“I’ve never confessed this before to anyone,” a pastor once told me, “but I hate preaching.” Using his tie as a handkerchief, he wiped his eyes. “Yet I love serving God,” he continued. “To those who enjoy preaching, I must sound like some kind of freak.”
“You are not alone,” I said confidently, because I’ve had the same feeling.
Some ministers lose sleep prior to Sunday’s sermon, literally get migraine headaches and feel nauseous as the event approaches. Sunday afternoon they suffer a range of emotions, from despair to self-hate. But migraines and despair are only symptoms of a deeper problem: the need to preach with excellence, or even better.
Theodore Isaac Rubin’s book Compassion and Self-Hate provides help for those driven by the demands of preaching. He writes of his own struggles to become a great lecturer who “wowed” people. At the end of lectures, however, he knew only head-aches and intense ego-aches. Rubin’s understanding of his complex reactions is handily adapted to preachers.
He distinguishes between those who participate and those who perform. Participants are fully involved in their presentations. They throw themselves into their topic, yet they are themselves as they speak. They allow their limitations to show, and they do not recriminate themselves for doing so.
Performers aren’t exhibitionists, but they speak in a way that does not fit their personalities. They “perform” because they are self-conscious, afraid of derision by others, and try to hide their limitations.
Before accepting his limitations, Rubin expected a brilliant performance of himself every time he lectured. “I was split three ways. One of me was lecturing; one of me was watching me; and one of me was watching the audience,” Rubin concluded. Self-hate lurked if he failed. He couldn’t give himself single-mindedly to his lecture under such severe self-surveillance.
Rubin almost gave up lecturing because of the high toll it was exacting. Finally, he asked himself, Do I expect to leave listeners ecstatic over my impassioned, artful rendition? Do I want to be a performer? When Rubin could finally answer no to both questions, he was free to give lectures that helped rather than just impressed people.
Getting free
From Rubin’s discussion I’ve distilled several helpful points. When I begin to fear for my next speaking occasion, I remind myself that:
1. I’m going to enjoy sharing myself with the audience. This sharing, however, does not completely define me or validate my sense of well-being.
2. No one lecture or sermon is crucial.
3. I am not going to set unfair homiletical standards for myself.
4. However the sermon or lecture goes, no crisis or catastrophe will ensue.
5. My listeners are forgiving and even forgetful. Two weeks from now, they may not remember most of what I said.
6. Failure is not a disgrace.
7. It is vain and prideful to think people are hanging on my every word.
8. I’ve lived through many failures, most of which I laugh about today.
9. I want to participate in preaching-sharing and learning as I preach.
10. “Good sermons are sermons that do good” (Clarence Macartney), so I should focus on doing good with my sermons, not on preaching great sermons.
11. I should put aside dreams of greatness and concentrate on what’s happening here and now.
12. Jesus was not a performer, but a full participant in humanity, a Man of sweat-and-tears honesty. Jesus’ private and public selves were the same; he was authentic.
The glory of being yourself
Recently, I read a short biographical sketch of J.B. Phillips by his widow, Vera, and Phillips’s close friend, Edwin Robertson. Drawing on Phillips’s abundant correspondence, the authors reveal his private battle with depression and feelings of inadequacy. His tremendous need to excel through preaching, radio broadcasts, and writing pushed him to exclaim, “I’d rather die than be ordinary.”
Across a fifty-year ministry, he was a slave to persistent perfectionism: “I just can’t bear anyone to criticize me, anyone to see me fail.” Yet, when success did come, it was “dreary and pointless.” So, at the same time this famous translator and biblical scholar enjoyed success and fame, he was in the care of a succession of psychiatrists and counselors.
Ray Cripps, in Guideposts magazine, told about a visit he had with Phillips at Phillips’s home in Swanage, England. Having just emerged from this dark and protracted period of his life, Phillips described his experience this way:
“Satan was mounting his most devastating attack on me. He was building an image of ‘J. B. Phillips’ that was not Jack Phillips at all. I was no longer an ordinary human being; I was in danger of becoming the super Christian! Everything I wrote or said had to be better than the last. The image grew and grew until it was so unlike me that I could no longer live with it. And yet the thought of destroying it was terrifying too. It was on this dilemma that I hung.”
Phillips had been profoundly encouraged by a vision he had of C. S. Lewis just a few days after Lewis died. In the vision, Lewis said to Phillips, “It’s not so hard as you think, you know.”
Phillips then related to Cripps his own conclusion to his crisis, “It is a glorious thing to be yourself.”
– Harry Farra
chairman, speech communication
Geneva College
Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania
Leadership Spring 1990 p. 118-9
Copyright © 1990 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
