When forced to accept the reality of my preaching, I managed to find some good in it.
—Doug Jackson
And you have never heard a worse preacher!—2 Corinthians 10:10 (TLB)
Those caustic Corinthians found preachers they preferred to Paul, and they let Paul know it.
We pastors often deal with similar attacks but without Paul’s track record to bolster us. How do we respond when people turn sour and assault our preaching? Two recent experiences taught me that such an onslaught brings pain but also benefits.
Our church property backs up to the Fort McDowell Indian Reservation. One morning, as I took a stroll through the desert, the issue of criticism crystallized.
Two Gambel’s quail, a male and his mate, skittered among the scrubby bushes before me, picking their way through the appaloosa sunlight of early morning. I studied the male especially. Larger than his partner, he strutted out front by half a length. His James Dean crest flopped over a Lou Costello face, an absurd specimen of gray-feathered aristocracy.
“Do you know how silly you look?” I snorted to him. He didn’t.
I scrutinized his mate a moment, a modest thing in hausfrau gray and brown. Unliberated, she kept demurely tailfeatherward of her companion.
“He probably tells you he stays out front to protect you,” I mused. “Fact is, he only means to get to the chow first. Why not deflate the clown?”
Then something spooked the pair. As predicted, Sir Quail made no move to tilt a lance for this lady. Both exploded in fury, pounding skyward. The female fluttered easily, while her mate tried to shatter the hold of gravity in short, shuddering strokes. But what grace he stole as he hit airspeed! He swept the wind on outstretched wings to land softly among the neon thorns of a paloverde tree.
I returned to my study and squared off against a dry pile of books and notes that were refusing to become a sermon. The image of Sir Quail lingered in my mind. He was a picture of my preaching.
How my self-image had changed! Only a few months earlier, I would hungrily enter my study, convinced I had found the preacher’s motherlode that eluded Spurgeon. Confident of my abilities, I found myself strutting along, self-important in my stuffy calling. Come Sundays, I flew on word-wings, barnstorming truth to the awed congregation, then settling gently at the back door to receive their coos of admiration.
But now I was awkwardly walking through a wasteland of facts, awaiting the terror of Sunday morning to give me wings—wings that no longer seemed able to get past the shuddering strokes to the graceful flight.
What had happened?
Church sociologists say that most honeymoons last about three years. I had been in my present pulpit just shy of thirty-six months when two of my most faithful members came to see me. They respectfully addressed me as “Pastor.” They never raised their voices, but these two men came to tell me, in essence, “You look ridiculous.”
One talked about “too much secondary application.” I had to ask what that meant. He said I should deal with “just what the text said” without so many digressions into what people should do about it. He offered me an out, noting that it must be hard for a preacher not to want to tell people, “Now get with it!” a phrase that to him, I suppose, summed up my applications.
I responded as best I could, saying it sounded like what he wanted was a lecture, not a sermon. (I remembered my preaching professor at seminary had said that dispensing textual background was “exegeting in public,” and although it wasn’t illegal, it should be.) If I wanted to lecture, I said, I would get a college teaching position. That during most of my sermon preparation I thought about the text from the practical side. He seemed unimpressed.
Another criticism focused on my illustrations. One of the men had been keeping score and had noted that the bulk of my illustrations were not from the Bible but from “secular sources,” his term for the newspaper articles, personal anecdotes, and literary quotes I used. He unsheathed the Reformation phrase “comparing Scripture with Scripture” and aimed its point at me.
I parried by saying that illustrating a Bible verse with a Bible verse was like using a red crayon on red paper. I pointed out that many people, especially the large number of new converts in our congregation, had told me how much they appreciated the stories, which provided a contact point between the Bible and daily life. However, I did admit I probably focused too much on the sermon text, ignoring parallel references.
Then I heard that I was not “fiery” enough. As near as I could tell, this was a call for more volume and insults. I responded that I had to preach as I felt led and in keeping with my own personality. I pointed to some instances of fairly stern exhortation in recent messages.
