Page 4368 – Christianity Today (2024)

Light

Can Christians Pray for Every U.S. Home in 2000?

“Lighthouse” tenders beckon pastors’ commitment.

One of the big hurdles American Christians have had in sharing the gospel is that confrontation is not the right place to start a relationship,” says Glenn Barth of Mission America. His cross-denominational organization points to prayer as the first step toward presenting the faith. And they want every person in the U.S. to hear the gospel this year.

Mission America is a coalition of 80 denominational leaders and 300 parachurch representatives working under the banner “Celebrate Jesus 2000.” One phase of the campaign is the distribution of Bibles, already under way in many states. Another phase is “Lighthouses of Prayer.” The strategy is to secure a commitment from one family on each block and commission that family to work their network of neighbors and friends. Barth says the approach is simple: prayer, care, share.

“There’s a question I’ve never gotten a ‘no’ to: ‘Can I pray for that?’ People are always glad to know you’re praying for their needs,” Barth says. “Build a relationship first and later you can present the gospel.”

Barth hopes 200,000 churches will establish Lighthouses. PaxNet telecast a two-hour special in October, and a coalition of 750 Christian radio stations promoted the project in November. A joint broadcast is planned in early Spring where listeners pledge their homes as Lighthouses. A free pastor’s packet is available from Mission America.

Lighthouses of Prayerwww.lighthousemovement.com1-888-323-1210

Salt

Bulletproofing Your Church Kids

Colson offers movie and kit to spark action on school violence

The names are indelible: Jonesboro, Paducah, Conyers, Littleton. They’re ordinary towns where the unthinkable happened. Kids killed kids in schools.

Steven Curtis Chapman graduated from one of those schools. The singer returned to his Kentucky high school after three girls were murdered while praying. Now Chapman has teamed with the victims’ unit of Chuck Colson’s Prison Fellowship to urge action by local churches.

Chapman and Colson are promoting a kit for youth groups. Included is a 45-minute movie about a teenager who struggles with school pressures. He could turn violent, unless someone recognizes the signs and reaches out to him.

A second video, for teens and their parents, is a documentary on the recent killing sprees. The Bible study and discussion guide offer ways to diminish school violence.

“This is the number-one public policy problem in this country today,” Colson said. He hopes to show how teens can change this “culture of killing.”

Zach Ames saw the video at a church in Conyers, Georgia. Last May he had stood about 30 feet from a student who opened fire on classmates outside his high school. “I realized that careless, senseless comments might not bother some people, but they could cause others to snap,” Ames said.

To order: 800-575-9269 ext. 139. Suggested donation $50. www.neighborswhocare.org

Worship

Blended Surpasses Traditional

4 in 10 churches mix music styles

Newer songs, styles, and instrumentation continue making inroads in worship. Churches using blended formats surpassed traditional services (40 percent to 38 percent) in the most recent survey by our CTI research department. Traditional dropped from 49 percent in a 1993 survey. Contemporary settled at 22 percent.

Although there are approximately 56,000 fewer contemporary music churches than traditional ones, 3.2 million more people per week attend a contemporary service than attend a traditional service. The average contemporary service attendance is 223, more than twice the size of the average traditional service attendance of 105.

The greatest impact of the contemporary music movement may be in the introduction of a variety of instruments in worship services of all kinds. Organ use is steady, but pianos are in trouble. Keyboards are replacing their acoustic ancestors. Guitars and drums are standard in nearly half of all churches.

The Top 25

These chart busters are really moving up.

Step aside Casey Kasem. Check the praise and worship songs printed or projected most often by 140,000 churches using CCLI licenses last year.

1. Lord, I Lift Your Name on High
2. As the Deer
3. He Has Made Me Glad (I Will Enter His Gates)
4. I Love You, Lord
5. Majesty
6. Give Thanks
7. Awesome God
8. Shout to the Lord
9. He Is Exalted
10. Glorify Thy Name
11. We Bring the Sacrifice of Praise
12. All Hail King Jesus
13. Change My Heart, O God
14. This Is the Day
15. More Precious than Silver
16. O Magnify the Lord (I Will Call upon the Lord)
17. Shine, Jesus, Shine
18. I Exalt Thee
19. How Majestic Is Your Name
20. Great Is the Lord
21. Open Our Eyes, Lord
22. Holy Ground
23. Celebrate Jesus
24. Jesus, Name Above All Names
25. Because He Lives

(Source: Maranatha Music and Christian Copyright Licensing, Inc.)

Ideas that Work

Good Gossip

Give the grapevine its own number and make it work for you.

The pastor’s phone rings at all hours. I’m accustomed to that. But when this phone rings, it’s answered by a machine. My congregation is accustomed to that. And they like it. We can answer all their questions:

• Who is in the hospital?
• Did the new baby arrive yet?
• What time is tonight’s meeting?
• And (after really foul weather), Are we having church this morning?

In three churches I served, we have established the Hotline to share daily news of the congregation. All we needed was a dedicated telephone line and an answering machine or voice-mail provider.

To start the project, we sent one or two labels with the Hotline number to each household. We asked members to place one on each home and office phone.

I repeat often that the Hotline message will be changed daily (except on the weekends when I do one version). I record the outgoing message in the evening, but the Hotline can be updated any time if there is an emergency or a death in the church family.

If time permits, I add a short devotion or prayer for the day. I’ve found that one minute of outgoing message is usually sufficient. People who call want a quick update, not a sermon.

This service can help a congregation get needed information without bothering an overloaded secretary. One member, a jogger, tells me he likes to come home after his morning run, sit down with a cup of coffee, and listen to the Hotline on his speaker phone.

And shut-ins have daily access to their church. I’ve often heard from these folks that they appreciate hearing their pastor’s voice every day.

