Archive for the ‘Ministry’ Category
Arg.
That’s it. Arg.
You’ve heard of writer’s block right? Well, there is such a thing for teachers/preachers as well. As I have well documented already, I go though a process when developing a teaching (sermon). It involves prayer, moving into meditation, moving into study, and finally into writing.
This particular teaching has a lot of extraneous pressures weighing on my mind as I’ve tried to seek God about it: (1) it’s Easter—got to be good; (2) it’s the end of the series—needs to wrap everything up nicely; (3) it’s Easter—needs to incorporate the resurrection; (4) the topic overlaps with some of what I said in last week’s teaching—makes me nervous people will think I’m redundant; (5) it’s Easter—did I mention that??
Inevitably the more extra thoughts there are in my head, the harder it is to focus and find the real deal. So I’ve spent hours and hours thinking, praying, and meditating on this thing. And I’m circling. Big time. About 10:30pm tonight the panic began to set in.
I hate the panic.
It’s like that feeling you used to get when you showed up in class and the teacher started to hand out tests, and you are like, “WHAT!?!?!?!? A test?!?!?!”
Yeah, like that. Only it’s like, “WHAT?!?!?!? Tomorrow is EASTER!!!!!”
Finally tonight I tried an approach I have only tried a few times before. I started writing before it was all crystal clear in my mind. Usually I don’t write until I’ve got the whole structure laid out in my head. But tonight was different. It had to be. My thinking had become futile, and I needed to just start.
So I wrote kind of a free-thought style, and then went back and tried to build structure around it. And then, went back again and tried to insert scripture.
What I have ended up with is not my normal teaching. Which may be a really good thing.
The last time I felt awesome about a teaching the night before I bombed. So maybe feeling scared the night before, will mean it ends up awesome! Who knows?
One thing I know, is that I am not going to be insecure. I will not apologize!! I learned my lesson a few weeks ago. I’m going to just preach this thing with all my heart, no matter what. And let the chips fall where they may.
Update forthcoming tomorrow night…
OK, so this picture has nothing really to do with my post, but I just really love it and yeah . . . it inspires me :)
But what I really want to talk about is the fact that I’ve taught 4 of the last 5 Sundays, and I have the next two as well. This is the most I’ve ever taught consecutively on Sunday morning in my life. I was excited for this challenge, and knew that I’d learn a lot about myself during the process.
One thing I’ve noticed is that I’m starting to fall into a groove (just noticed that when I spell that with one “o” like I did the first time, that it spells GROVE – wouldn’t that be nice to ‘fall into’?). I have kind of a series of things I do, almost like a ritual, to get inspired for a new teaching.
First, early in the week, I like to spend anywhere between 1-3 hours praying in the main room at the church. Something about being in the room that I will preach in inspires me. And praying, before thinking about what I want to say, or studying and researching, is a really good foundation for me. I like to just pray. And then listen. And then write.
Usually the first thing I’m going for is the “main idea.” Often I have a pre-assigned topic, so what I’m praying about is what God wants me to say about that topic. Then, (hopefully as fast as possible) I am passionately pursuing the coveted three points. I am addicted to those three points. I lust after them. I need them. If it starts to get close to Sunday, and I don’t have the three headings for those points, I start to panic. What if I can’t find three points???
So yeah, I’m a little obsessed with the three points. But it’s for a good reason. They are the main building blocks to support and communicate the main message. I need them (did I mention that yet?!).
Then I like to spend some time studying. I’ll do this by listening to a couple teachings throughout the week that are of similar themes and taking notes on them. I carry these notes in the car, around in my pocket, wherever I need them.
I also will do some study online. Usually two nights before I’ll spend some considerable time reading related verses, and especially commentaries.
Then, either two nights before, or the night before, I take a shower. Yup. A shower. I have no idea why, but it really seems to work for me. In the shower I pretty much start to preach in my head and try different approaches over and over again until it “works.”
Eventually I get tired of the shower, so I have to get out. So then I spend another long period of time walking around the house (not naked!!) praying and writing things down, and reciting the teaching in my head.
Once I feel really good about flow, about stories, about verses, about themes, about the three points, and about illustrations…then I will let myself go write. Usually this isn’t until 11pm the night before.
Crazy huh?
So, what inspires you?
“A preacher should aim to stimulate the mind, stir the heart, and motivate the will.”
When I get the chance to teach at church I think about this quote a lot. I’m not even sure who said it, but somewhere along the line in my life, this quote made an impact in my life. I will often run my teaching through this gauntlet—is it intellectually challenging?; will it touch people emotionally?; is it practical enough to demand a behavioral, volitional response?