Finally, they left, and I crawled away to lick my wounds.
What were these men really saying? From the vantage point of time, I see that both came to our church from large congregations with sharply chiseled preaching traditions. “Good” preaching was the kind they were used to, but each used different criteria for “good.” They did agree, however, that my preaching was way off the beam.
In the words of Anne Limburgh, hours of gold turned to hours of lead. The elastic texture of my preaching went wooden. Texts that had glittered like gemstones faded into dull Hebrew roots. I began to do more visiting, holding at bay sermon preparation until as late in the week as possible.
What to do? I wanted to flee to another congregation, but no invitation materialized. I would have quit outright, but the call of God tyrannized my cowardice.
I thought of the quail. Covered with dust, I again tried to fly. Though my solution often leaves me somewhere between the fuss and the feathers, it has kept me preaching, and I offer my reflections as encouragement for the sick at heart.
Crash-landing
Until my encounter with the critics, I had blissfully assumed that my preaching was fine. My fall from this illusion brought a crash-landing into reality. In many ways, I wish I could have continued living in fantasy.
Our illusions serve a purpose. When I was four years old, a realtor told me a hippopotamus lived in the attic of our new home. He shared a graphic account of the missing digits of naughty boys who ventured beyond the trapdoor in the storage room ceiling.
I bought the whole thing. A couple of years later, I learned that the salesman’s story was a ruse designed to keep me out of a dangerous part of the house. I was not happy. Staying out of the attic just to be good was no fun compared to staying out to avoid a chomping hippopotamus.
Life runs more smoothly and with more zest when greased with illusion. For that reason, I never assume the superiority of reality over daydreams. As David Morrison of the Menninger Clinic says, “Fantasy, not reality, will determine what you and I do.” I may have preached better—or at least with more zest and energy—before my pulpit bubble burst. I enthusiastically gave myself to creative study and application, and entered the pulpit with confidence.
Still, reality blesses us with objectivity, even longevity. When forced to accept reality, I managed to find some good in it. For me, reality brought humility, better relationships, and a renewed appreciation for people in the pews.
Humility’s gift. One Sunday I thundered forth in power, my blue pinstripe suit looking remarkably like camel hair. Every eye focused on me. I had them this time, and not a single Philistine would escape with his paganism intact. Another instant showed me the reality behind their absorption. From the front pew, my wife held aloft a rapidly lettered sign reading, ZIPPER. The words of Isaiah took on a new meaning as I lamented, “Woe is me, for I am undone.”
It helps (though it hurts) to hear the truth about the fly in the ointment, even when that fly is unzipped.
After the interview with my critical church members, I realized I had cherished the proud and false idea that people came each week with a burning desire to hear my sermon. I now saw that their motives were mixed. Some came to church in spite of my preaching; many preferred the style of previous pastors or famous television and radio ministers. Some came out of religious duty and did not care about preaching one way or another.
If this was the case, better that I know so. Worse than being washed up is being washed up and not knowing it. Tolstoy, in Anna Karenina, sculpts the image of obliviousness:
At almost the same time that his wife left Alexei Alexandrovich, there had come to him that bitterest moment in the life of an official—the moment when his upward career comes to a full stop. This full stop had been arrived at and everyone perceived it, but Alexei Alexandrovich himself was not yet aware that his career was over.
Then comes the most chilling moment:
Alexei Alexandrovich did not merely fail to observe his hopeless position in the official world, he was not merely free from anxiety on this head—he was positively more satisfied than ever with his own activity.
Better Relationships. I also ended up with a better relationship with my members. When the Shekinah draped my pulpit, I had excused my social reticence as devotion to a noble calling. Since my preaching was to lift people to exalted heights, I had good reason for being absent when they needed to chat. In short, in the name of eloquence, I had withdrawn.
When my tower of oratory caved in, I tumbled down smack into their living rooms and offices and backyards. Fearing that I was losing touch with them as a preacher, I decided to reach them as a person.