In a time when communication within the church must be a very high priority, the Hotline helps keep us connected.

—Drexel C. RankinLouisville, Kentucky

Video Invocation

Homebound lead prayer on tape.

A California church is bringing homebound members to church on video. The elderly who can’t attend church are taped leading a prayer and the video is played at the opening of the Sunday service.

High-tech becomes high touch, according to Tim Brown, pastor of First Baptist Church of Clovis. “It helps bridge the gap between the shut-ins and those who are able to go to worship. It makes them more committed to taking care of the elderly in their own church.”

And the “guest pray-ers” are blessed, too. “(Our church is) successful today because of the sacrifice of people unable to come, like our shut-ins,” Brown says. “We need to respect and love them.”

—Lynne M. ThompsonModesto, California

E-chain Gang

Online prayer partnering draws men

A new member of one of our Sunday school classes suffered a stroke during the week. Another man who found out about it spread the word electronically and sparked a new ministry.

He sent an e-mail to many of his class members and they responded immediately. Within a few hours, many were praying for their hospitalized friend, and they pooled their money to send him flowers.

The computer notification worked so well, especially among the men, that I knew we had to start an e-mail prayer chain. We had a small telephone prayer chain, but no men participated. That Sunday we invited wired members to sign up and 52 people joined the e-chain—28 were men. In one day we tripled the size of our prayer team and brought men into significant ministry.

—Brian MavisRocky Mountain Christian ChurchLongmont, Colorado

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Copyright © 2000 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Sometimes you just can’t find the right word, so you have to create one.

My daughter’s high school English teacher was looking for a word that encompassed “huge” and “gigantic” with the added sense of enormous, sweeping scope. So he coined “hugantic” (pronounced hew-jan-tic).

Now that’s BIG.

We faced a similar dilemma finding a name for this issue’s theme. How do you describe the assignment of today’s preacher, to communicate an ancient-future message that God is, God loves, and God can be known. And further, that God is currently at work, as he has been since the world began, to redeem good out of evil, to transform self-centered people into saints who fully engage life in the present but are never satisfied with simply an earthbound worldview, because they know that eternal glory is the reason they exist.

And that’s just the message. The other half of the assignment is to spread that good news, embodied in the person of Jesus Christ, to listeners who are ever-changing. To a world ever more complex.

How do you put that in a word?

Not long ago, some of our editors met with John Ortberg, a teaching pastor at Willow Creek Community Church and a frequent contributor to LEADERSHIP. John described the recent shift in the media from “broadcasting” to “narrowcasting.”

Fifty years ago, all radio stations offered “block programing,” a variety of music, news, comedy, and drama, assuming the whole family tuned in together.

TV networks took over that approach, and many predicted the death of radio. But radio stations adapted, going after narrower and narrower niches, with great success. So we have news talk or sports talk or shock jocks or the professionally opinionated Rush Limbaughs or Dr. Lauras.

Music stations are even more finely defined: classic rock, soft rock, lite rock, oldies, alternative rock, easy listening, classic country, new country, jazz, R&B, hip hop, and …

The emergence of VCRs and 500 cable channels has now forced TV from broadcasting to narrowcasting. Prime time network TV viewership is a mere 1/3 of what it was in 1980, the year we launched LEADERSHIP.

Today’s assumption is that each member of the family wants to watch something different, and communicating means aiming for a more and more precise subset of the whole.

This trend presents preachers with a dilemma. Each congregation is populated with multiple needs, preferences, and life situations. Each church may be only slightly less segmented than the radio market.

So what do we do? Follow the lead of radio program managers, aiming for a narrow subset of the whole, effectively ignoring the majority? Or do we try to speak to everyone within earshot, and fear we’ll reach no one in particular?

This issue of LEADERSHIP assumes that neither is an option for preachers of a timeless message with eternal importance. We neither broadcast nor narrowcast. Ours is a unique role. We Wordcast.

Our calling is (1) the Word—given by God through prophets and apostles and Jesus Christ. The Word is as old as Mount Everest and as contemporary as the latest attempt to reach Everest’s summit.

Our calling is (2) casting—to cast that Word far and wide, near and narrow, as we have opportunity. Jesus’ parable of the sower describes reality: we cast seed freely, hoping to find fertile ground, but recognizing that the Word will not be welcomed by all.

We’re called to Wordcasting. In this fragmented world, that’s a hugantic assignment.

Marshall Shelley is editor of LEADERSHIP.

Copyright © 2000 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Okay, Start with an Easy One

Patrick O’Boyle recalls the late-1940s Hyde Park “Speakers’ Corner” appearances of Frank Sheed, the Catholic author and publisher:

“Sheed could be devastating with hecklers. Once, after he had described the extraordinary order and design to be seen in the universe, a persistent challenger retorted by pointing to all the world’s ills, and ended shouting, ‘I could make a better universe than your God!’ ‘I won’t ask you to make a universe,’ Sheed replied. ‘But would you make a rabbit—just to establish confidence?'”

—Commonweal (4/23/99)(Creation, Pride)Genesis 1, Psalm 139

Jesus the Translator

In Just Like Jesus, Max Lucado writes: There were a few occasions in Brazil when I served as a translator for an English speaker. He stood before the audience, complete with the message. I stood at his side, equipped with the language. My job was to convey his story to the listeners.

I did my best to allow his words to come through me. I was not at liberty to embellish or subtract. When the speaker gestured, I gestured. As his volume increased, so did mine. When he got quiet, I did, too.

When he walked this earth, Jesus was “translating” God all the time. When God got louder, Jesus got louder. When God gestured, Jesus gestured. He was so in sync with the Father that he could declare “I am the Father and the Father is in me” (John 14:11, NRSV).

