Module #12. the missing ingredient that will change everything

Transcription

1 Module #12 the missing ingredient that will change everything

2 Let me begin by telling you a bit of my own story. I wasn t raised in the church around preaching. I became a Christian at 19 through Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship at the University. This module was written by Pete Scazzero. Pete is the founder and senior pastor of New Life Fellowship Church in Queens, New York City, a multiracial, international church representing over 65 countries. He is the author of Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, a groundbreaking work on the integration of emotional health and contemplative spirituality. He has also authored The Emotionally Healthy Church, Begin the Journey with the Daily Office and several bestselling Bible study guides. Pete and his wife, Geri, have four daughters and are co-founders of Emotionally Healthy Spirituality. I had a tremendous conversion. I was exposed to all of the classic Evangelical disciplines of the Word and fellowship, global missions and evangelism. I developed a great heart for the poor, the marginalized, and to see reconciliation. Eventually, I went on staff at Inter-Varsity. My job primarily was planting Christian Fellowships in New Jersey and here in New York City. I spent three years in seminary and then spent a year in Costa Rica learning Spanish, with a sense from God to come back to Queens and plant a church. In September of 1987 we started New Life Fellowship Church. For most of my life, I was bored by most preachers. I remember a lot of altar calls, a lot of evangelism, a lot of emotionally-charged sermons. Preaching class in seminary felt like Saul s armor on me, between the manuscript and the rest of it, I just remember saying, This isn t going to work real well for me. I just figured I wasn t a person who could preach. I just figured it wasn t me, because I really had not seen a model at that point that I felt like related to me and so I ve done a lot of teaching, but few sermons. 2

3 When I planted our church in September 1987, I had very little preaching experience. It was mostly student work and teaching. Preaching felt like this heavy yoke of Matthew 11, Jesus, my yoke is easy and light,. Preaching was hard and heavy. I just couldn t quite find my own voice and what I seen and taught, especially in Seminary had a tremendous emphasis on exegesis and good theology. I remember one professor banging his hand against the desk saying, Don t you put words in God s mouth. I was like, Oh, my Lord. When we started New Life in 1987 I honestly, probably overdid it with exegesis and teaching. The church grew quite rapidly, and we were communicating in two languages. It was quite exciting by year six or seven. We had about 450 people in English, and we had about 250 people in Spanish. Then, I hit a wall. I like to call it the iceberg. Only one-tenth of an iceberg is above the surface. Nine-tenths is below the surface that you can t see. When we re preaching, we re about transformation. We want to see people being transformed down deep, deep beneath that iceberg. I was aware I was preaching my guts out, but people weren t changing deeply. If you ve seen some good New York movies, we ve got a lot of great stories here. People coming to Christ, they come from dramatic backgrounds and all that, but I realized that there was a lot of material down here and people that somehow the Gospel was not touching. I was doing everything I could in terms of paradigms, to try to get that material. Preaching a lot more teaching classes, more of the Word, more fellowship, more spiritual warfare emphasis, gifts of the Spirit, Power of God, more prayer meetings, worship nights, you name it, I wanted to do it, because I wanted the people to get transformed by Jesus. I realized something was missing. By 1994, 1995, I had been a Christian 17 years. The church was seven, eight years old, and I was tired. I was exhausted, I was overworked, I blamed everything, from New York City to small children to people in my church, to being poor, you name it. I had this great dream of the Kingdom of God and planting a church, and preaching the gospel, but I remember my wife and I having conversations. What profit a man if he gains the whole world and lose his own soul, because we were clearly losing our souls. I was stressed. In 1994, our service in the afternoon in Spanish had a split, and 200 people left to plant another church, down the street. It s a classic. He was David, I was Saul. He was Abraham, I was Lot. You get the drift. I found myself in a real spiritual crisis, cursing, angry, unforgiving, furious, trying to be loving and forgiving, but it wasn t working. Not 3

4 It was very simply this, that emotional health and spiritual maturity are inseparable, that you can t be spiritually mature while remaining emotionally immature. only was I sure I didn t want to be a pastor anymore, I wasn t sure I wanted to be a Christian anymore, then you know it s really tough to preach. I remember my wife sitting there to the left, and I was in my own crisis at this point, and as I m struggling as she says, I can t believe you re going to get up and preach. I said, I can t either. Remember the scene in The Wizard of Oz when the Cowardly Lion meets the Wizard for the first time. He runs out and he leaps through the window. That s exactly how I felt. I wanted to run out the front door of New Life Fellowship and never look back, at church, at pastoring, at preaching. My wife was very unhappy at this point. She was unhappy and our marriage was struggling. At that point, I started going to a Christian counselor and understand, I didn t believe in Christian counseling, but I had to go talk to somebody. I started an inward journey of looking inside. Over the next two years I continued to pastor and preach while doing a lot of inner pruning. January 2nd, 1996, my wife comes to me and says, Pete, your leadership stinks. You don t have the courage to confront the people that need to be confronted. I m not going to sit here any longer and participate in this hypocrisy, and so I m leaving the church. I m going to another church. You can take the four kids if you want, but I m done. She wasn t leaving the marriage, but she was calling me on the carpet, obviously. Most loving thing she ever did for me, actually. Obviously, that was full-blown crisis at that point. In the midst of that, probably about a month later, we went to a place for failing pastors. I went there to fix her. She went there to fix the church, but God met us in a really extraordinary way. It was really the culmination of two years of pondering theologically about what was going on, why was I in this situation. I like to call it my second conversion. It was very simply this, that emotional health and spiritual maturity are inseparable, that you can t be spiritually mature while remaining emotionally immature. I was an emotional infant pastoring a church, trying to raise up mothers and fathers of the faith, and I, myself had areas of my life that had never been touched by the Gospel, and I was embarrassed, I was ashamed. My own wife didn t feel loved by me, because I was still busy building the church. In 1996, we began to integrate what we call Emotional health into our spiritual formation model. It was very powerful. We began to see people being changed and there was a big focus on loving well and character. During this time, I began to research and do a lot of study on Monasticism, slowing down and looking at our evangelical tradition 4

