I usually don’t do this.  Truthfully, I have NEVER done this.  But it is a cold, rainy day and my children are napping, and I began reading blogs.  Here are a few that you need to read right this very minute.

http://jdgreear.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/12/we-want-revolut.html

Not only is J.D. the greatest preaching pastor under the age of 36 alive on earth, he is a fantastic writer with a mind you would not believe.  He is also a good friend, and new daddy.  Start here and read everything he has posted.

http://www.stevenfurtick.com/

A great friend, former member of our Crossroads team, and local pastor hit the nail on the head with the post LOST SHEEP.

http://www.perrynoble.com/2007/12/19/going-to-unsafe-places/

One of my closest friends and my accountability partner, Perry wrote a post that every single minister and Christian should read about not playing it safe in church.

http://www.rwaynestacy.com/

All of the reflections here are fantastic, especially “It’s About Time” concerning C.S. Lewis and the time/space continuum.  But today’s on SIN was right on.

http://johnlambert.wordpress.com/100-quotes/

I have never met this gentleman, but he commented on my blog today, so I followed the link and spent 30 minutes reading these quotes.  You will be glued to your screen if you have a heart for missions.

http://www.robsingleton.net/2007/11/

A close friend and pastor who has archives of all his posts, way back to the 1990’s.  Some deep, some funny, some entertaining.

And while I am at it, my pastor Matt Orth gave me a book for Christmas that has gripped my soul.  If you have a gift card to a bookstore, use it to buy Evil and the Justice of God by N.T. Wright.

Comment and let me know if you enjoyed the links and the reads, and also be praying for me.  I say this as a genuine request, not as a veiled pat on my back.  I have just signed my first publishing deal with CLC Publications.  They are a missions minded publishing company and have given me total freedom to write a book about whatever God is telling me to write.  I need His wisdom and guidance in this effort.  The book must be done by the fall of 2008, so I would appreciate your prayers as I strive to “discern, digest, develop, and deliver” the word from God for His people.

Today I will wrap up the series of posts called ONE THING. This process began for me a few weeks ago when I preached the funeral of a friend who had overdosed and I felt overwhelmed at the thought of speaking a word from God to the people gathered at his funeral. As a way of review, I have stated that as a minister, in order for me to speak a word for God to His people, I must discern the message, digest the message, develop the message, and finally, deliver the message.

DELIVER THE MESSAGE

It does not matter how much I prepare or how many sources I consult if I cannot deliver the message God has given me. At the end of the day, I must stand up, clear my throat, open the Bible, and speak. It is a physical, verbal, and spiritual delivery that I am called to make.

It is PHYSICAL in the sense that it is an actual body with legs and arms and eyes that stands in front of the people. Even if you attend a satellite campus or watch sermons online or on DVD, someone had to physically show up and deliver the goods. The only people on earth who can understand the physical drain on a person who speaks publicy are those who do it themselves. An hour of public speaking has the same effect on the person as a 16 hour physically taxing work day (laying brick, mixing concrete, etc). There is a commitment that must be made with the body to deliver the message and those who do it pay a price for the task they are called to.

It is VERBAL in the sense that the message must be spoken. It comes from the mind and heart, but it is delivered over vocal chords through the mouth of a willing servant. And words matter. Tone, inflection, volume, they all come into play when the message is preached. Things like eye contact, body language, cadence, a soft whisper building to a crescendo, these accent naked words. And we must choose our words carefully. I have a list of them that I will never use in a message because they could be offensive, misunderstood, or used against me in the future if taken out of context. When I was just 14 years old and had just begun preaching, my wise father said to me, “Son, it does not matter what you say, or what you mean to say, it only matters what they hear you say.”

It is SPIRITUAL in the sense that ultimately, words are not the goods that are being transferred in the delivery. It is more than ideas and theology and information. The Holy Spirit inspires and empowers the words we speak, and in a very real way something supernatural takes place when the Word of God, from God, flows through my mouth to the hearts of the waiting and listening. Change happens. Hearts are cut to the quick. Minds race and blood flow increases. Palms get sweaty, confession of sin takes place, decisions are made, relationships are restored, apologies are extended and accepted. It is nothing short of a mystical mystery how the Spirit of God inhabits the message we deliver and rips people to shreds with those words, brings life and healing with those words, honors Jesus with those words.

