Stop writing sermons for people who aren’t in the room.

For the first few years after seminary, preachers write sermons to please their former professors. The more successful they are in doing this, the less effective they are as preachers. There is a big difference between preaching to seminary professors and to people who are proud of themselves for making it to the worship gathering 2 out of 4 Sundays.

When I first started preaching I wanted to get everything right. I wanted to make sure I handled the text well. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t saying something the text was never intended to say in the first place. I wanted to make sure I didn’t make a critical faux pas that would make my professors roll their eyes.

I once preached an entire series on Ecclesiastes referring to the writer of that book as Qoheleth. Talk about meaningless! People were leaving church more concerned with who in the heck Qoheleth was, instead of actually paying attention to what he had to say. For the record, the next time I preach from Ecclesiastes, I’m saying it was written by Solomon. The hard medicine of Ecclesiastes goes down easier that way.

After a couple of years of this, it dawned on me that my congregation was not comprised primarily of Bible professors whose preferred Bible translation was the Greek New Testament. I was preaching to folks who built houses, moved dirt, kept accounts, and changed 15 dirty diapers a day. They patiently waited while I figured this out. They kept showing up even though I kept preaching sermons to an audience who wasn’t there.

The day I became a better preacher was the day I said to myself, “I don’t care what my professors would think about this sermon, this is what my church needs to hear today.”

Over the years, I’ve relaxed a bit as I’ve learned that trying get everything right all the time is exhausting. I’ve also taken a cue from the writers of Scripture, who when they quoted other parts of Scripture, were more interested in giving their intended audience a fresh word from God, rather than making sure they only said what the original text was intended to say.

I’ve learned from the Jewish practice of Midrash that a new reading of a text demonstrates a deep respect for the text rather than haphazard scholarship. There’s more than one way to skin a cat, or so I’ve been told, I’ve never felt the need to vary my cat-skinning technique. There is also more than one way to read the Bible, which means there’s more than one way to preach a text, which means preachers should stop preaching to please their professors who may have given an “A” to only one kind of sermon.

I bet that if most professors knew that their newly graduated students were preaching to please them, they would be mortified. In their preaching classes, they teach audience analysis. Shape your message for the audience you’re addressing. They understand better than anyone that Scripture employs such a wide variety writers, genres, and rhetorical techniques precisely because it was addressed to vastly different audiences over a long period of time. I bet if they dropped into a gathering on a random Sunday morning and heard the preacher talking about Qoheleth they would give that sermon an “F.”

Which is exactly what any preacher who would do such a thing deserves.

I’m still a preacher, but a couple of years ago I ceased to be a young one. If I had to pick an age, I would say it happened at 35.

I preached my first full-length sermon when I was 18. I started preaching regularly for a little church outside of Abilene when I was 20. I landed my first full-time preaching job at 23. I was offered one of the more visible preaching positions in my network of churches when I was 29. Before I got there, one of the elders called me to tell me he was worried that I was too young for such a difficult job. I agreed, but assured him I was getting older every day. We were both right. Him about it being a difficult job for a young preacher and me about getting older every day.

During the first few years when I started preaching, people tell me I preached a good sermon and then say, “You’re gonna make a good preacher.” By year three, I wanted to protest and say, “I am a preacher.” I didn’t understand what they were saying then. Now I think I do. A 23 year old may able to deliver a good sermon, but he hasn’t seen enough of life to be preacher.

Being a young preacher had its advantages. I could get away with more. If I made a dumb mistake, I could blame it on my lack of experience. Sometimes I miss being naive. I said and did things back then that I can’t make a more mature, cynical version of myself do anymore. There a days when I’d love to go back and reclaim the innocence I knew at 25.

It had plenty of downsides too. I hated it when older people would discount my opinion because I was young. I’m not saying my opinions were more accurate than theirs, I just hated it when they would disagree with me and then remind me that I was still a youngster. I also don’t miss the insecurity. I spent the first 10 years of my preaching career in a fit of nerves on Saturday night that made most weekends a miserable experience. It’s only been in the last few years that I’ve been able to relax and enjoy the weekend with my family.