5 I realized that I had more activity going on in my life that God ever asked. I needed a contemplative life with God to sustain my doing for God. that s very missional and I realized people are way too busy. Over the next six or seven years I continued to study Monasticism. It culminated, 2003, 2004, when I took my second sabbatical. It was a contemplative sabbatical, and it led to my third conversion, which I call Contemplative spirituality. Contemplative spirituality is defined very simply as cultivating a deep inner life, anchored in the love of God. That to me is what that means. You can define that any way you want, but that s how I define it. That s its historic destiny within our tradition. I realized something more from the story about Mary and Martha. Martha is busy. She s distracted, she s preoccupied and then you ve got Mary, who s sitting at the feet of Jesus. The great tension of leadership is, How do I balance activity and being with God? How do I hold these two together? I realized that I had more activity going on in my life that God ever asked. I needed a contemplative life with God to sustain my doing for God. Out of that four-month experience of living some rhythms of silence and solitude, was like another conversion. God met my wife and I and we began to make some radical shifts in our lives. It was like a third conversion, and we got those circles a bit more in place. Out of this season of growth, emotionally healthy spirituality, was born. It s unfolded since then in 2003 and we ve brought into our tradition, some missing components of discipleship that we call emotional health and contemplative spirituality. I like to consider it the contrast of Saul and David. If you think of Saul, Saul would be, in a sense, a great preacher. He s anointed, he is a great leader, he s got 135 soldiers under him, he s conquered the Amalekites, and he s leading a whole nation. The guy s got leadership gifts, but he s emotionally unaware. He is not in touch with what s going on inside of himself. He s jealous, stubborn, and power-crazy, he s just got a lot of gaps there, emotionally. You see these gaps come out in his conversations with Samuel and David. He also does not have a contemplative life with God. He s not writing Psalms of panting after God like a deer pants for water. That s just not who he is. He s a maker, he s a doer. He makes it happen. The contrast is David. David is emotionally fully aware of what s going on inside of him. We love the psalms, he s suicidal, he wants to kill people, he is depressed, he is rejoicing, he s dancing. He s able to pour his heart before God. He s very aware but at the same time, he s also got a deep walk with God. Tremendous walk with God. We love him because he s not perfect. We ve been walking this paradigm out at New Life for now sixteen year. It s got a lot of branches to it once you begin to dive into 5

6 this paradigm, everything from how you do leadership, build community, do your mission, and of course how it impacts your preaching. This has been a great exercise for me actually, to be forced, to actually think through it. I ve simply called it Ten Distinctives of Emotionally Healthy Preaching. There are actually ten questions. Ten questions to which I return to over and over again for myself when I m preaching, and I return to them for our teaching team as we re seeking to develop communicators here at New Life. I m going to make the presupposition here as we start, that when we preach, we re preaching for transformation. Our goal is that people s lives will be transformed by Jesus Christ. We want people to meet Jesus either for the first time or if they ve known Him for fourty years, they might meet him more deeply. That s why we re preaching. I m not here to entertain people. I m not here to build a crowd, I m here to build the church and I want people to meet the living Jesus. That s the presupposition as we start this for me. Again, probably a picture here is helpful. I m going to lay before you an overarching theme of these ten questions; the issue of slowing down. Remeber the movie, Speed, right? The guy had planted a bomb on the bus and it had to remain at 50 miles an hour or more, or it was going to explode. They can t slow down, so it s going to the streets of Los Angeles and busting over curbs and fire hydrants and they re out of control. They can t stop. In some ways, it s a great image I think for us as pastors and leaders sometimes. We ve got so much coming out, it s like we can t stop. I m spinning my sermon over here, and I ve got to get that done as well, but I m running over people because the bus is speeding and it s out of control. If I stop, I don t know what s going to happen. So I ponder and step back and look to these ten questions. There is a theme about slowing down, I think that s going to come through all of them, and this is very difficult to do on our culture, very challenging to get off that bus and actually walk with God. Here are my ten questions. Question one: Am I contemplatively grounded in God. What I mean by that is first of all, we re not CEOs. That s not our role. We re hopefully men and women who know God. I mean the gift that we bring our churches first and foremost is we bring God. We bring the living God to our people out of our relationship with God. I cannot bring if I don t know him deeply. I can only bring what I ve got inside of me. I m intact to Jesus. I do my Greek and my Hebrew, and the context. I m doing my study. I m doing the 6