To say that I “think about my teachings a lot” is probably a pretty good understatement. I come close to obsessing. Seriously. I typically spend hours mulling over every single detail in my teaching. Generally I won’t even start writing notes down, until I have rehearsed my teaching over and over again in my head. God has gifted (or is it a curse!) me with a very logical brain, so when I think about a teaching, I actually visualize the teaching broken into several-minute chunks. Welcome>Intro (is it a story? funny? serious? bible verse? does this really fit? will it work? will it grab people’s attention? does it seguey perfectly?)>first point…..and on and on.
I obsess over every minute detail. Does this story illustrate exactly what this point will say? Or, I’m making this point, what story from my life can I think of to illustrate this? Does point 1 support and flow into point 2, and then point 3, and overall? Is there a logical flow?
When I’m all done creating, I will often go over it and write times in the margins to help me stay on track—like, point 1 must start at 10:05. (Have I said too much yet?)
I spend so much time inside my head (and spirit) that I have to create activities to help me not fall asleep. It actually is kind of a meditation that I do where I envision myself preaching and just try different approaches, different Scriptures, different stories, one after the other, until it works. So I will often take 30 minute showers during preparation time, in order to stay awake while thinking through this. And I’ve taken to walking. I will pace in my house; sometimes outside my house—back and forth on my sidewalk—and very often in the main room of the church.
I say all this to say that I take creating a teaching very seriously. I try to listen to God for every detail. And this past Sunday, was one of those Sundays for me.
I think my preparation was decent, maybe not my best. The material God put on my heart was solid. Challenging even. The logical flow was good. But you see, you can prepare until the cows come home (which by the way, they never did that night, so maybe that’s the deal) but if you can’t deliver, then it’s virtually pointless. And delivery is where everything fell apart for me. Delivery is usually the EASY part for me. I absolutely love being in front of people and teaching. It is one of my very favorite, most fulfilling, most exciting things to do in life. But I do have an achilles heel—insecurity.
And this Sunday it got the best of me.
Somewhere in between the 9am service and the 11am service, the thought grabbed me that I have been way too serious lately. No funny stories. Not much laughing. Was I doing something wrong? Allowing myself to dwell on this thought eventually led to my demise! During the 11am service, about 10 minutes into the teaching, I looked around and to my eyes, it appeared people were totally bored.
“Oh no! See! You are WAY TOO SERIOUS! Quick! Think of something funny to say! You are losing them! Why did you pick this topic anyway? This topic is too elementary! No one is challenged! They are just feeling sorry for you now!”
And down I went. Further and further. And then, I made my trademark mistake. I started apologizing for myself.
“I’m sorry I’m so serious all the time guys! Man, you are probably thinking where’s the funny Christian we are used to?”
And over the years I’ve learned that me apologizing for myself, is really me saying, “Well I think this really stinks, so you probably do too! Right?!?”
Yeah. So I bombed.
Now, what’s crazy about teaching in church is that even if on the inside I bombed; even if according to my standards I did not attain that level I am shooting for; God still uses the material to touch people’s lives. And inevitably people will come up to me after my worst showings (in my eyes) and say, “That was your best teaching ever!”
WHAT?!?!?!?
I guess that’s God’s way of reminding me that even though I prepare, prepare, prepare . . . in the end the real “oomph” to any good teaching is God. And that, of course, is always my prayer. That God will fill my words with meaning and authority beyond my abilities. And so often he does, for which I am always very grateful.
But anyway, I’m slated to teach again this week. And I am going to conquer this insecurity, and give a teaching knowing that I’m doing what I love, and saying what God wants me to say. And I’m not going to get focused on what other people look like, or think . . .or what I think they think which, might not even be true! I’m just going to enjoy myself, and do my best. And let the words fall where they may…
Ok, so I want to write about this, but I’m afraid it will sound (for lack of a better phrase) like I’m tooting my own horn. That’s really not my intention, but I did have an experience this weekend that is, shall we say, blogworthy.
For the last six or seven years, the Eastern Region of the Vineyard USA has gathered its youth groups in two winter retreats—one in the north, and one in the south. About 18 months ago, I was asked to take the leadership of a “task force” that helps support youth pastors in our region, and also plans all the major youth events. Last year our 2 winter retreats grew a bunch and were amazing.
This year, we decided to do something a little more…daring. Over the last year I had heard some talking about how our region has never offered a “large scale youth conference” experience. That sounded awesome, but also seemed like it could feel like just another event to attend. With finances like they are, I need to be sensitive to how many events I schedule for the region.
So, a couple of us started thinking, maybe we should use a vehicle that already exists. Sometime about 5 months ago, I pulled the trigger on this decision. Scrap the two winter retreats, and go to one. One huge winter retreat for all youth groups from Maine to Virginia.