(Incarnation, the Word)John 14:11

Opinions Aplenty

Anna Greenberg, assistant professor of public policy at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, observes:

“Polls show that Americans have the perplexing ability to hold ideologically contradictory views. As many scholars note, Americans are simultaneously attached to both limited and activist government policies; they are capable, for instance, of favoring both cutting the federal budget and increasing spending on education, health care, and other social programs. Americans are also quite willing to offer opinions to poll takers on subjects that they concede they know nothing about.”

—Chronicle of Higher Education (5/14/99)(Foolishness, Wisdom)James 1:5-8

Never Satisfied QB

In Texas Monthly, Skip Hollandsworth writes:

[Troy] Aikman [quarterback of the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys] is an elusive hero, difficult to understand, clearly driven by something other than fame. On the night of that first Super Bowl victory, he delayed attending a party with his teammates, instead ordering beer from room service and sitting alone in his hotel room for a couple of hours. “I kept thinking back to the time when I was a teenager—how I thought that all my problems in my life would be solved the moment I turned sixteen and was able to get a car,” he recalls. “Well, here I was at the top of professional football, and I found myself thinking, ‘Now what? Now what?'”

“Why would you feel that way?” I asked.

For several seconds, Aikman just stares at me. He appears dumbfounded that I would even ask such an absurd question. “Well, isn’t that what it’s all about?” he asks. “To keep raising the bar for yourself?”

It is precisely this attitude that makes Aikman such a fierce player—but it is also his curse, and he knows it. “I’ve always known that the lows have been lower for me than the highs have been high,” he confesses. After a loss, he does not answer the phone, even when close friends or family are calling to console him. He lies in bed and replays each offensive play in his mind.

—”The Real Troy Aikman,” Texas Monthly (December 1998)(Ambition, Competition, Contentment, Depression, Fame, Losing, Success)Ecclesiastes 1:2; Philippians 4:11-13

What’s Important These Days

In a New York Times survey, the percentage of those who rated these values as “very important”:

—New York Times/CBS News poll, conducted July 17-19, 1999(Culture, Priorities, Values) Luke 16:15

The Mercury Mystery

In Albert Einstein’s early days physicists had scratched their heads for some 50 years over the unexplainable orbit of the planet Mercury. Newton’s theories of gravity had served well for centuries to understand the orbits of all the other planets, but in Mercury’s elliptical orbit, the point nearest the sun drifted by a very small amount . …

Astronomers theorized that another small hidden planet, which they named Vulcan, might orbit near the sun and exert gravitational force on Mercury. But Vulcan was never discovered . …

Then Einstein formulated his general theory of relativity. When he applied this gravitational formula to the eccentric orbit of Mercury, he had one of the breathtaking moments of his scientific life: the numbers fit. Mercury was a mystery no more.

My life will on occasion have an orbit like Mercury that for a time simply defies my best efforts to explain it. Nonetheless as surely as there is order in the universe, there is a heavenly reason for my circ*mstances utterly consistent with God’s Word and character. I just cannot understand it yet.

—Craig Brian Larson, Pastoral Grit (Bethany, 1998)(Doubts, Mysteries, Purpose, Trust)Romans 11:33-36; Proverbs 3:5

Blocking the Entrance

A few years ago I had a chance to become a hero, but it turned out to be an embarrassing moment. I was in China on a tour group. Our tour bus was on the way to a scenic spot with another tour bus in front of us. It was snowing, and the road was muddy.

Suddenly the bus ahead of us skidded off the road and tipped over on its side in a rice field. I quickly jumped off my tour bus, ran to the overturned bus, and jumped on top. Windows were shattered, and people inside were obviously hurt. The emergency door was facing upward, so I grabbed the handle of the emergency door and pulled. The door did not open. I kept pulling hard, but it wouldn’t budge.

By this time, others had come and were pulling people out through the windows, so I gave up on the door and joined them. After I moved away from the door, another man went over to the door. He turned the door handle, and the door opened easily.

I suddenly realized why the door did not open for me: I had been standing on the door as I tried to open it. With good intentions to save lives, I had become the biggest obstacle blocking the door of rescue.

Sometimes those who want to lead others to Christ likewise become the biggest obstacle to their salvation.

—Charles Chu(Evangelism, Example, Testimony)1 Timothy 6:1; Titus 2:9-10

Marriage Versus Cohabitation

The number of “unmarried-couple households” has increased from 523,000 in 1970 to 4,236,000 in 1998. Professor Roger Rubin, a University of Maryland specialist in family studies, says, “We estimate that by the year 2000, half of all American adults will have had a cohabiting experience by the age of 30.”

The Houston Chronicle reports that couples who live together have an 80 percent greater chance of divorce than those who don’t cohabit.

A Washington State researcher discovered that women who cohabit are twice as likely to experience domestic violence as married women. The National Center for Mental Health revealed that cohabiting women’s incidence of depression is four times greater than that of married women, and two times greater than unmarried women.

In a survey of over 100 couples who lived together, 71 percent of the women said they would not live-in again.

—Christian Single (September 1999)(Divorce, Marriage, Sex)

What Really Matters

The question to ask at the end of life’s race is not so much “What have I accomplished?” but “Whom have I loved, and how courageously?”

—Geoff Gorsuch, “Journey to Adelphos,” Discipleship Journal (Issue 14)(Accomplishment, Love, Priorities,)Amos 5:18-24 (Lec.); 1 Corinthians 13

Something Worth Dying for

It’s hard to read any of the sermons the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. preached about death and heaven without hearing echoes of gunshots.

“The minute you conquer the fear of death, at that moment you are free,” he said in 1963. “I submit to you that if a man hasn’t discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.”