7 commentary work, yes. There s value in that that s important. The question really is, Do I have enough contemplative time around this text? Do I have time for this to sync in to my soul and become a part of me, to really pray it into my soul, to just be with it and be before the Lord with it? I m talking about the kind of time needed and space for meditating and doing Lectio Divina on it and almost memorizing the text. As you know, it s easy to preach sermons about Jesus without really thinking about Jesus. It s possible. I ve done it. First of all, we have so much to do. We got pastoral crisis, we ve got strategic planning to do, short-term, midterm, long-term. You ve got problems, you ve got calls and s. There s so much coming out. There s so many things we re juggling, and then I got to craft the sermon, and I got to get that one key point, what s the burden and what s the tension, and what s the great opening illustration. It s all true. I need that right to communicate to make it real. The number one struggle for preaching, I believe is remaining anchored in Jesus. It s abiding, remaining a loving union with the person of Jesus. That is the great tension. That is in my contemplatively grounded in God in this process. Jesus said, You know the text well, I m the vine, you re the branches. If you remain in me, and I and you, you ll bear much fruit. Afar from me, you can do nothing. What he s saying is this, that is nice that you can preach a sermon, but if you re not in loving union, if you re not remaining in Jesus in the process, what Jesus is saying is there is no fruit here. Do you understand? It doesn t matter how brilliant the sermon is. It doesn t matter. There will not be life changed. That is a sober reality. He s very clear, Apart from me, you can do nothing. He s not saying you can t preach or perform without him. He s just saying you will not bear any fruit, long-term. It may produce short-term fruit, people staying in the church, they re giving money, they re serving. Absolutely, but it will not change their lives. I know what it s like to preach out of anxiety, and not being centered in God. If you read much of church history, I love church history, but on a [inaudible 00:18:14] was that great reform in the middle ages, and all the leaders and church in middle ages in western church came out of them, the monastic communities. Bernard was the great leader in the 1100 s. He would not allow anybody to become an active leader in the church, he was not first a contemplative monk, who was not first a person who prayed their theology. For him, that this activity have the flow from a superabundance of contemplation with God. If you read a great book, he writes his letters to Eugene the third to one of his monks that became the pope, and he writes these letters to him. He basically says to him, You have been a lousy monk all these years, sloppy 7

8 and undisciplined, because it requires a lot of discipline to be still before God. It s much easier to be busy. He writes in these scathing letters to say, You do not have the walk with God. I m summarizing what he says. He says it more nicely. You don t have the walk with God to sustain the weight of responsibility that you re carrying, and I fear for your soul that you will grow a hard heart. He says, You re not afraid of getting a hard heart, I m already grieving for you. My concern for some of us, we build churches of a size, but we don t have the interior life to sustain it. All we ve got is another American church that s a crowd of not impacting and transforming people, and it of course impacts our mission, because our people can t give something they don t possess either. For us, we ve got a health center, and a food pantry. I m not a social worker. I want to see people transform by Jesus. It s one thing that s given out of your human gifts, it s another thing to give food out of the love of Jesus inside of you. That requires a walk with God. We don t model that first, our people don t have a prayer, because they re on that bus going 80 miles an hour as well. I know when I m out of that loving union with Jesus, I m grasping, I m rushing, i don t have margin, my body feels that I m tight. You know what it s like going through the week. Sunday is coming, and so I ve got to ground myself, and it s a war to ground myself in the contemplative as I m approaching that sermon. I ve got to find time to rest in his love, Sabbath from the daily offices margin in my life, some community, and that busyness as you know just kills a sermon. It just kills it, because you re preaching something you know has not had time to just stay inside of you and you re birthing a premature baby. I birth many a premature baby. Great sermons, I may have robbed it from you in Road nine back there, and it was a great word and it was true, but it didn t have the power. The great verse in Acts 19, the demon scream out of the seven sons of Sceva? They say, Jesus, I know and Paul, I know, but who are you, because it s all third hand? It s not first hand. I m saying is that, am I contemplatively grounded in God? Question Two: Am I centered in myself? We re fragmented, we re multi-tasking, our bodies are running on an adrenalin rush. You know what it s like, and you get up there and you re preaching but you re not centered. We end up reading our notes more than we should, and I know what it s like. I m sharing these great truths that I ve learned but I m not connected to the people. My mind is on my sermon. Does that make sense, because I ve not had enough time with it? I m not centered, I m not present, so I m thinking about my sermon while I m preaching. I m not thinking 8