Personally, I do several things to be a better “delivery boy.” I pray often and hard. I deliberately trust God for the results of the message. I listen to and watch the masters and learn from their style while maintaining my own. I watch and listen to myself to critique my delivery. And, I give others access to speak to me regarding my delivery. Eventually, I will write about the process I go through prior to stepping on stage to preach, but it is too early and I have not had coffee yet. Alas, I have finished the ONE THING series. Only God knows what is next.

As I continue to hammer home this thought that the minister must do ONE THING; speak a word for God to the people, we arrive at the third idea in handling that word.  First we must discern the message, then we must digest it.  Now we must DEVELOP the message God has given us, that word from Him.

DEVELOP THE MESSAGE

Having traveled in 25 countries, I know what it means to have things lost in translation.  It is difficult to communicate an idea, especially when I believe that idea is from God and He wants me to speak it to the people, when I know that every individual in the audience will interpret what I say differently through their own life experiences.  How do I develop the message in such a way that the big idea from God to the people is not lost in translation?

I do it by means of discipline, prayer, and faith.

Discipline is the process by which I study, read, learn, consult the experts, practicing the art of listening to God in all the resources at my disposal.  It means I consult commentaries, other ministers, lexicons, classic authors, and my own community of accountability when I develop the message.  It also means that the more I am disciplined to actually prepare and preach the message, the more comfortable I become in the role of “preacher.”  (P.S.  A minister is simply one called by God to serve, but a preacher is one who actually proclaims the Word of God publicly.  While there may not always be a public platform or audience for every minister, there is always a public aspect to the calling of a preacher, or “proclaimer.”  Most ministers are both servants and preachers, or at least they should be.)

Prayer is the exercise by which we connect personally and intimately with the God we are speaking for.  It is the line of communication and exchange with our Source of all inspiration and energy.  We don’t pray to get things from God, we pray in order to know God.

Faith is the bedrock that we stand on when we develope the message.  After all the books are back on the shelf and our notes are finished, we rest in the knowledge that it is God’s business to bring about His will through His word that He gave us to speak.

Bruce Springsteen, the great American rock icon, says that when he writes music, he speaks in a second language, one that comes to him naturally when he is inspired, because he has been an artist for so long it is automatic. I must strive to be constantly developing this second spiritual language; the way I get a word from God and develope it, getting rid of the excess, choosing words and tones and illustrations and facial expressions carefully. Consulting the experts and the masters and the ancient texts. Preaching and re-preaching and asking tough critics for honest critique. As I mature, the message is indistinguishable from me, because as I have developed as a minister, the grand narrative of the gospel has developed with me.

If you have a few extra minutes over the holidays, you can click on this link to watch a message I preached this weekend called “Meeting or Movement?”  It ties in with recent themes I have written about here and is one of the most passionate messages I have preached in a long time.

http://www.newspring.cc/225499.ihtml

In keeping with the theme of making the gospel central to our calling and ministry, I offer this second idea as a follow up to Discerning the Message.  We must first be able to train our minds and hearts to see and hear what God is telling us to say to the people.  But that is not enough.  We must move forward in order to eventually deliver it.  The second thing we must do is…

2. DIGEST THE MESSAGE

After we have discerned something from God, a word for us, through us, to the people, our next step is to digest it (i.e. own it, let it become a part of us, wrestle with it, be offended by it, feel the conviction personally, let it saturate our spirit).  It is never enough to know what we are supposed to preach or say to the people.  We have to actually be able to say it clearly, and unless we digest the message before we proclaim it, the message will be void of power and conviction.

