How Do Pastors Know What Needs To Be Preached?

I was reading from Barbara Brown Taylor’s book, When God Is Silent, again this morning.   Brown was sharing with a friend that she was “not sure people even listened to sermons  anymore.”  

Her friend’s reply was very intriguing.  “I do think people are trying to listen and that preaching does matter.  In fact, I think the vast majority of people are sitting in the pew with parched lips.  They are so thirsty that they have lost their ability to listen, to speak or to think.  But one big gulp of Gatorade is not the answer….it requires a series of sips much like a parched field requires a series of gentle rains.”(85-86)

Since I have often felt that my sermons fall shout of meaning to those who come to listen. This little conversation, between friends, started my mine to wondering.

I wondered, what if we pastors stood up one Sunday morning and said: 

“Help me to understand what you really want to know about God.?”   

“Or tell me what you need to hear this morning.”  

“Or tell me what I could say that would be relevant to your faith journey.” 

My cousin said to me years ago, “Preachers get up there and assume we know what you are talking about.  When in truth we don’t know." Her comments gave me tons to think about.

The truth is she is absolutely correct.  Any pastor who cares about the integrity, of daring to preach God’s truth, spend a great deal of time studying before putting the pencil to the paper.  We have read commentary on the scripture we are using. We do word studies from the Greek and Hebrew.  We pray, we study some more, and finally try to get relevant examples; to help our congregation relate to what we say. 

That is all well and good.  However, in our attempt to keep it simple, we often messy up the message by assuming that those listening have done an equal amount of preparation.  

                  

Not so.

Brown writes in the first Chapter, of this little treasure of information, exactly what I am referring to: 

“However well you have prepared, there is nothing like that moment of silence before you begin (to preach), when you look out at all those faces and wonder if you are about to waste their time.”(p. 5)

                                                           

BAM!

So the question is, how can any pastor know what you need unless you tell them?  

It is just like in any-other -relationship; there needs to be a two way discussion on any important topic.  We are not called to cut a hole in the top of people’s heads and pour in information that will make them know.

I just thought of the habit, I wrote about the other day, that I have developed in my preaching and Bible Study classes about asking questions.  

Maybe this decision, to question instead of alway telling, was a God thing.  

Maybe is was my way of getting the people, I served with, to ask their own questions. 

Because, lets be honest.  It is a well known — long standing expectation of a pastor — that they "know it all."  And in-turn we are now suppose to enlighten the people as to the God we all believe in.

                                                               

Hello?

Yes, we have been schooled in theology for four or five years.  That is very true.  But we are not mind readers.  We can’t  just assume to know what you are wanting to hear.

We need your input.

So when your pastor asks you the questions; don't be afraid to answer. That way we can all sip the Word together.  A little at a time.

To Speak? Or To Listen?

Yesterday I wrote about those who are so willing to speak.  Making so much  noise that it is difficult to silence it.  

Job longed for his unhelpful friend to shut up so he could think.  

⁴ As for you, you whitewash with lies;

   all of you are worthless physicians. 

⁵ If you would only keep silent,

   that would be your wisdom! 

⁶ Hear now my reasoning,

   and listen to the pleadings of my lips..(Job 13)

However his friends didn’t listen to his plea. They just kept repeating platitudes from the past; believing they were being helpful.  And, right/correct by the way.

Isn’t it interesting that people don’t realize that their constant speaking doesn’t allow others to have a voice?  I am thinking their assumption is that what they have to say is so interesting, or so right, that others don’t need to speak.

That kind of assumption is the tug that has yanked my chain for years.

There is a cherished truths in my life.  Silence.  

In silence I become open to listening.  To being willing to hear what needs to be heard. It took me years to find this truth. When we are continually talking we limit our ability to learn something new.  

One of the things I have realized, about myself in these past years, is that I am more interested in asking the questions; then having the answers. 

It is a great place to live. There is a freedom in not having to know it all — or even know a little — or pretend to know. 

This is most especially true when it come to God.  

By asking questions I have reversed the direction of  conversation.   And it feels great.  

I learned this gift from Jesus.  

Though the years, as I read, and reread the Gospels, I noticed that most of the time Jesus answered a question, asked of  him, not with an answer but with another question.