9 about them. I m almost preaching to myself, because I ve not had the time to get centered. I ve got too much going on and you really know you re not centered when you start exaggerating. Now, if you got a wife like I do in the first row. When she hears an exaggeration, Oh boy. Our spouses, they know. You know how you re in a middle of a sermon and you just, the crowd s with you, little embellishment, never hurt anybody? It s all for the sake of the vision, and all that, but it s not prudent, it s not measured, and it s not true. You just can t build the kingdom of God on lies. I don t care how well it works. It comes out of not being centered, I know it will. What happens when I m not centered, I m insecure, so now I ve got to ask three or four people who how did I do, because I don t know how I did. You better tell me how I did, because I m feeling like I was shaky up there, because we re in that time to get centered, so can you help me? Now I m feeding off you now instead of God. I m getting my validation from you not from where I need to get it. As you know, there are no perfect sermons. I hope you don t all hit home runs. We end up preaching out of a reflective self. I get my sense of who I am in God from you. It s reflected. It s not centered in God, and am I the same person on the inside that I am on the outside? The great danger of preaching and speaking in God s name is, it s really heavy to speak for God up here. What happens is it s very easy to have a gap between our role and our soul. Think of politicians. We know politicians, how they say things, they have a role as a politician, but often, we know that they re not living what they re saying. There s a disconnect between their soul and their role. We do the same thing with lawyers often or business people or they scheme and they lie. It s a role and soul was disconnected. What happens is so easy now for us, it s even worse because now, we re doing this in the name of God, and we ve got a role as pastor and leaders speaker for God, but our soul is not connected to our role. The gap is really big. We re saying things that are not in our soul, and we re projecting an image that isn t true. The question is, how much of your life is divided, or how much of your inner and outer life is divided or it s a pretend where I m projecting something outside that s not really who I am in the inside, and in a sense, I m wearing somebody else s face? It s not my face. Andy Stanley for example he s a phenomenal preacher. He s a great preacher. Tim Keller over here in Manhattan, is a great preacher, and I can learn a lot from them, but I can t be them and I can t be their pastor. You can t be whoever you may love and think is phenomenal. You can only be you. It s so easy to lose our integrity, it happens so slowly in a blink of an eye. We re speaking of things we re not living because we re not centered. We don t even know we re doing it. The people who know we re doing it are the 9

10 really only very few in the church are that mature, they can smell it a mile away. Most people, 98% of people in church will not even know it. Your spouse will know it, if they have the courage to say something. One or two staff who are really close to you will know it. They probably wouldn t say anything especially if the things is still being successful. All cultures pretend. All cultures have the gap of role and soul, every culture. There are no exceptions. The question though for us is, as the church of Jesus Christ, the pillar and foundation of the truth, we are the one people that need to be centered, where who we are in the outside is the same as who we are in the inside. Remember Anne and Isis [inaudible 00:26:32]? They lack integrity. They were pretending to be something they were not. They were disconnected in their role and soul, and God dealt with that. What I m saying friends is we re going to build great preachers, great sermons, great churches. Friends, we want to be centered in God first, and then in ourselves. We stand up and we are who we are, in all of its brokenness, but we need silence, we need time to unplug from our role as Pastor leader, to be who you truly are in God. Again, I got to stay connected. How can I be with you if I m not with me? How can I be in tune with you, I m not even in tune with myself? How can I be with you if I m never with me? How can I give you myself but I don t even know who I am? I m all scattered on the inside, because I m so busy building this church, I can t even think straight. How can I lead you somewhere in Jesus, I ve never gone there myself? I m just giving you a travel catalog and hoping you can get there because I don t have time to get there, so you have a wonderful time in Jesus. I m killing myself for you, building this church. One of the ways I know that I m not focused and centered is I m not thinking of them, I m thinking of me. It s one of my key tests, when I get up there to preach. That s why limits, theology of limits is so important. When you re preaching, you can t do 10,000 other things. You don t have the time. Preaching takes time, and a theology of limits, that means that the weeks that you re preaching does not mean you re preaching every week, it does limit your leadership tasks. You need the time. It s going to be different for every one of us here. Whatever time you need, you need. If God s called you to preach, this number of weeks per year, that means that other things need to be adjusted, because speaking for God as we said earlier so well is what a gift that people are actually listening to us. When I moved into the contemplative in 2003, 2004, my sermons changed. There s no question. Emotional health in 96 changed my sermons. You ll hear about that in just a moment, but the contemplative changed them even more drastically because it grounded me 10