Decades later, these words still inspire faith and courage, said social activist Johann Christoph Arnold, who marched with King in the Civil Rights Movement. That’s why the patriarch of the nine Bruderhof communes in the U. S., England, and Australia included this quotation in his most recent book, Seeking Peace.

This was the book that Cassie Bernall and other teenagers at Littleton’s West Bowles Community Church were supposed to have discussed on the evening of April 20th. After that tragic day at Columbine High School, Bernall’s parents showed Arnold her copy of Seeking Peace, with its handwritten notes for the study session that was never held.

Cassie had boldly underlined King’s thoughts on death. Did she hear echoes of gunshots?

“Why did these words speak to her at such a young age? It is such a great mystery,” said Arnold. “But I do know this. She had found something she was willing to live for, and even to die for, and that made all the difference in her life.”

—Syndicated columnist Terry Mattingly(Death, Courage)Matthew 16:25

Survey: Money or Home?

Fast Company magazine asked its readers, “If you could have one more hour per day at home or a $10,000 a year raise, which would you choose?”

The percentages:

• Money: 83

• Time at home: 17

—Fast Company (July/August 1999)(Family, Money, Priorities, Time)Ecclesiastes 5:10; Philippians 4:10-13

Where Have Those Lips Been?

According to a radio report, a middle school in Oregon faced a unique problem.

A number of girls were beginning to use lipstick and would put it on in the bathroom. After they put on their lipstick, they would press their lips to the mirrors leaving dozens of little lip prints.

Finally the principal decided that something had to be done. She called the girls to the bathroom and met them there with the custodian. She explained that all these lip prints were causing a major problem for the custodian, who had to clean the mirrors every day. To demonstrate how difficult it was, she asked the custodian to clean one of the mirrors. He took out a long-handled brush, dipped it into the toilet, and scrubbed the mirror. Since then there have been no lip prints on the mirrors.

Try thinking of this story when you’re tempted to sin. If you could only see the real filth you’d be kissing, you wouldn’t be attracted to it.

—Brett Kays(Consequences, Sin, Temptation, Warnings)Galatians 6:7-8

I Got Scripture an’ I Know How to Use It

According to one of those passed-along stories on the Internet: An elderly woman had just returned to her home from a church service when she was startled to find an intruder in the act of robbing her home of its valuables.

She yelled, “Stop! Acts 2:38!” (which reads, “turn from your sin”).

The burglar stopped dead in his tracks. The woman calmly called the police and explained what she’d done.

As the officer cuffed the man, he asked the burglar, “Why did you just stand there? All the old lady did was yell a Scripture at you.”

“Scripture?” replied the burglar. “She said she had an ax and two .38’s!”

—Unknown(God’s Word, Power)Hebrews 4:12

Keep Asking

A Chicago company is one of the world’s largest magazine fulfillment firms. That means they handle subscription mailings by computer. Among other things, they send out renewal and expiration notices.

One day the company’s computer malfunctioned. Soon after, a rancher in Powder Bluff, Colorado, got 9,734 separate mailings informing him that his subscription to National Geographic had expired.

This got the rancher’s attention. He dropped what he was doing and traveled 10 miles to the nearest post office, where he sent in money for a renewal—along with a note that said, “I give up! Send me your magazine!”

There is something about multiple requests that brings answers. For reasons known only to God, that is true also in prayer.

—Stand Firm (September 1999)(Persistence, Prayer) Psalm 123; Matthew 7:7-8; Luke 11:5-10; Luke 18:1-8

Wilt’s Wish: One Woman

The late Wilt Chamberlain had great numbers as an NBA star, but the number he will probably be remembered for most is 20,000. That is how many women the never-married Chamberlain claimed in his autobiography to have slept with.

What few may remember though, says columnist Clarence Page, is Chamberlain “went on to write that he would have traded all 20,000 for the one woman he wanted to stay with for keeps.”

—Clarence Page, “Remembering The Big Dipper’s Other Statistics,” Chicago Tribune (10/17/99)(Commitment, Fornication, Marriage, Sex)Ephesians 4:19

The Right Risks

In an article on old-timer pickup softball games—where seniors in Naperville, Illinois, gather twice weekly to test their skills against one another—writer Ted Gregory explains the risks: not pulled muscles and sprained ankles, but sometimes senior softball players suffer heart attacks from exerting themselves in the hot sun.

Despite the risks, 63-year-old Bill Body explained why he plays: “If I’m going to die, I’m going to die doing what I love doing, whether it’s playing softball, fishing, hunting, or something else.”

We’re often tempted in the church to slow down, cut back, take it easy because we get tired of taking risks—and in Christ’s work, there are a lot of emotional or spiritual risks. But Bill Body is exactly right: life itself is a risk—we’re all going to die. So we might as well get involved, take the risks, and do the things in Christ we really love.

—Mark Galli, reference: Chicago Tribune (7/23/99) (Aging, Fear, Joy, Passion)2 Corinthians 11:16-33; Philippians 1:19-26

Ministering from Weakness

Elisa Morgan, president of MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers) International, writes:

I’m probably the least likely person to head a mothering organization. I grew up in a broken home. My parents were divorced when I was 5. My older sister, younger brother, and I were raised by my alcoholic mother.

While my mother meant well––truly she did––most of my memories are of me mothering her rather than her mothering me. Alcohol altered her love, turning it into something that wasn’t love. I remember her weaving down the hall of our ranch home in Houston, Texas, glass of scotch in hand. She would wake me at 2 a.m. just to make sure I was asleep. I would wake her at 7 a.m. to try to get her off to work.

Sure, there were good times like Christmas and birthdays when she went all out and celebrated us as children. But even those days ended with the warped glow of alcohol. What she did right was lost in what she did wrong.

Ten years ago, when I was asked to consider leading MOPS International, a vital ministry that nurtures mothers, I went straight to my knees––and then to the therapist’s office. How could God use me––who had never been mothered-to nurture other mothers?