In my early twenties, being a young preacher was a liability. It my early thirties, it was an asset. Many churches have decided that in order to connect with young families and grow they need a “young preacher.” I heard that one church had described their ideal candidate as someone under 35. Four or five years ago I got quite a few phone calls from churches looking to hire a young preacher. Now they call and ask me if I know any young preachers!

This entire discussion about the age of a preacher is relative of course. In some denominations, a young preacher is someone under 40. Heck, in a few mainline churches, a young preacher is probably someone under 50! In my free-market, non-denominational network, I’m saying a young preacher is someone under 35.

What do you think? At what age does a young preacher cease to be young? On the other end of the spectrum, when does one become an old preacher?

At age 37, can I be just a preacher, with no other modifiers attached for a few years?

Thanks.

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Everyone hopes for a nice funeral, and with the exception of evil dictators, mass murderers, those who text while driving, and a few really annoying Sooner fans, I’d say just about everybody deserves one.

You live a good life, put in your work, and endure your trials. You have every right to expect a nice funeral. You want your friends and family to be there. You hope that it’ll be on a sunny day in the afternoon, that way no one will get their nice shoes wet from the dew-soaked grass that can be found at mid-morning funerals. It doesn’t have to be a state funeral. You don’t expect to have your coffin pulled down a path on a horse-drawn cart. Still, you hope the last event at which you’ll be the center of attention does justice to the kind of life you tried to live.

Nice funerals are my specialty. I’m a good storyteller, don’t get too preachy, and keep it pretty short. At post-funeral receptions, I’ve been told by more than one sweet old lady that she hopes I’ll be able to do her funeral, but not too soon of course.

I’ve done enough funerals that I’ve forgotten many of them. I remember snapshots in funeral homes and at gravesides, but I don’t remember the details. There is one funeral, however, that I can’t forget. It’s the one time I felt like I didn’t give someone the funeral she deserved.

Circumstances were working against me from the start. She died at the worst possible time. There was one week out of the year when no one at our church was allowed to die. That was the week when our church hosted a gathering of several thousand adults who made a yearly pilgrimage to our city to enjoy preaching, singing, and fellowship. I was the director of this event the year when this sweet lady died. I had been working long hours in the weeks leading up to the it, dealing with criticism for some of the speakers who were on the program, and addressing a never-ending stream of stressors that came my way during the three day event, including making sure we raised enough money to pay for it.

I remember being so tired I was numb on the last day, which was a Saturday. That’s when I was told by a fellow staff member that this woman had died and her family wanted me to do the funeral. It was a hurried conversation. I told her to tell the family that I would be honored to do the funeral. She got back with me a few hours later to tell me that the family had set the funeral for Monday afternoon. I was hoping they’d wait until Tuesday at least. The rest of the staff was taking that Monday off, but I had one more job to do.

We set up a time for me to meet with the family on Monday morning. After that meeting, I went back to my office to prepare what I was going to say. From there, I went straight to the cemetery chapel.

I was so tired that I was barely able to pay attention during the meeting with the family. I’d ask a question. They’d answer. Somewhere in between my eyes would glaze over. I kept telling myself that I needed to wake up and pay attention but i couldn’t shake the fog. I left the meeting with a enough information to piece together a few paragraphs of remarks. It didn’t help that I didn’t know this lady very well. We had exchanged some pleasantries after a few sermons, but I didn’t know much about her. This is not uncommon for preachers. We’re asked to say nice things about people we don’t know very well all the time. We get to be pretty good at it. Sometimes the less we know about the person, the easier it is.

I went back to my office and started working through my notes. One of the things I had asked the family to do was to prepare an extended obituary. I do this for just about every funeral I officiate. Prior to my meeting with them, they tell the story of their loved one’s life in a way that fleshes out the lists of dates and names that make up a typical newspaper obituary. This is helpful in a couple of ways. First, it’s therapeutic for the family. Some resist this exercise at first, but when it’s finished, they’re usually glad they did it. Second, it helps me have something meaningful to say about the person, especially when I don’t know her very well.