Yet these new relationships resulted in better preaching. Topics for sermons bombarded me, and application became as easy as taking inventory on the week’s conversations.
Renewed appreciation. I had pouted that no one celebrated my efforts, until one blunt friend reminded me that most people are never celebrated. The people in the pews toil daily. Come quitting time, they get a paycheck and maybe a handshake, but no brass band plays for them.
My bout with discontent also introduced me to what Calvin Miller calls the “back door” of life. Everyone has a back door, where all the unfinished and imperfect work of our life piles up. The occasional Sunday visitor sees only the front parlor and may even compliment us on it. Real friends, however, are those who have entered our lives through the clutter of the back door. Those who kindly ignore the negative reality may prove more genuine friends than those who praise positive illusion.
I learned to appreciate even more those real friends who saw me for what I was and didn’t mention it.
Redemptive criticism
After my painful interview I realized that some people wanted different preaching. I knew I couldn’t satisfy everyone, but as I reviewed my previous months of preaching, I had to admit I had become a formula expositor.
Not long ago, a TV commercial for a particular brand of clothing portrayed a fashion show behind the old Iron Curtain. The announcer drones, “Swimwear,” as a cruiser-weight model appears in a green smock and carries a beach ball. Ham-faced men in gray suits respond with Pavlovian applause. The announcer says, “Next, eveningwear,” as the same Medusa returns, draped in the same green smock, now carrying a flashlight.
I shuddered to admit that my pulpit ministry had the same lack of variety, and that the congregation’s response, even when positive, was perfunctory, Politburo-like applause.
I opened each sermon with some sort of story or object lesson and plugged in one illustration for each point. I also closed with one story or example, no matter how much I had to shoe-horn it to fit the message.
My weekly study began, always, with a translation of the text from the original language, followed by word studies, followed by commentary work. Bang, bang, bang, and I could be through with the examination without ever truly engaging in the text.
I blushed when I reviewed my applications. I exhorted them to be faithful in church attendance, to avoid my denomination’s cardinal sins (drinking, fornication, failure to vote Republican), and to be earnest in daily Bible reading. I realized any Pharisee in Jesus’ day could have passed one of my sermons with an A +.
I thought of a veterinarian who once described to me his disappointment when, after months of studying diagrams of the insides of a cat, it came his turn to operate. The textbook kitty presented clear lines and labeled organs set off in various colors. The animal stayed still, there was no blood, and the whole thing was shaped by symmetry. When he performed his first actual surgery, the real cat behaved quite badly. It was full of bits of life that wriggled and bulged. It bled and squirmed. He could not objectively study the situation because the subject’s mortality made time a factor. Still, he knew no one wanted a vet who could operate only on a picture of a cat.
I had to admit I had been preaching pictures of sermons rather than sermons, reducing my efforts to energetic but lifeless diagrams. Thanks to the criticism, I had to open up the slipper inside of a living craft.
“Except a man’s reach exceed his grasp,” asks Browning, “what’s a heaven for?” My preaching had spoken of heaven, but my attitude had left little need for it. The loss of my illusions forced me once again to take up the preacher’s burden of improved technique.
I varied my study habits by varying my genres. A straight expositional style allowed me to choose small portions of Scripture and study them in the same in-depth manner. When I began choosing longer passages, I had trouble outlining and studying them. That forced me to think about what I was doing. I ventured into topical sermons, which required an array of cross-references. I took a shot at my personal nemesis, the overhead-projector sermon, complete with a printed study sheet for the listeners. Some of it did not work, but some of it did.
I tried to use more personal anecdotes and fewer literary quotes. I swore off Barlett’s Quotations for a short while. If I had two brief word-pictures that fit a given point, I used them both. If I had none, I used none. I tested each illustration by a simple criterion: Did it illustrate? If not, I left it out.
As I stated above, application improved as relationships improved. I would simply take a few moments at the end of my study time to think of certain members of my congregation. What were their needs? What did this passage say to them?
My pastor father once told me, “The only bad kind of preaching is the kind we do all the time.” His wise counsel launched me into new methods.