11 in God and grounded me in myself. It became more important to me to have a Sabbath, than it was to find a great illustration to open the sermon. I agree with everything you said. Those first five minutes are critical in that sermon. We got to connect with our people. I ll tell you one thing, I d rather have a no illustration, and be centered in God and stand up there, because at least I m going to bring them God. Nothing is either or, but if I have to make a choice, I m going to bring them God. My sermons may not be quite as polished or slick as they used to be, but I know they re a lot better, and there s a lot more life change going on. Question Three: Am I allowing to text to intersect deeply with my family of origin? Now, I don t know how many of you have done a genogram of your family of origin. Some of you have been to our Emotion of the Spirituality Conference, but to me, every pastor leader needs some really, you need to do a lot of good work on your genogram. That is your family of origin going back three to four generations, and how it impacts who you are today, because you ve got to answer the question, How does this text and truth intersect with my family of origin and my culture? For example, let s say we re preaching about you are the beloved of God, you re loved of God? The gospel, right? I got to let sit in that, and say, How s that intersect with my life? Yes, I grow up with a family where I have millions of miles of negative tape, you re no good, you re a loser. Man, you re going to mess up. Don t do it. I know in my head that I m beloved, but I preach a sermon, I walk out the door, I get nine people that say to me, Fantastic. One person said, That was an awful sermon, and I m devastated for the day. I m devastated. What s that all about? Where s that coming from, because I know the gospel in my head. Why isn t that translating? I ve got to do to kind of work and intersect that, am I family growing up? What are the voices that I m hearing? Let s say you re talking about rest in Sabbath and delight, and you re preaching out, but the truth is you re a workaholic. Well, why are you workaholic? In my family, you are what you do. Your value is in work. If you don t work, why are you even alive? What are producing? Of course it s hard to have a Sabbath and rest. What am I accomplishing? My body is in rebellion, it s like being on crack, but it goes back. The pondering have time, will that text sink in about how my family for a 100 or 200 years looks at work, work, work especially for 11

12 men, and I wonder why it s such a hard time talking on Sabbath, but I ve got to let that thing go into my life. I need time for that. You know how the spirit tells Phillip that, Go to that desert road and speak to the Ethiopian. it s a great text on being responsive and discerning God s will and be open to Holy Spirit. It s a great preaching text, but I don t like that. The truth is I like control. I don t like chaos. I want to know where we re going, and when we re going to get there and what it s going to be like when we do. I like strategic plans. The truth is I get prompted a lot and I don t do it, because I m afraid that goes back to my family which was filled with chaos, so I built an adult life that has no chaos. Do you understand? I m preaching a text without even being aware of that. It has a limit in terms of its ability to go deep in people, because I have not allowed it to go deep in me because I don t have time and I don t know other people are doing it, so why bother? The bible hopefully rewrites our family s scripts. We re teaching people to come out of their families of origin and their culture and to live in this new family of Jesus, but we do it first. We let every text intersect with our family of origin and our culture. In our case, our American culture for most of you in this room, because we re in the new family of Jesus. That s why it s so important to have mentors, spiritual directors, a therapist at time. If I had a seminar, I d require everybody to go to therapy. I would. Absolutely. It s part of your theological education. Just to do some work and how your past impacts your presents, so you can be a better preacher. You may not be aware of it, it doesn t matter. It s in you anyway. Your grandma and grandpa live in your bones, so you can over spiritualize this as much as you like, but it s a huge limit on preaching. QUESTION FOUR: am I preaching out of my vulnerability and weakness? I was taught in seminary that you should do something about, preach about weakness because it helps you connect with people, like it was a sermon means. Make sure someone at sermon, you talk about your weakness because, then people can connect with you. That s not what I m talking about here. For me, this happened in 1996 with my great second conversion to Emotional Health. Up to that point, I preached out of my success. I use the illustration of weakness of course, but it was just an illustration, because it really wasn t in me. It was a huge shift. It was a gigantic shift in my preaching. To preach out of brokenness really was such a change, because I was scared too, first of all. I was embarrassed, and maybe nobody s going to listen to me. I m not talking about inappropriate brokenness. 12

13 You know the text what Paul says, My power... Jesus says to Paul, My power is made perfect in weakness. That really is the Bible. My power is made perfect in weakness, real, genuine authentic weakness, not a clicky cliché weakness. Paul says, Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses. I want you to catch that. I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses so that Christ s power may rest on me. That s what made him different than the super apostles in 2 Corinthians He was not boasting of being a super apostle in signs and wonders envisions. He was boasting in his weakness and delighting in that. What that means for example is that, I m going to honest and I m going to take the time to look at, so yes, yes, my wife s quit the church. Yes. She said my leadership stunk. Wait on God and preaching on waiting on God, it s Advent, we re waiting and waiting. The truth is I missed Jesus left and right all the time. I have birthed many Ishmaels in my time. I had a great vision from God, but I didn t want to wait so I just birth and I can give you a list, but why bother. Hopefully time is running out. I say things in reaction that I should not say in meetings. I do things that I m embarrassed about but I weave it to the sermons, I m preaching out, this is reality folks. I m not really any different than you. I am and I m not. Is every sermon a home run? Guys, I preach sermons that are on a scale of one to 10, are five. I m human like you. I don t know anybody who preaches a grand slam every week. That s inhuman. I ve never preached a perfect sermon. Never, because you re not perfect. Every sermon has its weaknesses and vulnerabilities and you get a lot of go. It s so tempting, my wife and I are talking about, we put up our rule of life, how we structure our lives for our church. Jerry was saying to me, You know what? I ve made some shifts here, and it looks more spiritual when I have had this up there about her pausing to be with God multiple times a day. She goes, I don t do that anymore, the way I used to. I got to take that off, because right now it looks good but it s not true. It s taking the time to say, I m not going to say things about myself that aren t true, and projecting an image of some strength and power in super spirituality, that s just not real. The truth is you re as weak and broken and vulnerable as everybody else, but it s in that place of vulnerability there s some power. What s interesting about it, people will always project onto us, they re unresolved stuff. They will project on to it that with this super God person, but you better be so grounded in your weakness, you might actually believe that foolishness, but that projection just always will come. Question Five: am I allowing the text to transform me? Very simple. It s simple but it s not. If the text 13