As I worked through what her family had written, I noticed that they had used her husband’s proper name. Everyone knew him as Barney, but his given name was Bernard. Seemed like a straight forward pronunciation, but as I read it, I had a niggling sense that there was something tricky about it. But how many different ways are there to say “Bernard”? Apparently there are two ways to say it, and if you think “Barney” is a useful clue, you would be just as wrong as I was.

Next was her hometown: Wewoka. Now Oklahoma is full of little towns with names like Wewoka. There are a couple of ways you can pronounce Wewoka. I took my best guess and moved on. I should have known better. When it comes to pronouncing local names, the instincts of an outsider are always wrong. Sometimes I think locals pick the most unlikely pronunciation just so they can take great joy in correcting outsiders who weren’t lucky enough to grow up in the area.

In both cases, the choices I made in my office for both names were wrong. Had I been at the top of my game, I would have made a quick phone call and made sure I knew how to say them correctly. Instead, I just hoped I had them right. I was simply too burned out to care about proper pronunciation.

The funeral service was short and sweet. I started by butchering the name of her hometown. Then I repeatedly emphasized the wrong syllable of her husband’s name as he was sitting six feet in front of me. To his credit, he never flinched. When your parents opt for the most obscure pronunciation of a common name, you probably get used to it. He’s probably the one who started telling people to call him Barney with the hope it would simplify his life.

The old man was willing to let it pass, but his son wasn’t. On the way to the graveside he went out of his way to tell me how to pronounce Wewoka and Bernard. I could tell he was irritated. I’m sure I apologized, but don’t remember doing it. Usually, I would have been mortified to find out that I’d made such a mistake. One of the secrets to giving the deceased the funeral they deserve is to correctly pronounce the names of the people and places important to them.

Again, I was too tired to care. I actually remember saying to myself, “This is going to bother me later I’m sure, but right now I’m too tired to be embarrassed.”

I was right. Eventually it did bother me. I hated that I had left her family with a memory of her funeral that included a preacher who couldn’t get his words right. I know it was a big enough deal to the son that when Bernard died a couple of years later, he told me in the family meeting that if I mispronounced Bernard during the service, he was going to stand up and correct me right then and there. His parents were nicer people than he was.

I assured him it wouldn’t be necessary and I practiced saying Bernard hundreds of times before the service. Like a true professional, I nailed the pronunciation part of the program. Even so, when I see him in heaven, I’m going to play it safe and call him Barney.

When I see Eileen, I’m going to hug her and tell her I’m sorry about her funeral.

She was a sweet lady from Wewoka, Oklahoma with a husband name Bernard and she deserved better.

Here’s why I still don’t like August:

1. The brightness of summer-come-upon-us in June is now dingy and dull.
2. I’m tired of the heat.
3. We usually vacation in June or July. Winter vacations are months away. Not much to look forward to in between.
4. Preseason football is a tease.
5. I didn’t play football in high school, but most of my friends did, so they were busy and I was not.
6. I start missing my favorite TV shows. Many of them won’t roll out new episodes until late September.
7. There are no major sporting events to get excited about.
8. If you had a great summer, then August sadly brings it to a close. If you didn’t have a great summer, August reminds you of the missed opportunity for some summer fun.

What can you add to this list?

If you like August, and want to make a case for it, I’m ready to listen.

As I’ve written elsewhere, we’ve been hesitant to move too quickly into launching a weekly large group gathering.

One reason is that we wanted our core group to develop a sense of community and prove that we could be “church” to each other without relying on such a gathering. We also wanted to experiment and see how meeting together only a couple of times a month would shape us. Would it encourage or discourage connections with new people? Could we grow numerically without a regular gathering?

After six months of experimentation we’ve decided to launch weekly large group gatherings on September 12th.

In no particular order, here’s a list of why we decided a weekly large group gathering is a good idea:

1. In this neck of the woods, it gives cultural legitimacy to a community of faith. Even those who have no interest in attending the gathering expect it to be a weekly affair. Stray too far away from the cultural norm and you come across as weird and not in a way that the people of Austin want to keep.

