Life on the road is tough, I won’t lie to you.  But after 21 years of it, I have figured out a few things that absolutely light me up.  And when traveling, it is important to find those things that GIVE you energy and avid those things that TAKE energy from you, if at all possible.  Here we have my short list of the things that put the fuel in my tank as a ROAD WARRIOR.

1.  SEEING PEOPLE REPENT - As an evangelist, there is nothing I would rather see than a person hear the gospel and be moved by God’s Spirit to repent of their sin and confess faith in Christ.  This is the penultimate experience for me, knowing that someone has gone from death to life.  If that ever gets old, something is really wrong with me.

2.  COFFEE -  No shame in my game…I drink it by the gallon and don’t apologize.  And no, I am not addicted, I can stop anytime I want to.  I JUST NEVER WANT TO.  There!

3.  MUSIC - When I need to be energized, especially after pouring my heart and soul out on a stage in front of a thousand college students, and I have a 3 hour drive ahead of me to get home to my wife and boys, I need guitars.  So my special stash of favorite music comes out, including Third Day, Bruce Springsteen, U2, Tonic, John Mayer, Hillsong, Johnny Cash, or Stryper.

4.  PEOPLE - Because I am an extrovert, people give me energy as opposed to sucking it out of me.  I love conversations with folks when I get to hear their story.  I love the large crowd, seeing the look of concentration of faces as  I preach, hearing the laughter at one of my comments, and keying in on the vibe of the audience.

5.  UNDERSTANDING - I don’t demand or expect to be served when I go somewhere to preach, but I sure appreciate it.  I am energized when I arrive at an event and it is organized, people seem relaxed and prepared, and they offer to help me (with my books, a bottle of water, etc).  When they spend the extra $20 to get me a non-smoking room, or when they splurge for the extra $45 to get me a direct flight from Charlotte instead of saving that $45 and requiring me to fly through Detroit to get from Charlotte to Knoxville.  This means they understand what I have to go through to get there, and it is just a special touch that makes me look forward to going back there in the future.

There is much more that energizes me and I will share that in the next blog, but right now, my family awaits, so I leave cyberspace to be energized by them.

To be honest, lots of things encourage me.  Let me list a few for you and then share a personal story that happened yesterday (because it is the people I meet that encourage me the most).

1.  My wife - without a doubt, she wields the power to make me the happiest man on earth.  A word from her can set me straight for days.  She has the ability to communicate with a simple smile what it would take days for me to feel otherwise.  When she tells me I am a good man and she is proud of me, I feel like I can conquer the world.

2.  My daddy - the greatest man I have ever known, Joe King is my greatest influence and greatest hero.  When I am driving home late from preaching somewhere, I call him and we talk for hours (he does not sleep much…he is a diabetic and on dialysis).  My earliest memories in life revolve around him, and my innocent desire to make him proud.  He is proud of me, and I am blessed with a wonderful dad who encourages me, as well as a mama who has always been my biggest fan and most avid defender.

3.  Calls, emails, and handshakes - The personal connections I make as a I travel are a constant reminder of how God works.  A simple email or blog comment telling me that God used me to make a difference goes a long way.

4.  Best friends - I am surrounded by an army of mighty warriors, young lions, and men of God.  Matt Orth, Perry Noble, Brian Burgess, Steven Furtick, Jeremy Berger, Jonathan Martin, Seth Stevens, Nathan Smith, Johnnie Moore, Justin Brock, Jeff Becker, Brad Borders, Rob Singleton, David Nasser, Ken Pruitt, Wil Graham, and about 15 others have always got my back.

5.  “Yesterdays” - Charie and I spent 5 hours yesterday face to face with an amazing woman who shared an unbelievable story about how Christ chased her down with His unfathomable love.  Her life has been filled with hurt, heartache, diffculty, and disappointment.  And when she least expected it, she wound up listening to me preach at Liberty University.  Her heart was touched and she responded to the gospel, giving her life to Jesus in her 40’s (which very seldom happens).  We laughed and cried and prayed, and got to hear first-hand how the grace of God captivates and arrests people.  We made a lifelong friend yesterday, and that is perhaps the most encouraging thing of all.

In the course of an average year, I may receive 400 verbal or written invitations to preach at various events. Clearly I cannot take them all, though I would love to. I am always humbled that anyone would consider me as a preacher, speaker, or communicator at their event. The hard truth, however, is that I have to say no sometimes, but I also get to say yes, too. So what is that process like for me?