14 doesn t change your life, if this message you re preaching... now we re going to Christmas. I preached 25 years of Christmas message. It can feel like it s getting old, do you know? As you know, every text is bottomless, if I have the time to really be in it. Every truth has enough to transform me. The question is, as I m preparing this text, am I being transformed by it? I m talking about before and during, and after the very critical question, that if you re preaching sermons and you re not being transformed, I wouldn t expect a lot to happen in your church either. For example, I m on a big learning curve about the cross. I feel like I m discovering the cross all over again. I m in the process of succession with rich and letting go, I ve been here 25. I m at 20, 60 year letting go in my whole identity and all that, and who am I, I ll be under him now. The guy is only 33 years old. He s a kid. It sounds like, Wow, letting go and who is he? Letting go in that verse in John 21 where Jesus says to Peter, When you were younger, you dressed yourself went wherever you wanted, but when you are older someone else would dress you and lead you where you don t want to go. I m discovering a whole new levels of what it means to follow Jesus in the cross. My wife and I, we did a marriage conference this past Saturday. We always do a talk on a theology of marriage. Marriage is bigger than you think, and how our marriage is meant to reflect the marriage of Christ in the church. Ephesians 5:32, then our loving union with our spouse is meant to reflect our loving union with Jesus and then loud as much as we preach, is our communion with our spouse. The whole theology. We were doing marriage seminars for 16 years, Jerry and I, but I knew that I needed to take the time, and it s been, Wow, my gosh. We must have spent at least a day to two days on this message, but I realized God had to come to me first before I was going to get up there and share that message. I preached that message before. We changed but of course quite a bit, but I had to let that text come in and change me a fresh, in our own marriage, before that marriage conference and before that message. It was going to have any kind of impact on other people. John 15, I preached on loving union with God a couple of weeks ago from Acts 19 and John 15. I m still in it, so impacted me. I m letting you know, I didn t always do it that well. I m doing better as I m getting older, but taking the time, I m still meditating and memorizing John 15:1-7, and just taking it into myself. Questions six: am I surrendering to the birth, death, resurrection and ascension process? My discovery is that in preaching, we re 14

15 following the Pascal mystery. In other words, we re following the life of Jesus in every sermon. That is I get a birth. I m like, This is awesome. What a great idea. I m excited about the sermon, and I find most of us are. We have to put it together and craft and get that one point. What s God saying? Generally, that s the time it s death. If on Monday or Tuesday, you go, This is going to be an incredible sermon. This can be the best sermon I ever preached. By Wednesday, you re like, This is awful. This is a disaster. Why did I ever pick this text? Why did I go down this road? I spent hours and that s Jesus on a road that s going nowhere. Now you re petrified because I m going to stand up there, I m going to look like an idiot, and it s Wednesday. Thursday, you re in death. It is. It s a death. There comes at some point by God s grace hopefully before Saturday night. You see it. It s a grace, really. You think you re working, but you can t make that happen. I love commentary, and I ve never written a commentary. I know people do write commentaries I appreciate them. A commentary cannot give you a revelation. There may be a line that grabs you and it becomes a revelation for you, but commentaries have a different purpose. In our prep, the Holy Spirit at some point ignites that study waiting, listening, it may happen in a car, in traffic. All of a sudden it s like, I got it. You see it. It s like a resurrection. That process is humbling because you can t control it. I ve tried to control it. I ve tried to mechanize it. Okay, I ll be in resurrection Monday, Tuesday I ll have a death, on Wednesday and Thursday we ll have the resurrection. Sometimes it ain t coming, and you re flipping out. You re like, Where is it? I thought I had it. I don t know what to say. I look at some preacher and say, they look like they re constantly living in resurrection. I said that every sermon they give seems to be a home run 10. As you get close and then talk to them, No, they re humans too. I ve had a few in my life that just jump to resurrection, probably like five. Most of mine are this. I ll ask the question, Are you surrendering to that process or you re fighting it? By fighting I mean this, it s Tuesday and you re saying, I don t have any more time for this. This is the outline. This is the point. I m not going to think about it again. Even if God s pushing you, you re saying, Sorry, you had your opportunity, because I had that time set aside and you didn t give it to me then, and you just frustrated me. It s really your fault the sermon is going to stink. I ve done it. I have preached sermons that were mine because I do not have the space or interest. I actually was mad at God for frustrating me. Why did you make it so difficult? Why did I have to have the anguish of birthing the sermon? I don t know too many great sermons that are not birth out of pain. I find every sermon, every week s bloody. I believe, I m like, I would think after 25 years, I d be cruising a little bit. I was thinking, Okay, I got my box of sermons, 15