2. It’s harder to keep a group of people focused on a unified vision when they’re only getting together a couple of times a month. Vision leaks and it leaks fast when we’re not being reminded of it regularly.

3. If someone misses a twice-a-month gathering, it means a month will pass before they’re with everyone again. If they miss two in a row, it’s six weeks. Not as big a deal if they’re in a small group that meets weekly, but if they’re not (and not everyone will be), then it is easy for them to lose touch with the community.

4. When the purpose of the home group is not geared toward deep Bible study (and ours are not), then the larger community doesn’t get much exposure to Scripture. Call me old fashioned, but I think most people need to hear the gospel more than twice a month.

5. If you have a gifted teacher or worship leader in the community, it puts his or her gifts in the dock half the time. Since one of my primary gifts is teaching and Patrick is a gifted worship leader, this made less and less sense as we went along. I’m not sure if I should have said this one out loud, but it’s the truth.

6. Most people we’ve encountered aren’t going to come to a home group first. It’s asking a lot of someone to show up at a strange house and hang out with ten people they don’t know for 90 minutes. Extroverts may not mind it so much, but half the population are introverts. A larger group gathering feels safer than a home group setting.

7. Our kids like seeing all their friends at the large group gathering each week. They were always disappointed on our off weeks.

8. It made it a bit harder to invite our friends to come to one of our gatherings. We’d have people ask us, “Are you meeting this week?” It never felt right saying “No, but we’ll meet the next Sunday.” Sometimes it takes multiple invitations before someone shows interest. If they showed interest on a week we weren’t meeting, if felt like a lost opportunity.

9. Most of us weren’t using our off Sundays productively. Instead of using that time for service projects or cultural engagement, some of us were sleeping in and/or staying at home and doing nothing. A few among us, who admit to being addicted to attending church services, would attend gatherings at other churches out of habit or a sense of guilt.

10. I don’t have a tenth reason. I’ve been trying to think of one for two weeks, but I’m done. You’ll have to live with only nine.

As a preacher, I have many times believed something that isn’t true. I have believed that preaching makes no difference at all. No one is really listening. They can’t remember what I say a day later. It doesn’t really help and nothing really changes. I keep preaching because I don’t know what else to do.

As a preacher, I have believed many things that aren’t true.

What about you?

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As we’ve thought about our ministry strategy for Fulcrum, we’ve developed three environments and one exercise that are central to our pursuit of Christlikeness.

1. Large Group Worship Gathering: Primary purpose is worship and teaching. This is the front door through which most newcomers enter to check out our community.
2. Home Groups: Primary purpose is missional community. Community that is the bi-product of a group of people being on mission together.
3. Microgroups: 3-4 people. Primary purpose is deeper bible study and mutual encouragement to grow in Christlikeness.
4. Personal Growth plan: After taking a brief survey that assesses personality type, learning style, and spiritual trajectory each person develops a personalized plan for Spiritual formation.

One way to implement this is as a funnel through which each person who becomes a part of our community will be moved. The shape of the funnel sets the expectations for involvement in each environment. The further we travel down the funnel, the less people will be involved in each activity. There will always be more people in the large group gathering than in the home groups just as there will always be more people in home groups than in microgroups. The number of people who will actually complete and implement a personal growth plan will be but a small fraction of the number who attend the large group gathering.

To increase participation in each level moving down the funnel, we’ll start using rhetoric that communicates that the further down the funnel you travel the more important the activity is.

“We believe life change happens in a small group setting,” we could say in the large group gathering when trying to get people to sign up for a home group.

“Microgroups are the basic building block of our church,” we could say to those who are in a home group, but not yet meeting in a microgroup.

“Developing a personal growth plan is the missing element in most people’s quest for Christlikeness,” we could say when trying get people to take the survey and develop their plan.

As we ramp up the rhetoric, an unsettling irony will emerge: the activities that we say are the most important will end up being the things in which most of our community is the least involved.

Does it have to be this way?