The answer came as I gazed into the eyes of other moms around me and saw their needs mirroring my own. God seemed to take my deficits and make them my offering––”My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9).

—Elisa Morgan, Christian Parenting Today (May/June 1999)(Alcoholism, Ministry, Mothers, Parenting, Service, Weakness)2 Corinthians 3:4-6; 12:9)

How Enemies Help

I heard a story about attempts to ship fresh North Atlantic cod from Boston to San Francisco during the nineteenth century.

At that time the only way to ship the fish to the West Coast was to sail around the South American continent—a trip that took months. As you can imagine, the first attempts to dress the cod in Boston and pack them in ice failed miserably. By the time they reached California, the fish weren’t exactly fit for consumption.

Next, the cod were placed in holding tanks full of water, shipped to California alive, and dressed there. The results were less than satisfactory. The fish didn’t get much exercise during the trip, and as a result they were pasty and relatively tasteless.

Finally, someone hit upon an interesting idea. “Why don’t we put some catfish in with the cod?”

Why? Because catfish are cods’ natural enemy. Sure enough, when a few catfish were placed in those tanks with them, the cod were always alert and swimming around. This time, when the fish reached San Francisco, they were in perfect shape.

—Bill Myers and David Wimbish, The Dark Side of the Supernatural (Bethany)(Spiritual Warfare, Temptation, Trials)John 15:18-16:4; Ephesians 6:10-18

Worshipers Live Longer

Gregg Easterbrook writes in The New Republic:

“Recent studies indicate that men and women who practice in any of the mainstream faiths have above-average longevity, fewer strokes, less heart disease, less clinical depression, better immune-system function, lower blood pressure, and fewer anxiety attacks, and they are much less likely to commit suicide than the population at large. These findings come from secular medical schools and schools of public health.

“In the most striking finding, Dr. Harold Koenig of Duke University Medical Center has calculated that, with regard to any mainstream faith, ‘lack of religious involvement has an effect on mortality that is equivalent to 40 years of smoking one pack of cigarettes per day.’ …

“Another new study, conducted mainly by researchers at the University of Texas, found that those who regularly attended worship services lived an average of seven years longer than those who never attended.”

—The New Republic (July 19 & 26, 1999)(Church attendance, Health, Worship)Exodus 20:24; Hebrews 10:24-25

Only in Horseshoes

98-year-old Charles Fackler was to receive France’s Legion of Honor medal for service in World War I.

Bill Fackler, his son, later said, “It was a sad occasion. We had everything organized for that day. The presentation was to be at 2 p.m. He died at quarter to 12. He missed it by two hours.”

—Adapted from World (2/20/99)(Perseverance, Persistence, Reward, Time)Deuteronomy 34:1-12; Psalm 90:1-6, 13-17; Hebrews 10:36

Temporary Contentment

A mother and son, a story goes, were outside when a tornado surprised them. The mother clung to a tree and tried to hold her son. But the swirling winds carried him into the sky. He was gone.

The woman began to weep and pray: “Please, O Lord, bring back my boy! He’s all I have. I’d do anything not to lose him. If you’ll bring him back, I’ll serve you all my days.”

Suddenly the boy toppled from the sky, right at her feet—a bit mussed up, but safe and sound. His mother joyfully brushed him off.

Then she stopped, looked to the sky, and said, “He had a hat, Lord.”

—Stand Firm (September 1999)(God’s Gifts, Bargaining, Mothers)Philippians 4:6

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It happened four times in two months—in churches scattered across the continent. It made me uneasy.

I attended Sunday worship with mainstream Protestant congregations in Wisconsin, Massachusetts, West Virginia, and California. In each service the pastoral prayer was interspersed with personal, intercessory prayers by worship attenders.

Why did I—one who loves both prayer and populism—squirm during this form of piety?

Because these prayers were overwhelmingly personal.

A dear friend articulated my concern. He is facing cancer in a private part of his body. He stopped going to church because he is afraid that part of his body will be mentioned during prayer. Public prayer that fails to distinguish between the personal and the private can really hurt people.

Another friend of the same generation winced when he heard his church service broadcast on the local radio station: “And now let us pray for R. who has prostate cancer and a female doctor.” The invasion of privacy hurt the person being prayed for as well as embarrassing those present in the sanctuary. Prayer that is too personal goes from being “good” personal to “bad” personal in an instant.

Keep public prayer public

I recognized another cause for my distaste for overly personal intercessory prayer as I left the fourth of these otherwise magnificent services of worship: no one mentioned anything truly public.

All the intercessions were individual, individualistic, even.

“Heal my mother-in-law who has the flu” is an important intercession. The flu is no laughing matter, as anyone who has ever had it knows. Still, why did the people of Indonesia receive no intercessions? What about currency crashes or floods or transpersonal events?

Surely these rival the flu in difficulty.

Yet in all of these services, prayer focused on medical issues like arthritis, cancer, and flu while omitting spiritual or international concerns.

Their absence points to a kind of selfishness in prayer. The irony is deep. When we pray for our ailing mothers-in-law, we are trying to be unselfish. And we are failing by lack of proper context.

Pious exhibitionism

Another reason for my distaste is the attention getters. In each service, there was one person or more who just talked too long. He or she was not calling attention to the power of God to intercede but to the power of personal pain. Pious exhibitionism is no better than any other kind.

The fact that L., who has severe arthritis, had a good day on Tuesday, a bad day on Wednesday, and saw the doctor on Thursday is simply not of wide enough interest to merit observation during public worship. Any of us who suffer from arthritis know how deeply we need God to survive it. Public mention in such detail, though, does not invoke God so much as offend others. Those who suffer in private have as much guarantee of God’s presence as those who suffer in public.

