I WAS WORKING on an issue of Preaching Today when the phone rang. “Pastor Ed?” asked the uncertain woman on the other end. I didn’t recognize the voice. My mental Rolodex started spinning.
“This is Jean McGuire.”
My mind was still blank. “From Arizona,” she continued.
My mind stopped spinning just in time: Jean was a faithful attendee of our last church but so shy and reclusive that I never got more than a whispered hello and a downward glance when I greeted her on Sunday mornings. What could have motivated this timid creature to make a long-distance call to a former pastor she hadn’t seen in more than two years?
“Well, hello, Jean. What a surprise! It’s good to hear from you.”
Embarrassed silence.
“I’m sorry to bother you. Maybe I shouldn’t have called, but … well, I’m calling about Roy.”
Roy was her forty-something, never married son. He was a huge man, intimidating in both size and stoicism.
“How’s my old buddy Roy doing?”
She blurted, “He died last month.”
“What? He died? Roy? What happened?”
She went on to explain a lengthy hospital stay for phlebitis, complicated by obesity, poor circulation, and high blood pressure. While she spoke, my thoughts were churning: They had no friends that I knew of. Did anyone else in the church even know of her loss? I hoped their new pastor knew and ministered to their family.
“I’m so sorry, Jean. If I had known Roy was in the hospital, I’d have called him and prayed with him.”
“I know, Pastor Ed. He really wanted to talk with you, too, but I could never find your new address or phone number. But today I was cleaning out his room and I found it. I knew you’d want to hear about it. You know that Roy always said you was the best friend he ever had.”
The second punch hit me harder than the first. Best friend? I hardly knew the man. We’d had a couple of brief counseling sessions when he was facing some difficulties in his job, and I invited him to lunch a time or two after that.
“Roy meant a lot to me as well.” (That is, what little of Roy I came to know. I didn’t lie.)
“We could tell. No pastor ever took much notice of us before you came. Roy always came home from church sayin’, ‘That preacher’s been readin’ my mail again.’ He’d sit on the couch after dinner and read his notes from your sermon and just shake his head and ask, ‘How’d he know, Momma? How’d he know?” “
We spoke a while longer. I prayed with her, then hung up the phone, shut my office door, and broke down. I grieved Roy’s death and his mother’s loss, but mostly I grieved the loneliness of a person whose best friend was the preacher who usually spoke to him over a microphone from forty feet away.
That phone call put me in a tailspin for days. I should have felt grateful that Roy called me “friend,” but inside an accusing voice whispered, Too little, too late, tempting me to believe I had neglected him. Should I have pushed past his intimidating exterior?
For a few days, Roy came to represent every church member I’d ever failed to care for in a crisis. I replayed every brief encounter with him I could recall, searching for clues about why he came to view me as his best friend. There wasn’t much to recall. I’d ask about his mom, his job, and his old dog, then he’d bring up church. I remembered he always commented about my sermons, the kind preachers like to hear: “You really got me to thinking about …”
I never put much stock in such appraisals. I figured he was just being polite, trying to make small talk about our one and only point of connection. Roy would usually allude to something going on in his interior life but in cryptic fashion, as if I already knew the details.
“You made me think about … well, you know, that thing I was depressed about.”
“Tell me about it.”
Roy would laugh. “Oh, you know, Pastor. You preached about it the last two Sundays.” It never went any further than that.
I don’t remember ever hearing Roy specifically articulate the nature of his spiritual struggles, but his allusions and my intuition told me that they probably had to do with his worth in the eyes of God. It was a major theme of my preaching during that time, and I always tried to affirm him, assuring him that he really was a beloved child of God.
But I never saw more than glimmers of belief, and I had a church full of people to minister to, sermons to preach, programs to administrate. As big as Roy was, he was easy to lose in the shuffle.
My last Sunday at that church, Roy grabbed me in a wordless, sweaty, vertebrae-snapping hug before charging out the door to his truck. For me it was just one of many hugs from parishioners we had come to love. But Roy, I know now, was saying good-bye to his very best friend.
Can a sermon, a monologue, really touch lives in such a relational way?
Though gratified to know I made a small difference in Roy’s life, I’ve wondered lately about how other parishioners perceive their relationship with the one who proclaims God’s Word for them Sunday after Sunday. While many, maybe most, would not consider the preacher their best friend, I suspect quite a few would form their understanding of that relationship based on how they receive that preacher’s preaching.
Jean’s phone call helped me realize how much pastoral care happens during a sermon. It certainly wasn’t eloquence or persuasiveness or great logic that made Roy feel my friendship. I think it had everything to do with him sensing, mostly through my preaching, that I loved him and knew he was listening.
