One of the oddities about pursuing a doctorate in preaching full-time is that you have to give up preaching. After spending the last 31 years (or, at least, most of it) preaching every Sunday, I am in a situation where I no longer preach. As a matter of fact, after resigning from my pastoral duties in Fresno, I had only one other assignment to preach and that was in September (I finished my assignment at the end of July). So, after all those years of preaching weekly, I have been relegated to preaching “seldomly”. And I say, “Thank God”. But not for the reasons you might think.
First of all, I enjoy preaching. It is my passion. To be away from a pulpit is not fulfilling to me. Secondly, preaching is an art that must be practiced in order to be improved. While my wife may or may not enjoy hearing me preach at her when we are home, it does not quite equate with preaching to a congregation. Thirdly, preaching is a discipline that keeps your grounded in the Word and faithful to the “whole counsel” of God. So, considering these things, why would I say, “Thank God”?
Someone has said that a routine is just a grave with the ends knocked out. After 3 decades of preaching, there is a danger that it becomes routine. The preacher begins to do “formula” preaching rather than really dealing with the depths of the Word. It is easy to get into the habit if allowing sermon preparation to substitute for the richness of studying the Word of God for personal insight and pleasure. It is also easy to become reliant on your technique and your process rather than relying on the Spirit of God to be your inspiration and your insight. By preaching with less frequency, I find that I am seeing things in a fresh new way. God is continuing to give me opportunities to preach (I have another assignment at a local church in early October and a series of sermons to preach in Ohio in January of next year). Now, because of the infrequency, I am finding renewed passion and joy in both the preparation and experience of the sermon.
What have you been doing for a long time? What has become “routine” in your life? What did you use to depend upon God for but find yourself doing now in your own power and might? How easy it is to become dependant on nothing except your own abilities! What have you done in your life and ministry with passion but find that it is now being done by formula and routine? Maybe it’s time to step away from it for a while. Let the batteries recharge. Don’t give it up forever or step away permanently. I find that this is the choice most church members make and it is frustrating. The solution to renewing your passion is not quitting your passion! The solution is to find ways to renew your mind and review your procedures. Having preached once in the last 6 weeks, I can tell you I am looking forward to being in the pulpit in a couple of weeks. Thank God he has given me the gift of stepping away from my passion in order to draw closer to it!
5 comments:
Wow Jeffrey. That was just great.
You don't know me. I just happened to stumble upon your blog in search for some inspiration for my own. I think I might have to add you to my favorites list.
Thanks for stumbling upon this. I am encouraged by your comments. You have hit on the purpose of the blog, so I hope you will come back soon and often. I hope to write on it with great frequency. Thanks, again, for your comments.
Thanks TRB for responding so candidly to my comments. A few things, particularly, caught my attention. First, while it may seem a little trite, I am no longer a pastor and am instead a student. Part of my focus in my Ph.D. program is preaching in a post-modern context. One of the first questions that has been posed is whether or not preaching has lost it's relevance and meaning in post-modernism. It will take a while but I am sure we will get down to really dealing with that (and your) question. For what it's worth, most of what I am reading now concerns itself with the issues of "practical theology". The main point in the readings so far seems to be on the dialogical nature of both learning and praxis. The major theme seems to be moving away from theory to practice models and moving toward practice issues and questions to theory back to praxis. I find the dialogical nature of theology that includes both pastor and parishoner (and others) in dialogue together to come up with the questions and issues facing each other and society to be a fabulous model that is a much needed correction to the pontification model I think you are questioning in your comments. Finally, I have always (during my pastoral years) cautioned those to whom I was preaching not to take either the interpretation or application of the sermon I was about to share with "blind interpretation". I think you will find that the most influential movement in the church over the last few decades has been a move toward small group discussion models in order to prevent the very thing you are concerned about. As a pastor I have no special relationship to God that is higher than anyone elses. I am a man (and all that implies) that has a particular calling to open the scriptures and share what I have come to understand about them. I am not sure that my job is to tell "me what God wants for me". It is, rather, to share insights from scripture that, when applied by the Holy Spirit to your specific situation, may be helpful in allowing you to understand what the will of God is in your unique situation.
Anyway, thanks for replying. I hope you will continue the dialogue.