One example I can think of, off the top of my mind, is when the arrogant Lawyer stood up, to test Jesus by, asking: “Teacher, what must I do to inherited eternal life?”  And Jesus asked him two questions back:  “What is written in the law?”  “What do you read there?”(Lk. 10:25-26)

Or when:

Then Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, ²‘Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands before they eat.’ ³He answered them, ‘And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? (Mt.15)

Or when:

³³The disciples said to him, ‘Where are we to get enough bread in the desert to feed so great a crowd?’ ³⁴Jesus asked them, ‘How many loaves have you?’ (Mt. 15)

What I am thinking is that Jesus continually invites his followers to find their own answers; by reviewing their own behavior, attitudes and habits.  

He lets us wrestle with our own stuff.  Asking us to focus on ourselves when it comes to our egos and pride, our greed and needs.

People of Jesus’ day were so use to the religious leaders telling them. That they became unable to think for themselves.  

Like Job’s three friends. Repeating only what they had been told; rather than figuring things out with their God given brains.

I don't know.  What do your think?

Do We Speak About What We Know? Or What We Have Been Taught?

I am thinking this morning about the Book of Job.  In particular I am thinking of Job’s three unhelpful ‘friends.’

Through the years, even before I went into the seminary, I have had this tug. I am not sure how to describe it.  But is about people who talk without saying anything essential.  People who talk about God without any actual relevance.  And yet they speak with such authority.

Do you know what I mean?

I was reminded of this tug as I was rereading the Book of Job.  He had three friends who grieved with him after God allowed Satan to have his way with Job. At first Job and his friends could only sit silently in disbelief together.

Unfortunately, after a time, Job's friends began to speak for God.  All they really knew, for sure, was that they could not understand Job’s suffering. However  they didn't leave it there. They began to spout their learned religious myths; and arguments based on ancient beliefs. 

The problem is Job's friends claim to know what is unknowable.  They even admit their ignorance by quoting scripture after scripture to prove their point.  A common mistake in today's world as well. (Read it for yourself in chapters 11-20 of Job)

Instead of comforting Job, by being his strength, they began to claim that the only logical thing, they could come up with, was that Job must have done something to displease God.  Nothing else made any sense.  Their simplistic logic just assumed that God was punishing Job for what he did.  And their religious traditions would actually back them up.

This way of thinking is not uncommon even in todays world.  I have heard many time: “What have I done for God to let this happen to me.”  Or, “I must have done something really bad.”

However, Job knew better!

I love Job's comment, to all of their claim to wisdom (Chapter 13).

"‘Look, my eye has seen all this, my ear has heard and understood it. ² What you know, I also know;  I am not inferior to you. ³ But I would speak to the Almighty, and I desire to argue my case with God. ⁴ As for you, you whitewash with lies;  all of you are worthless physicians.  ⁵ If you would only keep silent,  that would be your wisdom!  ⁶ Hear now my reasoning,...

I am thinking that this kind of speaking/talking is a key problem — a difficulty that needs to be resolved — but is not logically apparent. So then our human mind falls back on myths, and learned beliefs, uninformed information drawn from tradition that should have been corrected long ago.

Jesus did attempt to correct this.

I truly appreciate the dialogue between God and Job -- see Chapters 38-42. Ending with these words from Job:

² ‘I know that you can do all things,

   and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. 

³ “Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?”

Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand,

   things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. 

⁴ “Hear, and I will speak;

   I will question you, and you declare to me.” 

⁵ I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear,

   but now my eye sees you; 

⁶ therefore I despise myself,

   and repent in dust and ashes.’  

The conversation that God has, with the three friends, helps me with the tug I have lived with since early on in my life: 

7 After the Lord had spoken these words to Job, the Lord said to Eliphaz the Temanite: ‘My wrath is kindled against you and against your two friends;….my servant Job shall pray for you, for I will accept his prayer not to deal with you according to your folly; for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has done.’ (Job 42)  

As I read these words again I had to inwardly smile.  

God’s words, to Job’s three friends, speak to my often felt feelings, when listening to those who presume to define God in their own limited language.  

When people begin to tell me, or others, that they know the mind and will of God; I often am tempted to ask -- and sometimes have: “How do you know?  Or, "Did you see God face to face?”

What the human mind has tattooed onto God’s will, and character, is actually quite intriguing. And, in my opinion, quite incorrect.  

Think about it!  

             
                         To be continued

What Do We Actually Celebrate?

Today is Memorial Day.  

Yesterday as I left Iowa, and drove north toward Wisconsin, I saw American flags lining every street in town. On every single street flags had been planted in the corner of every yard.  Not just little flags, but regular size flags.