16 I preached on so many texts, I pulled it out. I preached it. Yes, I pulled it out. Absolutely. I got a couple of things when I find out. I got to go through the whole bloody thing all over again. I got to birth this thing. I m thinking, It never changes. I don t know. That s pain and suffering is normal. I love preaching, but do not be under the illusion there is not a price. If you got to birth something from God, you too must be willing to die. Again, we re back to space in your life. Question seven: am I making sufficient time to think through clear and pointed applications? Now, this is where I have faltered especially in the early years on this. It is a lot of work to make clear and pointed applications. I did not leave enough time for this in the beginning. I spent all my time in asking, Jesus, a lot of time I m praying, but I did spend a lot of time on this, and the sermon would fall. This is hard work. This is very difficult, because I m running out of time. Here s the principle, the more general your application, the less transformational the impact. I ll say it again, the more general your application, the less transformational. I m going to give you an example. Rich and I did a tag team preaching last week. We were summarizing the book of Acts. I missed it on this and he didn t. My first point was about endings and new beginnings on how in the book of Acts, there had to be an ending the whole crucifixion, forty days of waiting on Jesus, he s teaching them before the new beginning of Pentecost and the whole book of Acts. The whole theme, there has to be an ending. You have to let go, then you wait on God and then you have a new beginning. I said it, and I was under time frame and my wife said that the union in the illustration on there, she heard me for the service, I said, Get behind me. Just get behind me. There s no time for this right now. She noted it, but I was with a woman yesterday and I could easily have gotten this illustration as my I heard about this. I had lunch with the woman, 70 years old. Her husband just died. I was just listening to her story and it was incredible. She said, I didn t know how to illustrate this. She says to me, Pastor Pete... Her husband died. How long ago, Rich, two months ago? She says, Pastor Pete, I m at a new beginning, and I don t know what God has for me. I m 70 years old, but I just had this great sense of God has a new beginning for me. I love my husband. We re married 50 years, but it s over. I m alone, but I m alive. I m just so excited. Do you have any idea where I can serve more in the church at my age as I m 70? It was beautiful. I said, Imagine having... Her 16

17 name was Angela. Having her story weaved in, it would have make so much more life for people, but I didn t. I just skimmed over it quick. Rich had a point about, he s talking about being saved, because we re saved, we re being saved and we will be saved, the whole theme and how we re... conversion is not just a one conversion. Except Christ, but my life is a series of conversion. It s a great point for a student. Then he mentions the marriage retreat that Jerry and I had done the day before with 80 people, 40 couples. He mentions it. He goes, That s an example. They re constantly being converted in their marriages. It was good. Very good, but it was very general. We talked about it afterwards. I said, Imagine, Rich if you had actually told a couple of stories from that marriage retreat, of how a couple was there and they re married four years, and the husband said, let s say I had the first fight that I won. People say, I never dream I could have the marriage I had, or just talking about their spouse. We had a whole stack of illustrations. All you had to do is ask. Let me go through those images. He was busy. I was busy. We missed it. A very little thing, but it would have taken the sermon to another level. To think through pointed clear applications, friends is a lot of work. It is hard work. It is not something you do with the last minute. Oh yes. Let me get a couple of images in here. No, no. It s hard, it takes time. Question Eight: Am I thinking through the complexities and nuances? What I mean by that is we could be very flippant. Oh my goodness. Use your gifts, forgive. Rejoice the Lord and yes. We ll just take forgiveness, you don t forgive. There s so many complexities around forgiveness, so many nuances. Forgiveness isn t forgetting. People on our churches don t think they re forgiving because they re still remembering that person that have hurt them nine years ago. They go, I m still carrying it, in the whole process of forgiveness. What about grieving? What about death and resurrection? There s so much complexity around forgiveness, but we throw it out there. We got to forgive as the Lord forgives us. It s nice, but that is so superficial with all the complexity around forgiveness. How about Rejoice the Lord. Let s give him praise? That s true. Let s rejoice the Lord, Philippians 4, but we do have a whole books in the Bible called Lamentations. Two thirds of the psalm which are [inaudible 00:48:20]. How do I rejoice when I m grieving and I ve just had a death and lost my job, or my spouse just divorced me, or my kids run away from home. How do I do that? What does that look like to grieve? What is it look like to feel those things and rejoice in God? How about serving? Serve the Lord. Use your gifts. We ve got this course, and they want you to go do, get active in our church. Yes, yes. Yes, but where is 17