Public exhibitionism about private pain is not prayer: it is not addressed to God so much as addressed to a human crowd for human sympathy.

Writer Annie Dillard sums up the problem we face. We don’t want prayer to be impersonal so much as we want it to be appropriately personal.

“During the long intercessory prayer, the priest always reads ‘intentions’ from the parishioners. These are slips of paper, dropped into a box before the service begins, on which people have written their private concerns … ‘for a baby safely delivered on November twentieth, we pray to the Lord.’

“Suddenly the priest broke in and confided to our bowed heads, ‘That’s the baby we’ve been praying for the past two months. The woman just kept getting more and more pregnant!’

“How often, how shockingly often, have I exhausted myself in church from the effort to keep from laughing out loud? I often laugh all the way home. Then the priest read the next intention: ‘For my son, that he may forgive his father. We pray to the Lord.’

” ‘Lord, hear our prayer,’ we responded, chastened” (Teaching a Stone to Talk, pp. 19-20).

Protect private writhing

What might save intercessory prayer from the debasem*nt of the silly, the trivial, or the overly personal? How do we assure intercessions that include the stranger, tame tendencies to exhibitionism, and respect the privacy of people for whom we pray?

1. Minimally, we might ask permission from someone we’re about to “out” in prayer before we pray for them. Piety is important for prayer. So are good manners.
2. Remember that prayer is conversation with God, not with each other. A good prayer keeps the focus on God and off ourselves. We might ask ourselves whether we are really speaking to God or just letting God overhear something we are trying to tell our neighbors.
3. Distinguish public intercession from private prayer. Is this prayer better made in private or in public? In prayer groups or at home, prayer can be as personal as we need it to be without fear of offense. (In criticizing some public prayer, we dare not discourage private and personal prayer.)
4. Balance the kinds of prayers that we make in public worship. Prayers of petition are magnificent, but they are only one kind of prayer. Worship that allows individual petition to dominate is skewed.

If all conversation between you and a close friend was about private ailments, that would hardly be desirable. In good prayer, as in good conversation, we include praise, listening, lament, forgiveness, and petition, as well as a deep acknowledgement of the other.

Prayer, as Abraham Heschel puts it, “serves many aims. It serves to save the inward life from oblivion. It serves to alleviate anguish. It serves to partake of God’s mysterious grace and guidance. Yet ultimately, prayer must not be experienced as an act for the sake of something else. We pray in order to pray.”

Petitions must be very carefully prayed so that they do not turn into orders to God. Instead, prayers of petition can be forms of surrender and always need to imply that the answer is God’s will, not ours.

Parts of ourselves have to get out of the way if we are to pray in public. Prayer does not dislike the self. Rather it wants the smaller self, the one Luther called the curved-in self, not to get in its own way so that the larger self can see and participate in the larger design of God.

A prayer by Saint Augustine adheres personal fatigue to a collective hope. In this prayer, arthritis, prostate cancer, and mothers-in-law are all collected into “burdens.” Augustine resists the tendency for his public prayer to become group therapy. In it he joins a burdened human race in offering our souls to God.

God of our life,
there are days when the burdens we carry chafe our shoulders and weigh us down;
when the road seems dreary and endless, the skies gray and threatening;
when our lives have no music in them, and our hearts are lonely, and our souls have lost their courage.

Flood the path with light, we beseech Thee
… and so quicken our spirits that we may be able to encourage the souls of all who journey with us on the road to life,
to Thy honor and glory.

Your Response?

This is one pastor’s attempt to be faithful in public prayer. What are your reactions? LEADERSHIP would like to publish other approaches to teaching people to pray well. Contact Us or write to LEADERSHIP, 465 Gundersen Dr., Carol Stream IL 60188.

Donna Schaper is associate conference minister for the United Church of Christ51 Center St.Ludlow MA 01056

Copyright © 2000 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

It’s Wednesday and I’m still not laughing.

On Sunday our computer crashed between the PowerPoint presentation of our church news and the SongShow Plus worship music. Our worship team had sung two songs before the laptop was up and running. The congregation was unsure of the words and wondering why we would sing a song called “Windows 95.”

Who would’ve imagined we’d become so tied to technology? I thought. I remember when crashing your hard drive and losing your sermon notes on Sunday morning was the stuff of LEADERSHIP cartoons. Now, computers play a serious and ever-increasing role in my ministry, especially in my preaching.

Thou anointest my laptop?

I can hear the skeptics: “God won’t send his anointing through a Pentium processor.” Something so blatantly material seems unspiritual. If I become too consumed with my PowerPoint, might I miss God’s power?

Yes, it’s true. Computers can impoverish my soul while improving my image.

I must remind myself: new software will not help me preach with greater power or stronger conviction. Electronic wizardry cannot replace spiritual gifts. Microsoft does not open the windows of heaven. In short, computers cannot substitute for ministry basics—a heart for God, spiritual disciplines, personal and professional integrity, and diligent study.

Despite the hazards, I remain committed to using technology in ministry. Computers have done two things for my sermons: (1) improved my study and preparation methods, and (2) polished my delivery techniques.

Turbo-charged study

I still use my books, but technology has beefed up my study and cut my prep time.

Better Bible research. At a couple hundred dollars a pop (or more), Bible study software might seem pricey. But nobody I know leaves Bible software sitting untouched, like I do some of my expensive commentaries.

Everyone uses Bible software differently. Some focus on original Greek and Hebrew studies. Others use CD commentaries, vast libraries crammed into small spaces.

I use Bible software in simple, utilitarian ways, mostly comparing translations. Software can provide me with 12, 16, or more versions, side by side. My books can do that, but only with a desk the size of a Ping-Pong table.