Here is how it usually works. The host of the potential event will contact our office and ask about my availablity to preach at their event. (Until 2002, they called me personally at my house to inivite me to preach. This was a nightmare. Phone ringing all day and night, messages scribbled on Burger King bags, and an old answering machine with a tape in it that took 8 days to check). We have a much better system now. They contact our ministry office.

Once they call the office, we have them fill out a simple speaker request form that allows them to communicate the most important elements of their event so that I can make a decision: date, location, attendance, direction of the event (evangelism, discipleship, missions?), budget to pay a speaker, and whether they have held the event before. They also share their vision for the event and what they hope to accomplish, if it is a denominational event, and who is leading worship. This form is emailed to us, ensuring that it will never be lost. It is then forwarded to me and I respond back to my office so they can communicate with the host as to whether I have accepted or declined the offer.

Here are the elements I pray through when deciding to say yes or no to an opportunity to preach the gospel.

1. Can I clearly use my spiritual gifts as an evangelist and a preacher of the gospel? Are they looking for a different experience or perspective than I can bring? In other words, am I a match for what they need?
2. Does it fit my schedule? Traveling over 150 days a year means that already, nearly half the calendar is off limits. It also means that just because I am not preaching on Tuesday, August 4 that does not mean I CAN preach somewhere that day. For every day that I travel, I need 2 days of prep time, family time, rest time, and “normal life time.”
3. How far away is it? If I can drive there and be back home before midnight, that is easier than an invitation that requires me to fly across time zones, missing 3 days away from my family to preach once (a day to fly there, a day to preach, a day to fly home).
4. What is the age group and demographic of the audience? I very seldom do middle school retreats, and I never do senior adult dinners. If the audience is not right for me, then I would be doing a dis-service to the host by saying yes.
5. What have they budgeted for the event? See my previous post on this one…it is not just whether or not they can pay me enough. That is not the point. I consider how much they are paying for the inflatable games, the 4 rock bands, the pizza blast, the iPod giveaways, and the lights and sound. If they have budgeted $7,500 for all of that, and they are gonna pay the preacher $250, then that communicates to me that they value everything else more than the proclaimed Word of God. And I am not the guy to come in and be a spiritual prop.
6. How important is the message? If they only give me 20 minutes to preach and give an invitation, but they have allowed 90 minutes for skits, dramas, videos, announcements, mime teams, puppets, giveaways, and testimonies, I am not the right choice for their event.
7. I ask my wife. She has ultimate authority to say no, pull rank, and tell me that I need to pass. Her discernment is better than mine.

The spiritual discipline that undergirds this entire process is prayer. I am asking The Holy Spirit to guide me anytime someone trusts me enough to invite me to share the precious gospel with their group.

*ANNOUNCEMENT*
My good friend and our Crossroads worship leader, Carl Cartee, is hosting an incredible conference called INSPIRE. Here are the details.

*website: inspireworshipconference.com
*When: May 14-16, 2008
*Where: Gatlinburg, TN, Glenstone Lodge and Conference Center
*What: a conference to equip, encourage and inspire those who want to lead the way in worship
*How: through practical seminars like songwriting, leading musical worship, instrumental and vocal workshops, large group worship and teaching times and tons of other opportunities to grow. For a full list, see inspireworshipconference.com
Who should come: Any person who feels called to lead God’s people in worship music. Anyone who is already leading and has a desire to develop greater musical excellence and deeper passion for truth in worship.

The simple answer to this question is that…I don’t. I preach for free and trust God to provide for my family through random strangers and $50 handshakes.

That was a joke.

It seems like anytime money is brought up, there is a natural tendency for some people to feel about as awkward as a Quaker at a gun show. But I have learned over the years that it is much easier to talk openly and honestly about money and remove the stigma right off the bat. And as a traveling preacher with no “church” supporting me, the issue of daily finances and a paycheck are a bit different.

The short answer is this; Crossroads Worldwide/Clayton King Ministries pays me a salary. That salary is set by my Board of Directors. For the first 15 years of my ministry, I lived from event to event and paid my bills based off what I got paid to preach. But we felt that in order to guard me personally from the trappings of wealth and the love of money, a stable and predictable income would allow me to say yes or no to invitations based on prayer, not the budget of the event. And Billy Graham always made a salary. That was all I needed to hear. On top of my salary, I also make some extra each year from the sales of my 7 Sermon Series box sets and my 4 books, as well as honorariums from public school assemblies and some other secular, non-religious events I speak at.