As a youth pastor I talk a lot about living your faith in ways that stretch you and not becoming complacent or comfortable. I hadn’t had a major stretching experience in ministry for a couple months, and this was a big one. It was a major leap of faith. All of us in the region had worries that our numbers would actually shrink because we were asking people to drive further. But in the end, everyone deferred to me. Basically – “Christian do what you think is best, and we’ll support it.” Talk about pressure!
So I went for it. And that leads me to this weekend. Over the past 4-5 months I have done TONS of work on this. Logistic work. Details. Creative planning. Booking. And prayer. Constantly asking myself, “How can I make this experience just blow people away?”
Then on Saturday, the first day, as 730 people filed into this room, it was like seeing my vision fulfilled. I had leader after leader come up to me, almost awestruck at what they were witnessing. During the first meeting, I remember a point where I sat back and just breathed it in.
You know, we have dreams, and we work towards dreams, and goals, and visions. And sometimes these take a really long time to come to pass. And I guess I just realized that wow—it sure feels good when one of these just works out perfectly. You know what I mean? It was so fulfilling. It was one of those “sweet spot” moments where I just felt like, “Yes. This is what I want to do. This is worth it all.”
On top of me feeling that personal fulfillment, I also felt just a very real sense of God’s partnership in all this. I don’t have time to recount all the miraculous ways that God overcame obstacles that stood in my way on this. But really, after a while it was almost laughable. I just began to expect insurmountable problems to arise, and then amazing solutions from God to come just in the nick of time. It was a testimony of God’s faithfulness even in the difficult times.
Yeah. It was a good weekend :)
…Ajax, butter, cookies, a deck of cards, an elephant, some falafel, God, a harry igloo, jelly, Kris Kringal and his laidies, your mom, neosporin, an octopus, a parachute, a queer eye for the straight guy box set, a red rider BB gun, your Salome costume (of course!), a transvestite dressed as Cher, uristat!, a vestibule, windshield wiper fluid, a xylophone, a Yorkie, and a Zen meditation garden have in common?
Friendship!
I just spent the weekend running a huge youth retreat for the Eastern Region of the Vineyard.
And spent most of that time hanging out with my youth group and some adult friends who came along to help out!
And just a little bit of time dancing between some ropes (no I wasn’t boxing).
And maybe the most important side effect of all of these things, is friendship. I love trips like this because they are like pouring gasoline on the fire of friendship. They allow moments you don’t get to have in normal life. They provide jokes beyond measure, laughs, cries, and deep talks, that are much harder to come by outside of the realm of the “special trip.” Most adults don’t get these opportunities very often and I count myself lucky enough to have a job that makes me do this regularly.
I shared a very small cabin room with two very good friends of mine (Shane and Isaac) and we had a great chance to catch up, talk late, and be real. We also made lots of wonderful jokes that I probably shouldn’t share right now. I got to have a one-legged race in a parking lot with some old friends and some new friends—inviting them all into a tradition that me and some friends have had for years on end. I had a chance to catch up with friends I had not seen in 15 years! And I also had a chance to reconnect with friends I have made over the past 3 years who hail from all over our region. What a blast!
And finally, on the way home, we got to play . . . car games. What could be better? (I’m actually being serious.)
Ever since I was a little boy I have been forced (ok I loved it!) to play car games, and listen to my dad’s really long and really really stupid jokes. In fact, my dad’s jokes are so long and stupid that they became a tradition! Every family road trip, he would at some point say, “You want to hear a joke?” And we’d all say, “uuugggghhhhh, daaaadddddd!” But secretly we had been waiting with baited breath (or at least maybe just me!).
So on our car ride home yesterday that took WAY longer than it should have, I told some of my favorite jokes out of my dad’s repertoire—Rudolph the Red, Knows Rain, Deer. And we also played some great games. We played the classic alphabet road sign game (actually that was the trip up and yes, I’m pretty sure I’ve NEVER lost at that game).
And on the way home we had the joy of being introduced to two new games by my friend Jessica. One I have played before at her request, and one I had never played. It was a Great…Game…Great Game Da Dum Da Dum (and I know for sure that Janine would have said “person” instead of “game” and for sure that then Shane would have said “person” because, you know, Shane just can’t be original on the spot apparently! HA!)
The other one was a game where you make a creative list of anything, as long as they consecutively start with the next letter of the alphabet. That’s the list at the beginning of this post. Pretty creative right? Well, if I was going on a winter youth retreat, and I was asked what each and every person in attendance would be required to prove ownership of before being allowed to enter . . . I know for SURE that list would be it.
So anyway, I am blessed to have many friends. Many of whom weren’t on the trip. Some of whom are going through incredible pain in life now. And tonight I just want to honor friendship. To my friends whom I’ve known for forever, and to my friends whom I have just begun to know—my heart is with you all.
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