Software performs concordance-like searches for topics or words, only faster and more comprehensively. I can print verses containing a word, several words, or a specific phrase, or copy verses into sermon notes in my word processor.

Better sermon illustrations. I subscribe to a couple of Internet services that offer collections of illustrations. It’s almost like having a research assistant collecting and organizing stories. I can search for a specific word or topic among a huge database and view contemporary anecdotes, quotations, historical items, or humorous stories.

The only downside I’ve encountered is information overload. On occasion, I’ve collected up to 50 pages of (mostly) relevant stories for a single sermon. I’ve had to set limits, otherwise I could spend more time than ever on sermon preparation.

Better grasp of current events. I’ve learned that the best illustrations are those that convey vivid detail and emotion. In the past, I’ve tormented myself trying to recall the details of a news story: What did Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura say about religion?

If a network news program reports a quote I’d like to use, I can usually retrieve the exact quote through news archives or transcription services available on the Internet. Our local library has such services available for free, permitting me to e-mail text copies of articles or transcripts to myself. These services are available at home for about $5 per month (www.elibrary.com).

Better general research. The Internet offers quick access to otherwise obscure information. Late one Saturday night, I realized that a reading I’d seen more than 20 years ago would be an ideal addition to my sermon. The next morning, I did a quick Internet search and found OneSolitary Life.

Better filing. I used to collect illustrations in notebooks and file folders. No more. Now I save them in a computer file. This works for me because I recall stories more by a name or detail than by the topic. I won’t remember whether I filed it under “perseverance” or “persistence” or “patience” or something else. If I remember some story was about Frederick the Great, I let the computer do the searching.

I store my sermons on disk and can easily refer to an old sermon. Some search tools do word searches through an entire directory or drive. In other words, I don’t have to open each file separately to search for a particular word. This is especially helpful when I want to find a story I’ve already used.

Better notes and manuscripts. If you still prefer a typewriter or legal pad, fine. But drafting and editing sermon notes on the computer works better for me.

Buffed up delivery

When it comes to preaching, nothing can take the place of divine anointing, deep passion, and a commitment to speak authentically. But I can still improve my speaking skills and tap new technology.

I want to connect with those who find it difficult to stay focused for any length of time, even when listening to eternal truths.

Preaching to the eye. Presentation software allows me to show key sermon points to listeners. I’ve also projected poignant quotes, Scripture texts, even photos, drawings, and maps. The congregation’s attentiveness and comprehension improve when I connect with their eyes as well as their ears.

When I first started using presentation software, one man told me, “I never realized how much of a visual learner I am.”

Even before we got a video/data projector, I improved my sermons by generating overhead transparencies of sermon points with my computer. Using Bible software, I made color transparencies of Bible maps and photos of archaeological sites.

An unexpected bonus of using presentation software has been a more disciplined editing of my sermon. Rambling sentences don’t communicate well on screen. Concise, logical points reduce my tendency to be wordy.

Preaching to the heart. The computer sparks my creative energies. I no longer think merely words and outlines. I also consider photos, video, and graphic designs that will convey more than information and facts. I want my sermon to connect with hearts.

For instance, I might accentuate a message with a musical montage. On Independence Day we laid the words to America over a series of patriotic and historic photos. The congregation not only read and sang the words, they made an emotional connection with scenes of the Statue of Liberty and Vietnam Memorial.

All’s well that endsIn a Leadership cartoon several years ago, the preacher, with sweat pouring off his brow, peeks from the wings at his congregation. The caption reads, “Pastor Phyles’ worst nightmare comes true: a Sunday morning computer glitch means he can’t print out his sermon notes.”

I can laugh at that one—now.

I remember the Sunday I had to fax my notes down the hall to my secretary’s office, because my printer refused to work.

When Pastor Phyles finally prints his notes, he will likely find a sermon better than it would have been before he switched to the computer. I have.

Richard Doebler is senior pastor ofCloquet Gospel Tabernacle1400 Washington AveCloquet, MN 55720cgtab@juno.com

Copyright © 2000 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

When President Kennedy was assassinated almost 40 years ago, Walter Cronkite interrupted "As the World Turns" with the tragic announcement.

Pastor Gene Boutellier climbed the tower of his Fresno church, and began pulling the bell rope. Much later, exhausted from his tolling, he descended and found the sanctuary full of weeping people. Tear-streaked faces turned upward, wondering what he would say.1 The scene was repeated the following Sunday in virtually every church in the nation. People needing hope turned to their pastors. Preachers of the generation called it "The Sunday with God."

When President Kennedy's son died in a plane crash last year, the news media climbed their towers and sounded the alarm. After witnessing a week of non-stop coverage, pastors ascended their pulpits wondering, What should I say? Should I say anything at all?

And if they're like me, they wondered, How do I preach to the endless tide of natural disasters, terrorist attacks, celebrity deaths, and political intrigue? And why does this seem to be happening so often?

Preaching at the speed of satellite

I watched the famed low speed Bronco chase from a Holiday Inn in Tallahassee, Florida. Returning home from a week-long vacation, I had turned on the television to see what my congregation might be talking about. What I found was a major shift in the way news is processed and presented.

With their interminable reportage of O.J. Simpson's murder trial, the networks discovered an insatiable public appetite for the mindless repetition of scanty facts. With the proliferation of satellite news channels, tragedies once distant now unfold without interruption in our living rooms. And senseless acts, once given some context by those reporting them, are increasingly presented raw.

Are there more wars? Or is it that we all have cable access to rumors of wars? Are the earthquakes severe? Or are we harder rocked by sensurround accounts of them? Whichever the case, the world as seen on TV makes less sense than it ever has. And the people who soak in an average of four hours of television per day come to church hoping on some level that the preacher will make sense of it all.