Most folks can tell if a minister actually means what they say or if they are just regurgitating warmed up sermon material.  No more pathetic indictment can be leveled against a minister than for someone to be uninspired by their message because the minister himself came across as uninspired (or fake, phony, plastic, rehearsed).

When I get a word from God, I have to yield to it myself before I ask others to yield to it.  The Holy Spirit must preach it to me before I preach it to others.  I need a familiarity with the text and the Spirit behind the meaning of the text so that I can know what I am talking about when I take it public.  It is imperative that we digest the message because after all, we will soon be asking others to take our word for it that the message we preach is true and sent from God.

I know more about the Zanskar Valley of Ladakh than most people because I spent 2 months there, eating the food and smelling the air and walking the mountain trails along the Himalayas.   I digested that place until it was a part of me.  For a month, we trekked along goat trails living out of a tent and a backpack in order to reach Tibetan Buddhist villages with the gospel.  So now when I see a book about Ladakh or a show on Discovery about the Zanskar region, I am dialed in because I know that place well.  The same is true with our message, the gospel of Jesus Christ.  It must affect us emotionally, we must know it well, it must be refined over time until there is a warm and honest familiarity with it.  A minister must chew on the gospel, be offended and humiliated and surprised and energized by it. This takes a lifetime.  We have to own what we sell or no one will believe it’s true because they can tell we don’t really believe it.

As I continue to flesh out this idea of ONE THING: SPEAKING A WORD FOR GOD, I literally cannot turn my mind off.  Whether it is residual grief over the death of my friend from an overdose or conversations I have recently had with friends in ministry (both “former” ministers who bowed out or current ministers on the verge of doing so), this is where my heart is at the moment.  I am content to stay here as long as it takes.

I am sticking with my story.  The more I reflect, the more I am convinced that we must speak a word for God to the people.  But the question eventually arises: HOW?

It is more than simple mechanics.  You can pile public speaking courses on top of hermeneutics classes on top of preaching books and you still do not scrape the surface of the mystery of how God communicates His word through ministers to the people.  But I offer four relatively elementary ideas as to HOW we speak a word for God.  (And I did not read this in a book, swipe it from a professor, or rip it off of sermons.com).  I will share the first thought today and the other three will follow.

DISCERN THE MESSAGE - I would rather listen to a testimony from a hillbilly preacher who could get a personal and passionate word from God than a polished pulpiteer who spends more time telling me what the Bible doesn’t mean that about what it does.  I am not AGAINST education.  I am FOR ministers staying spiritually sensitive enough to God’s Spirit that they can discern when He is handing them a word that He wants them to hand to the people.  We must learn to listen deeply and hear the Spirit, discerning His message for those who need it. 

Discernment means knowing the difference between hearing a lyric in a song that just sounds cool versus being assaulted by a lyric in a song that drips with truth and conviction and realizing that God used that line in that song to inspire your next sermon series.  It means sitting still long enough in a quiet place so that God can isolate your busy mind and crowded heart so that only He has access to it.  It is watching your children play and fight and interact and seeing all the spiritual parallels between them and yourself.  And for me personally, I had to discover the mystical dimension to spiritual discernment, when that weird feeling in my heart is actually God revealing something to me. 

Here is an example.  Over a decade ago, I happened to see Axl Rose of Guns-n-Roses wearing an offensive t-shirt on TV that said “Kill Your Idols.”  That phrase stuck with me but I could not figure out why, nor could I get it to go away.  A year later I was reading in the Bible about King Josiah, a boy king who wiped Israel clean of all it’s pagan practices and altars and IDOLS.  Josiah had killed their idols in order to turn their hearts back to God.  Then I understood.  And I prepared and preached one of the most passionate messages of my life called “Kill Your Idols” about a teenage King who would not tolerate any idol among the people of God.  The inspiration came from a t-shirt.  We must pay close attention if we are to DISCERN the message that we will eventually bring to the people.  Next we must learn to….

As I continue to ask The Holy Spirit to reveal to me exactly how I must do the ONE THING, i.e., speak a word for God to the people, He continues to speak to me regarding our call as ministers and how we must guard that calling with passionate aggression.  So I submit to you this…

If the Gospel of Christ is not absolutely central to our calling and our ministry, then we are simply wasting our time.  