What would happen if we refused to give any one environment a privileged place in our programming or our promotional rhetoric and instead held all of them up as equally important and valid options for those who are a part of our community? What if we encouraged each person to invest their time and energy into whichever environment is best suited for their particular season of life and stage of spiritual development?

Let’s say a single, introverted, skeptical young man shows up on a Sunday morning in response to an invitation from a friend. He’s intrigued enough by what he sees and hears to keep coming back. What do we do with him? Do we start trying to funnel him into a home group? Do we make sure he understands that he’s not really a part of our community until he joins one? What if he never joins a home group, but after several months of showing up and listening and pondering, he’s finally willing to join a microgroup with his friend who originally invited him? The combination of the large group gathering and the microgroup where he can ask questions and discuss possibilities is exactly what he needs. The thought of attending a home group has no appeal to him whatsoever, because as an introvert he always feels awkward in groups of 10 to 15 people.

Is this okay or does this young man need to submit to my plan for his life and work his way down the funnel?

Instead of arranging these activities in the shape of a funnel, what if we laid them out like a configurable computer dashboard? We could present each environment with a clear explanation of its purpose and the anticipated outcomes for those who participate in it. Without prioritizing any one environment above the other, we would encourage each person or family to invest themselves in whichever environments make the most sense for them.

The large group gathering is a great way to be introduced to our community and meet a few people and get a sense of what we’re about. Home groups are a great way to develop a sense of community with a handful of others. Microgroups are a great way to go deeper into Scripture and to explore the spiritual disciplines within a more intimate environment. Developing a personal growth plan is a great exercise for those who are hungry to grow and looking for “next steps.”

If we regularly communicate the availability and purpose of these options without prioritizing any one above the other, could we trust that through adequate pastoral coaching and the guidance of the Holy Spirit, each person in our community would discern which environments, activities, and exercises are best suited for them at any given moment?

Could we live with the outcome of this kind of approach? Not everyone will be in a home group. Not everyone will be interested in a microgroup. Not everyone will be working on a personal growth plan. Not everyone will regularly attend the large group worship gathering (Although most will or it would cease to be the large group gathering!). But they’ll all still be a part of our community, and to the degree they invest themselves in at least one of these environments, they’ll be connected and hopefully growing.

Of course, after some time in a given environment, their growth may stall. When that happens, they can opt into a new environment and be stimulated to grow in new areas and ways. Take the skeptical young man mentioned above. After a year of attending the gathering and being a part of a microgroup, he gives his life to Christ. Not long after that, he meets an attractive young woman at the large group gathering who invites him to her home group. He decides to give it a try. He still feels awkward in small groups, but he decides having his comfort zone stretched in this area is a good thing. That, and the young woman who invited him is really attractive. In order to conserve his social bandwidth for the group, he decides to take a break from his microgroup. No problem. He’s still growing!

What do you think? Is this idealistic crazy talk or could it work?

One of our biggest concerns about a weekly gathering is that it can quickly become “The Main Event” of The Fulcrum Community. If we are not careful, it will become the primary way we evaluate our success (How many showed up and how much money did they give?), it will dominate our budget (How much did you say that zip line and fog machine cost?), it will absorb energy that could otherwise be spent building relationships (We can’t have dinner with the neighbors tomorrow night, we’ve got a worship planning meeting!).

My question today is: How can a church have a weekly worship gathering without turning it into The Main Event? How do we communicate that all the other activities and environments associated with our community are just as important as what we do on Sunday morning?

In a lot of religions, Christianity being one of them, the idea is that life is a test. That you go through your life and if you’re good you go to heaven or nirvana or whatever and if you’re bad you don’t, you go to hell or don’t go anywhere.

The context of the quote was a question he was asking Matthew Fox about his character “Jack Shephard” on Lost. I’ve embedded the video of the interview below. In fairness to Jimmy, he’s trying summarize all the major world religions in one sentence as a precursor to explaining his theory about what Lost was about.

However, I found it interesting that he singled out Christianity. I think his summary of Christianity is representative of how most people understand it. Life is a test. Good people go to heaven. Bad people don’t.

What is your response to Kimmel’s summary? How would you summarize Christianity differently?