men terrorizing shopkeepers; of women from good families openly prostituting themselves outside the taverns; of sudden conflagrations, violent tempests….and scavenging dogs; of fanatics, soothsayers, beggars, fights. (p. 7)

And that’s only one paragraph!

Superstition pervaded every aspect of life. When the Senate convened, before any business was enacted, priests performed rituals to determine “the auguries,” or supernatural signs.  Flights of birds or lightning flashes were interpreted as warnings or encouragements.

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