A few days ago, a friend phoned me with an interesting and sad story.  He was in class at a Christian school preparing for lifelong service in the church and during the course of conversation, the professor unveiled some of his own particular theological beliefs.  Among them; Jesus did not have to die on the cross, we could have all been saved by His perfect example, there was no need for blood and pain and suffering on the part of Christ, Jesus misunderstood His Father’s desire and went to the cross mistakenly, and we should seek out nonviolent ways to approach and understand the atonement since God is not a mean, evil vindictive God who demanded blood to be shed for sins to be forgiven.

I had been exposed to this sort of theological nonsense before and had dismissed it years ago as heresy.  But my friend had just heard it for the first time, and his furious reaction to this emasculated version of the gospel was a reminder to me how we must believe the gospel, contend for the gospel, and proclaim the gospel.

1.  BELIEVE THE GOSPEL - The real issue with this professor is that he simply did not believe the gospel, the story  that was handed down from Jesus to the apostles to the church, that has withstood 2,000 years of opposition and scrutiny, that has thrived everywhere it has been preached, and that calls each of us to account for our sins.  It is much easier to dismiss the gospel (that Jesus was born of a virgin, lived a sinless life, was crucified in our place for our salvation and God’s justice, was raised from the dead and will return again as judge and King) than to yield to its claims on your life.  We must BELIEVE it to be true before we can orient our lives and ministries around it.

2.  CONTEND FOR THE GOSPEL -  Why do so many ministers avoid speaking of sin, judgment, repentance, and conversion?  Why have so many pastors quit extending invitations for people to respond to the message of the gospel?  Because the gospel itself is powerful (Romans 1:16) and it has always been, and always will be, under attack (both from spiritual forces that fear it and human forces that are offended by it).  That is why we must contend for it, defend it, study it, and allow it to saturate our lives.  There is no wiggle room in the gospel, especially for those that would take their liberties and change it around to suit their own proclivities.  It was such a big deal to the apostle Paul that he proclaimed condemnation on anyone who deviated from it, human or angelic! (Galatians 1:8)

3.  PROCLAIM THE GOSPEL - I am not advocating a rehearsed robotic 2 minute regurgitation of facts about Jesus.  This can easily become an obnoxious and off-putting exercise to the lost, who have keen radar for anything un-authentic.  I mean the living, winsome witness that the gospel works in your own life.  If we do not proclaim the gospel of Christ in our pulpits, in our homes, at work, at ball practice, or in the board room, perhaps it is because deep down, we either don’t believe it or we have never been arrested and ruined by it.  If we ever make anything else our “big issue” (abortion, gay marriage, Bible translations, women in ministry, denominational squabbles, heresy hunting, politics and elections) then we begin to rot spiritually.

The gospel must be central as our message to proclaim and as our method of winning the lost to faith in Jesus.  The  next post will deal with the preaching and proclamation of the gospel as the means that God uses to build His Kingdom and save people from sin and judgment.

The funeral I preached Wednesday for a friend who died outside of a crack-house here in town affected more than I realized.  The last post on the calling of a minister to speak a word for God has continued to rattle around in my head like the buzz from guitar amps after a great rock show.  I feel like I have so much I want to say, but I need to be patient in hearing it from God before a I try to communicate it all in this impersonal medium of the blogosphere (perhaps that is not only one of my most serious personal struggles but something inherent among those of us who write “electronically.”)

If the ONE THING we must be about as ministers is speaking a word for God, to the people, then there are countless things we must guard, and guard against, or we will surely take our eyes off the goal.  One thing that we must wage absolute war on is SABOTAGE.