18 serving where it s out of my pathology? When is there over serving? Where s the gift of limits in that where I m not the whole body of Christ? We got folks coming out of abused backgrounds who served to find that identity, and actually their over serving is actually keeping them from growing in Christ. It s complexity, it s nuance, but I know I need that worker now. Not only that, I don t have time to think about these complexities. Every sermon friends has complexities to it. Talk about the holy spirit. The holy spirit. The holy spirit. He comes outside of us in the book of Acts, he lives inside of us. Power, character. Particular gift things, diverse gift things. There s such breath in the holy spirit, so we need to wrestle and think through what are the nuances of this particular truth? Every truth. The cross. You name it. I can go on. They re all there. Question NINe: Am I drinking from the well of community acts of Jesus? Basically, you ve heard this before I m sure. I think it s the reason that this is important. I m talking about, I can t preach the sermon just me. I need to talk to some other people about it, one or two other folks and I m very fortunate, our staff. Right now we have each other. My wife serves as that for me for years. I know that I don t have the whole perspective. To me, this comes out of a theology of limits. I know that I m very limited, my perspective and my experience in life, and even when I come to a text, I come with a limited perspective. At the same time I also recognize, I m weak. I look at drinking from the well of community acts of Jesus, I m talking about getting more to other people that you can talk with about that sermon is an act of humility, that you re recognizing, I know, even if I think I got it. You know you think, I got it. I got it. I got it. Check it out. Usually, when you check it out with someone you get devastated because you find out they say, That doesn t make sense at all. We got illustration. That doesn t work at all for me. I don t know what you re talking about. My wife would say to me, You re so in the heavenliest. I don t know what you re talking about. This sermon is no good. You re in your revelation, but nobody s getting anything, but you re having a great time up here with yourself. I used to hate sharing my sermon with her because she generally, basically devastated and I back in death all over again. I always try to have at least one other person that I can talk to about that sermon. Question Ten: am I connecting the message to people s long-term spiritual formation? 18

19 I accept the limits of preaching. Preaching is part of people s spiritual formation. I believe in preaching. I love preaching. For me, we have a principle here in your life is I don t want people living off my spirituality. I want people cultivating their own personal relationship with Jesus. Many people in our churches become Christians, get baptized and even get active in our churches but they live off our spirituality books, tapes, sermons, worship teams. They re not cultivating their personal relationship with Jesus. They re on autopilot for 30 years. Some of these people are elders and deacons in our churches. For me, the number one priority is I got to get people connected to Jesus. I recognize the limits of a sermon. Sermons are important. They create culture, context, a lot of good things, but they don t do it all. For me, it s a couple of things. I m always looking for ways to creatively deliver that message. For example, number one, I m thinking, What can we do in the service? That s different. We may do things like a daily office in the middle of the service. We stop for prayer. We may do a panel. We do some services we call Alone together. Break them up in small groups. We got thousands of people in the room, we ll do it anyway. I ll stop with silence at the end of a sermon doing a tag team last week. I m just constantly looking for creative ways once in a while to break it up. Not only that, I m looking to connect the message to equipping opportunities, classes, with marriage, singleness, a workshop on skills, a workshop on genogram, a workshop on spending a day alone with God. I m just looking to connect people to something they can do for their next steps in formation and then I m always looking for I ll close my sermon... we always look if possible to close with something, we ll just meditate in a verse, I can teach a little skill about meditating on scripture, teaching silence for 30 seconds or a minute because people don t know anything about silence, just to be still before God. I ll teach that. There are certain things I m trying to just weave into the culture, but I see that something of a larger, long-term formation issue. My sermon is a little piece of it. It s not enough without the other pieces. In conclusion, I ll close with this. I invite you to steal sermons from anybody you can. In other words, it s really good to listen to other people s sermons and you get some great ideas and insights. You may even get once in a while a great outline that you can use. I think that s really... I think it s normal especially if you re starting out. It s actually quite healthy especially to developing your own style and getting your own skin. The key is this... and I tell you any sermon I ever preach, you re welcome to take whatever you like. The key is this, it must become a revelation to you. That s the key. In other words, if you hear something that becomes a 19

20 revelation to you, then it s yours. The word, biblical commentaries, the fellow who wrote the commentary for Ezekiel... they read the introduction. I forget his name. Craig, I think he was. He talks about how Ezekiel drew from Jeremiah s sermons, some of the illustrations he used, but he reworked them for his context. He didn t say, Thus says Jeremiah and thus says the Lord. I m telling you. No, he just says, Thus says the Lord, because they were revelation to him in the desert in the exile. The same way, when you hear something great and if it really becomes a revelation to you, because you had the time to let it go into you, then you say, Thus says the Lord, through your personality in your context. Don t be quoting it. I would not quote other people too much. I think we want the word of God to pass through your life. I definitely do a quotation with any sermon I do. Just make sure the first person you preach to every week is you. The greatest gift you can give your church is to walk with God. That is my number one gift like give our churches to let Jesus transform me, and there s a lot to be transformed. It s not what we say that s most important. It s not even how we say it that s most important, although they are important. What is most important is who you are. Who you are is the most important issue when you stand up there. With that, let me pray and we ll close. 20