Now I grew up in a very patriotic culture. I wasn't even allowed to breath when the National Anthem was played.  World War Two was not too distant in the memory of America people’s minds. Theirs hearts were truly grateful for what those, who served in the armed forces, did to defend the rights of freedom. And the ones who couldn’t join the action, who stay home, did their part to help a nation without a the majority of its young men and women. 

It was a shared experience for all involved.   They all knew what it honestly meant for a nation to "be great."

It made me wonder, as I drove away, what the generations, that have come since, are actually celebrating on this national holiday.

So being me, I began to compare this holiday with another huge celebration, Easter.  A holiday, by the way, celebrated all over the world, not just in America.   

I thought about how it was for Jesus followers, who walked and talked, listened and experienced how it really was to know Jesus first hand.  How it must have been, on that awful Friday, for them — so lost, so full of grief and disbelief.  And yes, disappointment -- they believed Jesus was indestructible.

That event rendered, Jesus’ closest followers, defenseless and completely disoriented. They didn’t know what to do. So they did what they knew best.  They went fishing.  

We can only, just begin to, imagine their joy when Jesus came and met them on the beach.  They witnessed first hand the awe and joy of the biggest event in history; and most certainly their otherwise ordinary lives.  

They experienced what we today can only read about to know. 

I am quite aware how people today celebrate the Easter event.

However, I was born just four years after the end of WWII.  I came into life in the midst of that huge feeling of pride. 

But now this day comes and goes, in my life, without much if any notice.  Even when I was in full-time ministry the only true reason I gave thought to it was because I was expected to give it attention for the sake of the veterans in the congregation.

So my question today is: 

What, how and why do we celebrate something that occurred seventy-five years ago?

What Is The Message You Give?

For most of my ordained ministry — from early on — the focus was on the  messages we give to others.

One of the main areas was what we say to children without uttering a word.

This is most prevalent in the worship space.  Children are totally aware of how people feel, about them being just “kids”, by the looks they receive.  Right?  Kids are suppose to act like grown-ups when they are in the pew. And by the way whenever they are in public.

I witnessed this in a Taco Bell one afternoon:  The mother says, to her little boy of about 6, “Stop acting like a child.” 

Really?

Some people, mostly my age group, are totally unaware  of this way of being with children.  We have grown too close to the way it has always been.  

I 1998 Barbara Brown Taylor wrote a little book titled: When God is Silent.  I’ll say that she was writing about the messages we give.

                                                                        Or, actually don’t give.

And the sad thing is we are mostly unaware of it.

I have read this book many times in the last twenty plus years.  And it has never failed to inspire me.   However this time, as I read, I kept  wanting to clap and clap some more.

I am thinking that one of the reason, I read something new, is that I wasn’t ready to hear before. However, in the last five years, my eye have been opened to the need for the traditional church to make some major changes.  

 What I was reading, in Brown’s book, is about how the Word of God has been (my interpretation of her thoughts) diluted and misrepresented.  Actually I will be even more bold and say: How God, and God the Word, has been represented in the modern world, spoken and though silent actions.

Brown prefaced her point by first explaining how ‘words’ in every avenue of our lives, have been used to get us to do something, or spend our money, or follow a trend in thinking, or follow a cause, or support a charity.  

She references a eulogy for a literary critic and linguist named Steiner. She writes: “…any preacher who reads this eulogy for the Word without sensing a chill is not paying attention.  We should all be wearing black, because the assaulted, gutted word whose diminishment he laments is the same word we rely on to talk to people about God… a common language we share, and our congregation listen to us with the same ears as they listen to politicians, salespeople, and news commentators.  

Their ears have been assaulted. They are fired upon every day by words intended to influence them, to manipulated them, to separate them from their cash….”(p.19)

It has to give anyone who listens to others talk, about not just God, but anything, might make them wonder the same wonder Pontius Pilate had, as the accused Jesus, stood before him: 

                                              “What is truth?”

Really!  Think about it.

Brown sights the example of, “the KKK”  who stood on street corners, with white robes and fire torches, claiming they acted in God’s name.  

What was the message?

Or when, in 1987, Oral Robert sent an urgent message to the television audience that: “God is taking the initiative….unless he raises a total of $8 million, above regular ministry expenses by next month, he will die.”

Whats the message?  

Or a more subtly  — another one of Brown’s  examples — “…a nicely landscaped neighborhood of second homes is going up one mile from the Hispanic trailer park where there are no screens on the windows.  A government grant for more public housing has been turned down for fear of whom it might attract in town……”(p.28)

What is the message?