So then what about the churches, camps, retreats, conferences, and colleges I speak at? Once I have been invited to speak, I look over the request form and see what they have budgeted to pay a preacher for their event. I have always tried to work with people within their budget if it is an event that I feel suited for. If it is not a match for my spiritual gift as an evangelist and communicator, then I will decline the invitation and recommend a trusted friend or another Crossroads speaker for them to consider.

Most churches, colleges or events pay a flat honorarium. Sometimes they will also receive a love offering and that goes back to Crossroads unless they give it directly to me with instructions to use it for my family, a mission trip, a nice date with my wife, etc. We also ask that they cover expenses like hotel reservations, airline tickets, or mileage if I drive. We never want to be a financial burden on those we go to serve, and I have personally seen speakers or bands charge exorbitant amounts that have so stressed the host that nobody really cared about people hearing the gospel and being saved because everyone was so stressed out about paying the artist or the preacher. I pray that I never become that guy.

Are there ever times where I say no based solely on money? Absolutely yes. Very seldom, but occasionally, I will get a request to preach at a camp or a revival in a region far removed from my home in NC. So if a 4 day camp in Oregon can only pay me $500, then I have to add a day to fly there and a day to fly home. So I spend 6 days in Oregon, without my family, for $500. This is not the best investment of my time and it costs my family dearly. An itinerate evangelist would starve and end up divorced if he made his living on events that paid $500 for 6 days. Do the math on this one…If I preached every single day of the year (365 days) based on this pay scale ($83.33 per day), I would make $30,314.66 per year. BEFORE TAXES. To support a family of 4.

Crossroads makes income from my traveling ministry (and our other speakers) as well as our camps and conferences. We are not a fund-raising ministry and only ask for financial support if there is a specific need that must be met (hiring of a new staff, mission opportunity, purchase of land for a retreat center, etc).

I have learned that I am THE STEWARD of my time and that when I leave home to preach, it better count (thanks Jay Strack, for those words of wisdom). Money is not the most important thing by a long shot. But it is important enough to talk about. Then once it is discussed and agreed upon, move on to what really matters; proclaiming the gospel.

There are only two words that can answer this question. CALLING and CONDITIONING.

CALLING
This is the easy part, because it was generated from a source other than myself. Because God called me to preach the gospel in new and different places, I also believe that he gave me a personality to fit this calling. He clearly knew before I was born what He wanted me to do with my life, so I believe that in the womb he equipped me with an outgoing and adventurous disposition. I love to see new places, eat new foods, look at maps of new interstates, make new friends, and experience new cultural oddities (whether a truck stop in Missouri with a giant dinosaur out front or a barber shop in Katmandhu where you get a chiropractic adjustment after a haircut). I tell young guys all the time who say they want to be an itinerate evangelist that if they are not called by God to do it, then they will never make it. I have seen dozens of guys try it out, and after a few months they start sending out resumes for church jobs. You simply have to be cut out for traveling. It takes more than a desire to preach. God has to call you to do it, and He called me. This I know for sure.

CONDITIONING
The calling thing is pretty easy. I have known since I was 14 that I would spend my life preaching. The conditioning has been a wee bit more difficult. Like any other thing in life that demands strain and stress, I have to keep myself conditioned to a mobile life, and there are several things that help me stay in the zone.

1. REPETITIONS - like lifting weights or shooting free-throws, the more I travel, the more natural it is for me. My mind and body get used to it. It becomes second nature, like muscle memory. When I take long periods off, for vacation or a sabbatical, it takes a few weeks for me to toughen back up. I even notice that my voice is strong when I am staying busy, but when I hit the road again afer an extended break, I will always lose my voice after the first sermon.

2. NUTRITION - I don’t like to say diet because a consisten healthy lifestyle is better than any fad diet. I try to eat right. Very little fast food. Lots and lots of water. Vegetables and fruits, lots of fiber and cereals. Yogurt and blueberries and bananas, spinach and salmon. Hardly any soft drinks or sweet tea, no white bread, and greeen tea every chance I get.

3. TREATS - A good friend and mentor told me that if I will be good to myself when I travel, it will make time away from my family go faster. I take his advice and I splurge often. This usually comes in the form of some simple pleasure; ice cream at Dairy Queen, a Jamocha milkshake at Arby’s on the ride home, or a new CD to listen to while I drive (and I will end up selling it in 6 months anyway).

4. SERMONS AND PHONE CALLS - When I drive, I save most of my ministry related phone calls for the car. I also catch up with friends while driving, which helps redeem the time and also keeps my time with my boys and wife free of a hyper-active cell phone ringing off the hook. And I will take a pile of CDs with me to listen to, made up of some of my favorite preachers.