Vexing value
In our church, we have three weekly preaching services: Sunday morning, and Sunday and Wednesday nights. I played it safe with the larger Sunday morning crowd, but I began to experiment with the evening services, when smaller crowds made the risks less formidable. These changes may have appeared subtle, perhaps unnoticeable. To me, however, they seemed daring. They demanded of me a new attention that worked toward curing my staleness and helped me regain the challenge of preaching.
Some of my flock disliked even the small changes I made. One man fondly remembers my first sermon at the church, which set the standard for him: a standard which should never be violated, world without end.
Others felt the changes had not gone far enough. I soon noticed, however, that those in this class simply hoped I would adopt their favorite style as “the” style. They had no clear use for variety, but preferred the tyranny of their form of monotony.
Dick Vermeil, when head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles, once told the rowdy sports writers’ establishment that he had no intention of letting the press pick his starting quarterback. I learned that I could not let the pews control the pulpit, and that most people respond well to variations of style, so long as doctrine remains uncompromised.
Discipline’s flair
A boy lost an arm-wrestling match to the neighbor’s daughter. His dad reproached him for this breach of “machismo,” wanting to know how he could lose to a mere girl.
“But Dad,” the boy protested, “girls aren’t as ‘mere’ as they used to be!” Forced to realize that some of my sermons were more mere than majestic, I found liberation in the thought that “mere” preaching may not be so mere after all.
Style, elan, panache, flair—whatever the name, most of us covet it and feel apologetic if our preaching lacks it. Still, preaching, when it cannot soar, should at least walk, or even crawl.
Real preaching gets somewhere, or at least heads toward somewhere. Even preaching that is pedestrian still holds value. Content is ever the key. Prosaic preaching, as only as it remains biblical, at least gets its message out.
Spurgeon deals wisdom when he advises,
Better far to give the people masses of unprepared truth in the rough, like pieces of meat from the butcher’s block, chopped off anyhow, bone and all, and even dropped down in the sawdust, than ostentatiously and delicately hand them out upon a china dish a delicious slice of nothing at all.
Prosaic preaching also liberates the preacher from his heavy servitude to the goddess of inspired preparation. We all like to prepare under the Spirit’s inspiration, for study is not fun without it.
Author Stephen King takes exception to the common conception of “the Muse” as some ethereal fairy who dusts writers with a magic wand. His own sprite, he says, is a little guy in overalls and a crewcut who smacks him on the side of the head each morning and orders him to work. Clearly, King has the better muse.
Yes, I like inspiration. I covet and court it. I find I cannot, however, keep it in stock. Discipline is a more stable element. When the weeks slip by and no sacred fire falls from heaven to ignite my gray-bound volume of The Pulpit Commentary, I still can search out and express truth. It is not nearly as enjoyable as the white-heat of genius, but it steadily yields content.
Quail preaching
A year after my crisis, as I evaluate my reevaluation, I find another truth: it’s always possible that everybody else may be wrong, and that I may be right.
I can still recall the fateful interview with my parishioners. I walked through the house to my bedroom and slumped into my easy chair. Looking up, I saw my two-year-old son toddle into the room. He didn’t comprehend the details but knew that “someone had been mean to Daddy.” He pulled my hands away from my face and solemnly intoned, “Daddy, don’t listen to the hooty people!”
I’m uncertain where he got the adjective, but I know what he meant. There are some hooty people in this world, some congenital malcontents, who laugh at quails for not being hawks. I must listen to criticism, but if my critics threaten to steal what is truly best in me, I must steel myself to fight for what is uniquely mine.
In all this, I’ve learned that survival may be the greatest virtue. Whether the critics are on-target or off-base (and especially while we’re trying to decide which is the case), my best response is faithful perseverance.
Even in the depths, I didn’t quit preaching. I have delivered sermons that I knew were unworthy. I have left the pulpit frustrated and embarrassed. But I know the only thing worse than bad preaching is no preaching at all.
Copyright © 1997