The messages we speak, whether from the pulpit, or in the nightly news, or with each other is a fragile tool.

The messages we give when we act, or hold a poster, or ignore the reality of what is.  

We give a message. 

When we ignore oppressive behavior, bullying in any form.

What is the message we give?

All small examples given by us though how we speak our words, our body language and actions.  

We give a message.

My little book: I Still Have So Many Things To Say To You, was prompted by a poster, someone was holding outside local a high school, that gave this message: “God Hates Fags.” 

                                           Really?

Through history we have taken the language of God and melded it into a foreign language that no one truly understands anymore. 

My wonder is how do we reverse the way we have, for so long, inadvertently devalued our ability to witness to the Word.

How can we speak in ways that don’t get confused with the popular forms of verbal  manipulation today?

How can people, who want to know God, learn to listen to what God/Jesus came to tell us? 

Any thoughts?

Follow The Rules. Or Not?

The question I have often ask others, and myself, is:  Does being ‘good’, following all the rules, following all the set traditions , rituals and practices of the church (institutional church) save us?

Does following all the rules, and doing good, mean we are pleasing God?

Does that really mean we are doing our faith “right?”

These are not new wonders for me.  Those who have listened to me preach, or in Bible Study discussions, have heard me offer these same wonders over the years.  

And one day, about two weeks age I was reading one of my favorite authors most recent books titles, The Haunt of Grace.  Toward the end of the book he writes:

“So here’s the mysterious part, the grace part of it.  God the ultimate “good,” does not always abide by the rules either.  That’s what Jesus’ birth and life, crucifixion and resurrection are about.  They are revelations of God acting, engaging to break the rules of lesser goods, as well as of corruption and death.  By his engagement with people, Jesus did miracles that went against the “rules” of madness, sickness, storms, and religious powers.  Don’t you suppose that’s why he was so upset with the hypocrisy of people who limited goodness to the keeping of rules, maintaining their image of innocence while their spirits atrophied?   Risk of engagement is based on grace, not on innocence. 

Rules are a good thing as far as they go, but they do not exhaust the possibilities for either goodness or evil.”  (p.148)

As I read those words I wanted to shout, to whoever would listen ‘SEE I TOLD YOU SO.’

Thank you Ted Loder for confirming what I have have been professing for so many years.  You said it so much more clearly then I ever could.

Thats all I have to say today.

I’d like to hear what you think.

Anything New?

Have you ever watched a tree, while the wind is blowing through it?  

I did this morning at dawn.  It was rather intriguing.  We think the wind just blows in one direction at a time.

Not ture!

At least as far as I could see, as I watched those branches go in all different directions all at once.

Not theological you say?  

                                   Not about Jesus you wonder?  

Check out this passage from the Gospel of John 3:

⁸The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.’ ⁹Nicodemus said to him, ‘How can these things be?’ ¹⁰Jesus answered him, ‘Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?

As I watched the branches, dressed with it’s newly green growth, I couldn’t help but think about how the Spirit move in and around us.  Giving each of us in our own individual directions for this time in our lives.

And I thought: How interesting it is that we all assume — presume — to know what we don’t really know.  The common assumption often is that we are all guided, by the Spirit, in the same way.  That the way of the Spirit is the same for everyone.  I know I have been guilty of that assumption myself.  

You know, “be of the same mind” kind of thing.

But watching that tree made me think again.  

Think about this, If God wanted us to go in the same direction.  If God wanted us all to think the same way.  Nothing would ever be invented.  Nothing new would ever come into being.  Nothing,  or no one, would ever change and grow.

Didn’t “the one sitting on the throne say: “See I am making all things new?”(Rev. 21:5)    I know, quoting Revelations is a tricky thing to do.  But Check out Isaiah 43:18f) where God says “I am doing a new thing….”

A little proof texting, to remind us of the possibilities of God, is okay sometimes.  As long as we are forthright about it (;

Anyway, as we live our lives from day to day, year to year, don’t we learn more; and so think differently?  

Don’t we go to the same place in different directions?

Do we always do the same things the same way all the time?

Is there no room for different?  Or new possibility?

Some wouldn’t be doctors?  Some wouldn’t be teachers, or lawyers, or electrical workers or garbage persons or, or, or?  Would we all be just teachers?

No, God made us all individuals who walk through life all thinking and moving and being different.  

Right?

Just a silly imagination for an old — not so dumb — woman at dawn.