Loving the jerks
In a lecture at Beeson Divinity School, Dr. Elizabeth Achtemeier told of a former student who couldn’t preach. She struggled to understand what was wrong, until he started talking about his congregation: “They’re all a bunch of stupid jerks,” he said. Achtemeier stated unequivocally, “It is impossible to preach to people you hate.”
While that may seem obvious, her point underscores the fact that effective preaching is at least one part relationship. How does a pastor preach so the people feel loved?
I certainly never felt loved by most of the preachers of my childhood. I remember Brother Bob—loud, emotional, animated—but we left each Sunday with the weight of our sin increased; our sense of unworthiness magnified. Hope was never proffered to our souls.
Our next preacher was so emotionally unstable he cried during most every sermon. Passionate? Nah, just really, really sad. Then there was the youth revivalist who could have made better money as a stand-up comic; he was that funny, but no one would have described him as passionate. Along the way there were also those who seemed as if they were above touching the heart; they seemed to think of themselves as the learned, the sophisticated, the cerebral. What they said may have been theologically accurate but was neutered, cut off, and separate from the world of sadness and anger and insecurity that we inhabited.
Many preachers argue that such emotion, or lack thereof, is a result of passion—for God and his Word, for study, for truth. But preaching is more than a passionate delivery or funny story or a biblical teaching. Preaching is touching, and spiritually passionate preaching is rooted not only in loving God but in loving people. Words, no matter how eloquent, profound, or funny, may not communicate the clearest message. My delivery of touch tells people everything about how I really feel about them. A gentle hand on the shoulder is one kind of touch. A warm hug is another. A slap, a shake, or a stiff finger in the sternum are others.
Preaching provides me with the opportunity to touch more people in thirty minutes than I could possibly minister to in a week of conventional pastoral care. If people have found in me a high level of trust and respect for God and his Word, if they sense in me an authentic spirit, if they hear from me messages of encouragement, trust, and hope, then the Holy Spirit finds hearts and wills open to transformation by the gospel.
In this together
In my early attempts to communicate “I am one of you”—and thus build a relationship with my congregations—my basic approach was to preface every point with “I struggle with this too.” I never gave examples, or if I did, they were trite and sterile.
But in a sermon about loneliness, just before Easter one year, I stumbled upon a more effective way of opening myself up to the congregation—and thus connecting with them on a heart level. My text was from Matthew 26: Jesus, the night of his arrest, saw his closest friends desert him.
“What does it feel like to be abandoned and left all alone?” I asked. I then told of the loneliest period of my life, in the months and years following a broken engagement with a girl I had dated throughout high school. Afterward, I was overwhelmed with the people who wanted to talk with me about lost loves—tales of divorces, infidelities, engagements, and near engagements. Everyone, it seemed, had been hurt by a love that had grown cold and died. In telling about my loneliness, we all went home a little less lonely that day.
However, as much as I want to connect with my listeners, no one really wants to hear the details about my current inner battles with doubt, pride, dissatisfaction, anger, lust, or ambition. No one really wants to see me emotionally disrobe in the pulpit. Perhaps it’s enough to allude to current battles. But that can never include even the sketchiest details about sexual temptation. And stories about current financial struggles are tricky; they can too easily be interpreted as dissatisfaction with my salary or the church.
I’ve concluded that if I’m going to connect with people in the pulpit, perhaps the best way is to tell stories of victory over temptations in the past. If I’ve found God sufficient in moments of pain or loss or insecurity, if I’m safely past the point where people might wonder about my spiritual or emotional stability, then I try to pass on that wisdom to my listeners.
I don’t care about being vulnerable—a popular word among preachers trying to be relevant these days. My motive is not to be perceived as real or authentic. The clicheŒ “Sharing the gospel is just one beggar telling another beggar where he found bread” is still one of the best descriptions of the preacher’s task.
You can do this
I was fortunate to live in the Chicago area during the basketball dynasty of the Chicago Bulls, led by Michael Jordan. Watching Jordan play basketball was one of life’s great pleasures. Not only does he perform midair magic with a basketball, he appears to have both a winsome personality and dynamic leadership ability. While we admire such persons, we are intimidated by them at the same time. I have marveled at Jordan countless times, but only in my wildest dreams have I said to myself, I bet I could do that.
Brian Williams, on the other hand, made me think a career in the NBA was still a possibility for me. Acquired by the Bulls late in the 1996-1997 season, Williams was overweight and a bit slow. As the season progressed into the playoffs, he not only made some memorable plays but a number of spectacular bloopers as well. But overall, his stats proved him more asset than liability. Williams was the Simon Peter of the Bulls, a person we could relate to because he is more like you and me.
