a•bomb•i•nation

“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…

Paint it Orange, and Kill It.

Sometimes teachers just have the perfect illustrations. I have had them at times.You see, teachers are a kind of different breed. We walk around life with this radar – a “great teaching illustration radar.” Normally people just have events happen in life, and keep going. Maybe they’ll retell certain events to get a laugh, but that’s it. Teachers on the other hand, often while the event is in progress, will be thinking – “I’ve got to remember this, this will fit so well with my next teaching!”

I can remember one time going downstairs to use the bathroom a church several years ago, and knocking on the bathroom door. From the other side of the door that led to the single-person bathroom came a response that I’ve never heard in my life before. Normally in situations like these you expect, “Someone’s in here!” or “Almost done!”  This time the voice on the other side was Bruce, and he said “Come on in!!”

What!!?!??! It was a great slip. And as I laughed, my mind immediately contextualized it for a teaching. It took me 6 months, but I finally found the chance to use it!

So anyway tonight I was listening to a good friend, Mark tindale, teach – and he had a classic example of this. He has squirrels in his house. They get in through a hole in their roof, and live in his walls. So he got an exterminator. The guy told him, “look squirrels mean business, you’ve got to really go after them.”

He proceeded to recount how he had once had a squirrel in his house. So he caught it, drove it 2 miles away, and let it go. Two nights later it was back! He was convinced it was the same squirrel. So he caught it again, and painted it orange. Two nights later….you guessed it….an orange squirrel was in his house! So he killed it.

His message to Mark about squirrels – you have to paint it orange and kill it! Mark used this tonight as a great illustration for getting rid of the stuff on the inside, the stuff people don’t see, that keeps us from living lives we are meant to live. He said you can’t just let this stuff stay in your life and fester – you have to paint it orange (call it by name) and kill it (confess it to others).

Awesome. I loved it. And because the illustration is so great, I’ll probably never forget that part of the lesson.

The Quest for the Masterpiece

I taught this morning at church. I really love the opportunity to teach, whenever I get it. Teaching is one of those things in my life where I feel “alive”—like I’m doing what I was created to be doing. I pretty much love everything about it – I love preparing for it, I love the research, and most of all, I love the presentation. There is nothing quite like giving a really good teaching.

Over the years, I have come to regard making and giving a teaching as an art form. There really is no other way to describe it. I feel the way about my teachings, that a sculptor or painter would feel about their masterpiece. I have a certain methodology that I go through each time I prepare, and each “masterpiece” has to have certain elements in it that fit together just so.

I will often agonize over the smallest details of the teaching because I long for them to be so perfect. In fact, this agony has become a familiar, and not so welcome, part of my teaching creation process. C.S. Lewis used to write of “longing” in many of his works—a pain-like emotion that reaches out from within us and stretches for the divine. This longing drove many of his characters to seek ‘better worlds’ and to not be satisfied with the status quo.

I have this longing when it comes to teaching.

I am driven by an intense and powerful force within me to make each teaching the best I have ever given. And so, I scrutinize. I dissect. I disassemble and reassemble. Every minute of a teaching counts. Every verse. Every story. Every point. The flow. The logical structure. The tone. The humor. The Spirit. And on and on.

I agonize over every fine detail – they all have to line up perfectly like the shaft of an arrow, all pointing in the same direction, so as to pierce the heart of those listening (mine included). I aim, as one of my teachers once said, to “Stimulate the mind, stir the heart, and motivate the will” every time.

I could write for hours about teaching, I’ll have to do more some time, because what I inteded to write about (the many pieces that I try to look for each time I teach) I have yet to do. Suffice to say, today I gave my teaching at our first service, and…you guessed it…decided it wasn’t quite perfect yet.

In between services I changed the title, swapped points #1 and #2, deleted my intro and added a new one complete with dramatic and funny story (that I thought of in the bathroom) and re-tooled the ending.

The second time around was so much better. It almost felt like a masterpiece to me, except….