5. EXERCISE - This cannot be overstated…if I am not in shape, I get tired and sick and fatigued. So I swim and work out and run. It keeps me trim, I sleep better at night, and my energy levels are high. My goal is to be running 13 miles by the end of the summer ( a half-marathon). Last summer I made it to 9 miles and then we started building a house (and our lives came to a screeching halt).

6. FAMILY - it is the time I spend with Charie and the boys that gives me the energy I need to travel. When I am home, I make their lunches for school, I take them and pick them up from school, I help around the house, I watch cartoons with the boys, and I date my wife like she is still my sweetheart (she is).

7. GET HOME QUICK - As soon as I am done preaching and hanging out with people after the event, I hit the road like a man going to put out a 5 alarm fire. I make sure the tank is full so I can drive straight through, or if I am flying, I take the absolute earliest flight out the next day. I print my tickets early and I never check a bag so I can save time.

8. HELP FROM MY FRIENDS - There is a short list of guys who understand my life and when the road wears me down, I am dialing their number. No telling how many times Nathan Smith or Steven Furtick or Perry Noble or Brian Burgess has talked me all the way home to my doorstep.

I get this question alot. It seems that many traveling preachers, evangelists, and fellow Road Warriors have only a handful of sermons. Some of them only have 1 or 2 and they feel comfortable preaching them for life. I have no insight into what God has called other preachers to preach (as long as it is Gospel-centered). But for me, I have a few more than a handful.

This past weekend, a youth leader commented to me, jokingly, that he was impressed that I actually decided to teach the sessions for a DiscipleNOW weekend based on their theme from the book of Acts. In the midst of our casual conversation, he told me that most speakers he had heard over the years were not interested in the theme or direction that the church had decided on, but were bound and determined to preach one of their “canned” messages when they showed up no matter what. (2 notes: the leader was a weekend small group leader, not the youth pastor, and the term “canned” is an insider word that all us Road Warriors are familiar with. It just means a sermon we have memorized from preaching it so many times).

This stereotype is both accurate and unfortunate. Not every young evangelist sticks with a few rehearsed sermons, but so many do that the rest of us are grouped in with them. So it is accurate to an extent. But I try to dispel the stereotype, church by church and event by event, when I get the chance. At the same church this past weekend in Knoxville, the senior pastor of the church where I preached Sunday morning told me after the service that he enjoyed my expository message, and that he had heard few evangelists preach from the text verse by verse. How sad. It seems that so many Road Warriors are just so busy and tired from the road that it is easier to pull out an old sermon than do the hard work of working out a fresh one.

But back to the question…How many sermons do I have? Right now, sitting here at my computer, I could probably preach 30 different evangelistic messages and I could probably teach from another 50 passages of scripture. The evangelistic messages would be the ones I have preached before and that I will preach again, because those messages were given to me by the Holy Spirit and they are annointed by God (as a word of defense for those of us who DO preach the same messages frequently, the reason is often times that we see God used those messages to save souls and so we are going to keep on preaching them. I mean, hey, does the Sermon on the Mount still speak to people today? My point exactly!).

Over the years, I have spent hundreds of hours studying books of the Bible and the context of those books, so there are also maybe another 50 or so passages that I could teach a Bible study on. So the question is difficult to answer. But I have more than a few that I preach. And for me, the most important thing is that I am constantly in The Word, getting fresh inspiration from the Lord, allowing the message to saturate my heart before I preach it to others.

So bottom line? How many? OK, OK, I probably have between 100 - 130 sermons that I could preach at the drop of a hat (21 years of preaching adds up). But I would also say that there are at least that many new ones being developed in my heart and mind every single day as Christ increases and I decrease.

I have never really had normal sleeping habits. Once, at about age 7, I woke up and realized I was riding my mother’s exercise bike at 2 AM. Then again, at about age 9, I awoke to the sound of running water and it came to my attention I was drinking water from the kitchen faucet using a spoon. Needless to say, sleepwalking, talking in my sleep, and restlessness have always been a part of my nocturnal life. Not much has changed.