In my work at Leadership, I met some nationally known pastors who are the Michael Jordans of the preaching vocation—unusually good-looking, incredibly smart, influential, and driven by the passion of their calling. They inspire me in one sense, yet often after hearing them speak, I’ve come away feeling more intimidated than helped. I look at what they’ve accomplished and know I will never have that level of impact.
Yet there have been others who have made an impact on me precisely because when I watch them preach and lead, I feel, I can do this. Maybe that was part of the reason Roy felt we were friends. Maybe he figured. If Ed can make it, so can I. I never want to preach in such a way that portrays my life as being so far above the crowd that others stand in awe, certain they can never achieve the spiritual heights that I describe. Spiritually passionate preaching never elevates the preacher above the listener.
I know you’re here
A young woman left my office smiling one day. She had just unburdened herself by telling me her secret of bulimia, which had kept her down for more than a decade. She said my seven-week series of messages on our freedom in Christ gave her the courage to tell me about it. Over the course of the series, I had tried to raise every issue I could think of that might keep someone in bondage to their past. During one message from Romans 8:1-2 on “Our Freedom From Condemnation,” I said, “Maybe you were abused as a child, and made to feel it was your fault. Maybe you were told you were stupid, and were constantly criticized by your parents.… There is hope for you in Christ. There is freedom from condemnation.”
That young woman confided in me that she became bulimic, in part, because of her inability to live up to the standards of perfectionistic parents. That one line in a sermon had caught her by surprise. “How did you know I needed to hear those very words?” she asked.
“I guess the Holy Spirit knew you needed to hear them, so he gave them to me to say,” I replied for the second time that day.
Just a few hours earlier, I had met with a man who, also for the first time, told me his shameful secret of being molested as a little boy. “I never heard anyone bring that up in a sermon before,” he told me. “I figured that I must be the only damaged goods in this congregation. But when I heard you say it right out loud like that, I figured it must affect a lot of people or you wouldn’t have bothered to mention it. So I figured maybe we could talk about it without your being disgusted with me.”
While a seminary student learns in his first pastorate that a person’s appearance offers little or no clues to a person’s soul, I’m still amazed at how outward appearances can deceive. I’ve ministered in an affluent, well-put-together suburb, a transitioning urban area of dwindling hope, and a small-town, rural church where poverty hung like dust. In all three places, I’ve encountered similar pain, confusion, bondage, and fear. In any setting, preaching must free people from the pain of the past, communicating, “I know you’re here, I’m not surprised by your past, and this is for you, too.”
Collateral benefits
When I approach the pulpit with the intent of administering spiritual care to people I love, when I’m appropriately honest about my spiritual ups and downs, when I demonstrate that the Christian life is attainable and doable, when I communicate, I know you’re here, some tremendous benefits emerge:
1. I lower my counseling load. Several examples in this chapter came from conversations in my counseling office, which is where I’ve heard people clearly articulate the results of preaching as pastoral care. And many of those who came for pastoral care had pinpointed the issue in their lives as a result of the message; I didn’t have to fish for their spiritual illness, and that saved us many hours. But many more, I believe, never felt the need to come see me because the Bible’s truth, clearly articulated and applied, did its transforming work without a trip to my office. That is one more reason why I’m passionate about preaching.
I then get to relate to these people, not as the wise, omnipotent counselor, but as the friend who was able to give them the key piece of information needed to unlock their own dilemmas. In such situations, I’m only the messenger, and they are much more likely to thank God than to thank me for the change that comes.
2. I can better preach the severe passages. Pastoral preaching allows me to preach prophetically without rancor. Not that I haven’t preached harsh messages in anger; in previous chapters I told about my shortcomings in that area.
I was recently talking about this with Johnny Hunt, a pastor from Georgia. “It’s the most amazing thing,” he said. “When people know you love them, you can shoot straight from the hip about the seven churches of Revelation, and people will come up after the message and say, ‘That really encouraged me.’ If they had heard my words without the filter of love, they could only have been offended!”
3. They think I’m a better preacher than I am. It happened frequently enough to be predictable. Someone would send me a sermon tape of their pastor, wanting me to consider it for Preaching Today. The letter often read something like, “Our pastor is one of the greatest preachers you will ever hear. He preached this message I’m sending you just a month after he got us through my mother’s funeral.… I know it will touch you and your listeners as much as it touched me.”
It may have been a good sermon, but it usually never made the final cut for Preaching Today. Because she felt loved by her pastor, to her, his sermons were world class. I’m always delighted when someone believes her preacher is one of the best communicators alive.
I don’t know about you, but I can live with people thinking I’m a better preacher than I really am.
Copyright © 1998 Ed Rowell