DON’T LET “THEM” SABOTAGE YOU, YOUR LIFE, OR YOUR CALLING.  Who is “them?”  It can be your spouse, your children, your church members, a lost person you are trying to win to Jesus, an acquaintance at the Post Office, a cashier at Walgreens, or the very fallen Angel Lucifer himself.  It can be your list, your inbox, your voicemail, or your Blackberry.  We can become so caught up in doing the stuff of ministry that we never obey God or actually serve Him.  It is the tyranny of the moment; things must be done, and I must be the one who does them.

We ministers are go-getters.  We like to make things happen.  I feel no greater sense of accomplishment than making a very long list of things to be done early in the morning before my first cup of Broad River Coffee is gone and marking those things off my list before supper that evening.   I honestly go through many days working through my ministry list without ever even thinking about God.  And if I am too busy to think about God, the chances of me hearing a word from Him are greatly reduced.

Lists are not evil, nor is hard work.  But how many days have I been a slave to a list as opposed to being led by the Holy Spirit?  My day is sabotaged, not by demoniacs who run out of the tombs at me, nor by drug pushers or pornographers assaulting my family or my home, but by all the busy little things that nip at my heels while The Holy Spirit, all the while patiently trying to get my attention, is whispering a word to me.  First, that word is for me.  Then, if I handle it right, it is for the people, or the person, that God ordains for me to speak it to.

I must say no more often.  I must turn off my phone and leave it off for more than a few hours.  I must decide that praying with my wife after the boys are in bed takes precedent over watching a lame re-run on TV.

If we are not obsessive and militant, our days (and subsequently, our weeks, years and eventually our lives) will be sabotaged by every conceivable power and person.  We must fight for our lives, for a word from God for us and for others.  Do whatever it takes, and don’t let “them” sabotage you.

Ministers are easily distracted.  We are easily distracted because many of us have a desire to serve people and the inability to say no.  On top of that, people know that we love them so they often ask, and expect,  certain things from us, whether we should do those things or not.  Nonetheless, I find myself, as a minister, being pulled in 8 different directions on any given day trying to decide what to do first; answer emails, return phone calls, schedule lunch with a friend, work on the next sermon, play with my boys, clean the house, write a new blog, or download a new sermon from J.D. Greear or Ravi Zacharias.

So what is our job anyway?  I mean, what are we really supposed to be doing?  Because if you have not figured it out already, there is no way that we can do everything that everyone wants us to do. 

What is the one thing we must be about?  If I can answer that, it helps me sort through the laundry list of busyness that follows me around.  If I can discern the ONE THING that I MUST ABSOLUTELY FOCUS ON, at the risk of accomplishing nothing else, then I have won the battle before I break a sweat.  Today, I found that ONE THING, once again, though I have forgotten it many times.

Death has a way of interrupting schedules.  It does not ask permission to enter, but rather kicks the door down taking all things with it.  Death comes when it wants to, not when it is convenient for us.  And today, in the face of the death of a friend, I received a REVELATION (or a reminder, actually) of exactly what the minister’s job is.

I preached a funeral this afternoon.  Not my first, certainly not my last.  It was unlike any that I have been involved in, though.  A friend of mine was found dead this past weekend outside of a crack house.  Though the autopsy is not finished, those of us who knew and loved him were not surprised by the news.  He was 47, with 2 children, and he was loved by everyone.  He had been locked in a battle to the death with alcohol and drugs for years, and he finally lost.

The church was packed and the tears fell liberally.  We sang “How Great Thou Art” and 3 other ministers shared thoughts and encouragement for the grieving audience.  I was the last one.  I was asked to share the gospel and call people to repentance and salvation.  As the moment got closer, my heart began to beat fast and my mouth dried up.  What was I going to say?  There were no answers!  There was no explanation.  He was never coming back, everyone was upset, and here I was in a dark suit with a lump in my throat and nothing to say.

Then it hit me.  The ONE THING.  The JOB OF A MINISTER. 

I HAD TO SPEAK A WORD FOR GOD.