As a Road Warrior, one who spends his life traveling the world and preaching the gospel, I sleep in new places all the time. I have slept in my vehicle on occasion, but usually I end up in a hotel room or someone’s house. I usually prefer a hotel room because it removes the “wild cards” from the sleeping equation. It means there will be no indoor pets (I am extremely allergic), no small children entering the room at 6 AM wondering why a 6 ft. 3 inch stranger is sleeping in their bed with Strawberry Shortcake sheets and a Hello Kitty pillow, and, most importantly, the entire host family does not wake up to see me roaming through their home at 3:17 AM asking where I am as I sing old Michael Jackson songs. I never remember doing these things, even though people from over 30 states have told me these kinds of stories over breakfast. “Clayton, do you remember us waking you up last night as you rambled through the kitchen cabinets looking for shotgun shells?” I actually love staying in people’s homes, I just hate that my nocturnal habits are so unpredictable, and I don’t want to scare the kids.

Hotels also have their pros and cons. The beds may be comfortable or pathetic, the breakfast might consist of stale donuts and old orange juice, or the rest of the patrons on my floor may decide to party like it’s 1999 (the first person to post a comment correctly identifying this pop cultural shout-out will be honored in my next post). And then this happens to me…I wake up and have no idea where I am. I don’t know if I am at home, in a hotel, or at a family’s house. I don’t know what city I am in or what event I am preaching at. Then as the panic sets in, I automatically assume I have missed my flight (this is a constant fear I live with). So without ever really waking up, I get dressed, grab my bag, and realize as the elevator opens to the lobby and I stumble out in a sleep-deprived stupor, that I have 4 hours before my plane leaves. Heart pumping, adrenaline flowing, I limp back to my hotel room where I lay in bed for 3.5 hours trying to go to sleep. Then, I doze off for exactly 8 minutes, and the alarm goes off. This time, I know where I am…

I am in purgatory. Miles from home, hours from my wife and boys, another sleepless night. But it is worth it for several reasons.

1. I get the honor to preach the gospel to those who need Christ

2. I am storing up eternal treasure in heaven

3. When I do get home, I will have 3 days uninterrupted with my family and I don’t have to go to an office or do any administration thanks to a great team at Crossroads

4. I can catch up on sleep on the airplane, and there are 4 Starbucks in the Charlotte airport

Ahh, the life of a Road Warrior? Sound glamorous? Hardly. Sound fulfilling? More than I could ever have imagined.

Today begins a new series I have held off on for sometime because I wanted to make sure I could do it justice. So many of you email me or talk to me personally at events asking me questions about God, politics, homosexuality, the environment, musc, and parenting. Two of them, however, are the most common.

1. What EXACTLY do you do?
2. How do you do it?

Over the next few posts, I will be attempting to communicate what God has called me to do with my life, how that plays out practically, spiritually, and mechanically, and the joys and struggles associated with this calling.

I begin by saying deliberately and without apolgy…I AM AN EVANGELIST. Not the TV type with a Rolex and a bad hairdo. I am the Billy Graham type (though I would never compare myself with a man of such annointing and integrity). This simply means that I do not pastor a church. I do not preach to the same people week after week. I do not endure deacons meetings or business meetings/fights.

My calling takes me all over the world. I am what we call an “itinerate” evangelist, meaning that I move, travel, fly, drive, perambulate, and stay in constant motion. I live on the road. I live out of a suitcase or a backpack. I sleep in hotels and people’s guest bedrooms. I spend copious amounts of time in airports and I know ticket agents by name. I am always someone else’s guest and I am always leaving my home to serve someone else in theirs.

When I was a teenager, the Mel Gibson classic movie “The Road Warrior” came out, and not long after that, a wrestling tag-team named themselves “The Road Warriors.” Even though Hawk and Animal no longer wrestle and there is a rumor that Mel will once again don the post-apocolyptic vagabond role for a comeback (if Rambo can do it, why not Mel?), I like to consider myself a Road Warrior. There are precious few of us and we like to stick together for strength, friendship, and accountability, but what we do is difficult and challenging. It takes a toll on us, but most people in the kingdom have no idea that we even exist. So I want to tackle some issues and bare my soul as I take you inside the mind of a Road Warrior.

Here are a few of the issues I will be writing about.

1. What is an evagelist?
2. How do you get paid?
3. How do you get opportunities to preach?
4. Is there still a place for the evangelist in a post-modern culture?
5. How much do you travel?
6. What are the most difficult elements of being on the road?
7. How do you decide when to say NO and when to say YES to an invitation?
8. What temptations do you face when you are away from your family?
9. How does life on the road affect your health?
10. How do you stay connected to Christ spiritually?
11. How do you prepare sermons, and do you only have a handful you preach?
12. Do you still give public invitations? Why or why not?
13. Do weird things happen to you on the road (just wait to hear the stories…)?

This is my life and calling, and as hard as it is, I love it and would never dream of doing anything else. This should be fun!!!