RB-
I certainly believe that a pastor has a place in the "modern" church (I didn't know if you meant "post-modern" or not). The pastor is a trained professional in a variety of areas - counseling (marital, grief, crisis, etc.) takes up a significant role. Over the course of my ministry I have recieved an M.Div. degree that highlights some 12-15 hours of graduate work in counseling. I have recieved CEU's in various methods of counseling; in addition, the pastor is an administrator of both an office, often with multiple people on staff, and the CEO of a financial corporation that can handle anywhere from $100,000 to millions of dollars. Again, part of my M.Div. degree was in administration and organizational structures; the pastor is also a liason for missions to both the community and the larger world. I took numerous courses in missiology, practical theology, missional practices on a local level, etc. All these were designed to enable me to be a representative of the church body at local, regional, national, and international bodies to both give and receive information concerning the needs of the missional focus and the actions that can be taken by the local church in dealing with those needs. Over the course of my pastoral ministry I participated in everything from trips to economically deprived metropolitan cities for cleaning up neighborhoods (literally clean-up) to heading up an alcohol label movement to put warning signs on alcoholic beverages warning of thier dangers to pregnant women and general health risks when abused to organizing a small town effort to revoke the permit of an adult book store operating illegally in our town to feeding the homeless to visiting maximum security prisons and county jails. In these and other ways I informed, trained, and lead groups to minister in concrete ways to the community; I beleive the pastor has a primary teaching role not dissimilar to that which a school teacher or professor has in an academic institution. While there are many styles of teaching mine has been dialogical and interactive. As with any teacher, I share what I know and help the class/students/congregation to discover what is meant by the texts we study. Ultimately, the focus of teaching is how to help the students put that into practice what you learn in one's daily life; I also consider the pastor to be part of the health care team in a community. In addition to the counseling, psychological health areas, the pastor has a role with those who are ill and infirmed. Much time is spent in hospital rooms, emergency rooms, nursing homes, and with shut-ins to be an encourager to their spirits. Any health care professional will tell you that curing disease is a function of both treating the body and treating the mind. I beleive a pastor has a significant role in helping to feed the spirit and treat the mind and soul. These areas certainly contribute to the wholeness of the person and to the wholistic medicine approach used in most health care training today. I'm sure I have left out a few areas, but these will suffice. If you have any other questions I would invite you to respond again. I appreciate your questions.
Your exposure to churches must only be in much larger settings than the average church if you believe that "plenty" of churches employ an administrative pastor. The average church is less than 100 in attendance and rarely do they have a second staff person prior to growing to 150 and above (and an Administrative Pastor is rarely, if ever, the next staff person hired).
I would also take issue with your concept that the functions I described are Marketing in their focus and that they do not seem "spiritual". The functions described in what I shared are functions of relating to and sharing with both individuals in the church and the larger community surrounding the church. Such actions and activities are part of the central mission of the church which has to do with ministering to others in the name of Christ and sharing with others the Gospel of Jesus Christ. As a pastor, one does those things for 30 minutes in a pulpit on Sundays but it becomes the focus of what you do for hours and hours throughout the week. The ministry of Jesus Christ takes place in locations other than a sanctuary. Jesus called his disciples to be both salt and light - both of which have an effect on the things that surround them and neither of which can be confined to a single spot but spread out to impact their surroundings. Such is the nature of the Gospel. It has a transformational character to it - whenever and wherever it is shared.
Finally, in those congregations that have a full-time administrator, that does not alleviate the role of the pastor in either congregational leadership, community service, and having an effect on the larger world. The other day I attended a Chapel Service here at Fuller with Dr. Lloyd Ogilvie as the featured speaker. Dr. Ogilvie is the past Senior Pastor of Hollywood Presbyterian Church. In addition, he is the retired Chaplain of the U.S. Senate. He described in his sermon some of the challenges to being a person of Christian faith being asked to minister to 10 members of the Senate who were Jewish. His task was to find common ground and be able to share with them in meaningful ways. I say all this to make the point that just because someone handles the business functions of the church does not mean that the pastor has fewer duties. Instead, as the local church setting is taken on by others who are trained to adminstrate the affairs of the church, the pastor merely had a larger parish in which to minister. The role increases as the territory increases.
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