At that moment, all the detritus washed away and it became crystal clear.  Ministers are called to speak a word, to the people, from God, for them.  Nothing else mattered at that moment.  Death, the great equalizer, had blown all the clouds and confusion from my mind, and I stood in front of grieving people who only needed one thing from me.  THEY NEEDED ME TO TELL THEM SOMETHING THAT WAS FROM GOD.  Nothing fancy.  No need for theological instruction.  Their hearts were broken and they needed to know what God had to say to them in their pain.

And that is where we come in.  We stand in front of the people, in sermons and prayers and lessons, in times of despair and chaos and loss, and we tell them what God has to say to them in their time of need.  And Satan himself will make every effort to usurp God’s hold on us, to split us from task and steal us away from this one job.  Administration, dead-end debates, theological hoop-jumping, political posturing, financial hand-wringing, or even good old fashioned sermon preparation or hospital visitation.  If we lose sight of THE ONE THING, our calling, we are finished.  As Eugene Peterson says, we become domesticated and tame, scrambling to do unimportant and non-eternal things that people think they need, when the one thing they really need, A WORD FROM GOD, is the one thing we are called to deliver to them.

The past 2 weeks have afforded me almost unlimited time for reflection and deep thought, because I spend about 8 hours a day priming and painting walls.  If you are ever looking for a mindless activity that affords you tons of time to yourself, painting is your thing.  Personally, I would rather set myself on fire slowly by rubbing sticks on my flesh than ever paint anything.  That is beside the point.

So with extension pole in hand and surrounded by paint trays and buckets and lids, this question materialized…

DO I STRIVE TO IMPRESS PEOPLE OR INSPIRE PEOPLE?

When I am preparing to preach, when I am looking for good stories to use in a message, when I am deciding which illustrations I will use to make a point, when I am sharing a meal with friends in a ministry setting, what is my agenda?  Do I drop names to IMPRESS the people around me?  Do I always make myself the hero of every story to IMPRESS the audience?  Do I throw in golden nuggets of historical factitudes to IMPRESS the scholars or theologians listening to me?  Do I pepper my sermons or conversations with intelligent sounding words to IMPRESS other intelligent people?

The truth is YES, I do this quite frequently.  And it is nothing less that sin.  It is rooted in a desire to be seen as more important, more intelligent, more godly, and more in-demand than I really am.  And this is rooted in idolatry, like all other sins, in that I desire to become greater and bigger while at the same time making Jesus smaller and less.

I want to mature beyond the need to IMPRESS people.  I want my life under the lordship of Christ to INSPIRE people to wholeheartedly follow Jesus.  I want people to leave a conversation with me and not think about me at all, but to ponder the things of God.  I want people to walk away from my sermons and never think twice about me or the delivery, but to be INSPIRED to give themselves to God, heart and soul.  I would rather my sons be INSPIRED to follow Jesus by watching me follow Him than to be IMPRESSED that their daddy preaches 200 times a year for Jesus.  The difference between the two is colossal.

Here is the difference.  The New England Patriots IMPRESS me because they are undefeated so far this season, but the Green Bay Packers INSPIRE me because Brett Favre is 38 years old playing like a high school senior with nothing to lose.   Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney IMPRESS me because they can raise millions of dollars at one political dinner, but Dr. M.A. Thomas of Hopegivers International INSPIRES me because he has lived his whole life serving orphans and lepers in India and he has never owned his own house.  I am IMPRESSED with sizes and numbers and attendance at concerts, conferences, and mega-churches.  I am INSPIRED by 88 years of faithfulness to Jesus in the life of Billy Graham.

I was IMPRESSED when I watched The Dave Matthews Band live in concert earlier this year.  No better musicians on earth.  Never missed a note.  But they did not make me want to go out and do something. I turned off the TV thinking they were a great band.  But when I watched Bruce Springsteen and The Easy Street Band, I was caught up in the reality of his music and the conviction he possessed as he performed.  Those songs, those lyrics, and his passion made me want to go out and change the world.  I was INSPIRED.   

We are too easily IMPRESSED with unimportant things.  Maybe we can replace it with a desire to be INSPIRED by goodness, Godliness, service, suffering, and passion for Christ Jesus and His advancing Kingdom.