Rather, rather not

As a journalist-turned-pastor, I have regularly used the news to illustrate my sermons, but only once have I preached a whole sermon on a news event. In one memorable week, our city was shaken by the drive-by shootings of several children, one of them in our neighborhood; a suspected drug dealer was found slain execution-style four blocks from our church; and police reported that New Orleans once again led the nation in murders. I had to address the fear that gripped us all.

We must deal with tragedies when they are our own, but even if they are distant, episodes like the massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, and the killings at Wedgwood Baptist Church in Fort Worth force the preacher to reconsider the sermon schedule. If my recent conversations with pastors are any indication, few are comfortable doing so.

Tim Keller pastors Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan. "Some of my folks here have said they wish I'd talk more about current events," he says candidly. "I'm not sure I'm wise enough to pull it off."

Keller has two concerns: one is that the news will overshadow his message. "When you talk about something that is making headlines, the illustration becomes the point." Keller says his listeners, including non-Christians, "want to hear eternal truths, not an interpretation of news events."

He wonders too about the unreliability of early reports. He usually waits a year or more before referring to a news event. "It often takes months to get perspective," Keller says.

Keller points to the sermons of the old masters as examples. The only sermons of Jonathan Edwards and others that seem irrelevant now are those preached about national events, Keller says. "It is remarkable how poorly reasoned those sermons are. That is what originally made me hesitate about preaching on current events."

"Who says a sermon has to last for 500 years?" counters Joseph Jeter, Jr., professor at Brite Divinity School at Texas Christian University and author of the book Crisis Preaching. "All of us would like to preach a 500-year sermon, but it would have to be a very general sermon."

In his research, Jeter found many preachers who refused to speak to news events. "Some said they don't know what to say; others don't want to sensationalize. But if your people bring to church a concern they're confused and disturbed about, and nothing is said, that is like looking for bread and getting a stone."

Choosing to address a news event requires discernment: of the likely lasting impact of the event, of the emotional needs of the congregation at the moment, and of the Spirit's leadership in sermon preparation.

Lessons from the epicenter

A tornado ripped through Goshen (Alabama) United Methodist Church during the Easter drama on Palm Sunday 1994. The building just exploded, says Pastor Kelly Clem, burying worshipers crowded in the sanctuary under three feet of rubble. When the debris was cleared, 20 were dead, including Clem's four-year-old daughter Hannah. The media descended on the tiny community outside Birmingham.

"They asked us 'Why?'" Clem says. "Isn't the sanctuary supposed to be safe? Isn't this going to shatter your faith?" And the larger, and harder question: "Why would God let this happen to a church?" "During the crisis is not the time to ask the why question," Clem says. "The real question is 'What am I going to do with the life I have today, with the family members I have today, with the church I have today?'"

Clem's words to her congregation on Easter morning a week later spoke to the need of the moment: How can we be the comforting church when we're all suffering? Help with the why question came later.

The pastor's temptation in a crisis-prompted sermon is to offer answers. Although the people may say they want answers, what they really need is help dealing with overwhelming emotion.

A little more than six months after the shooting deaths of 15 students at Columbine High School, nearby West Bowles Community Church continues to wrestle with the catastrophe while at the same time watching a great revival in Littleton and in their church.

"Some wanted to make sense of (the deaths)," says Pastor George Kirsten. "I don't think we can. Others would say, 'Where can I turn? Is there any hope? Is there any comfort?' That's the issue we addressed loud and clear."

Kirsten's church became a clearinghouse for wise counsel. Many Columbine students came to West Bowles two days after the shootings to talk through their trauma. They didn't seek out the counselors sent by the school system, according to Kirsten, but went instead to other teens, youth from the church who were willing to listen and to cry with them.

Both Kirsten and Clem approached the preaching task as fellow strugglers. They expressed what their people were feeling and what they themselves were feeling. "Sometimes that's all we can do—cry with our people," Jeter surmises.

Craig Barnes calls this "emergency room talk." Barnes is pastor of National Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C. He recommends the E.R. approach to emotionally wrenching crisis. "You don't do a lot of constructive theology in emergency rooms. You just remind them that we live in the hands of God, and that's a wonderful place to be. The constructive preaching comes in the second wave."

We live for moments when we stand on the stump and say, "I have a word from the Lord."

Breaking news can wait

"Crisis rips the veneer off," Barnes says. "It can be very helpful." Yet in 20 years of pastoral ministry, Barnes counts only a handful of occasions when national news became sermon fodder. Most he treated briefly—the deaths of Princess Diana and Mother Teresa in the same week produced two paragraphs to close a message on the cost of following Christ.

Pastoring in the nation's capital, Barnes has felt pressure to speak to the news. He has resisted. For many months he refused to address the investigation that led to the impeachment of the president. "I told my congregation I was taking the high road, but when everything finally came out, I had to speak."

News anchor Peter Jennings called while Barnes was preparing his sermon. "He was taking a survey on how churches were handling it. He wanted to know whether I was calling for the head of the president or the head of the special prosecutor. Those were my only two options.

"I explained that the gospel is a little bit larger than that. My intent in this kind of sermon is to transcend the options. I want to say something that is clear and useful as people work their way through the issue. The crisis sermon should draw them to Jesus as Savior, as opposed to leaving them with the 'right' answer.

"We live for those moments when we can stand on the stump and say, 'I have a word from the Lord.' If it's truly the word of the Lord, then it's not just for the president or the prosecutor. It's for all of us."

The preacher's temptation is to exegete the crisis, rather than the Scripture. Barnes avoids this by starting with his congregation's emotions and moving quickly to the text.

"All preaching has to maintain both sides of that sacred conversation," Barnes says. "You have to tell the Lord how it is down here. The people need to hear that. They need to see you as Moses, as the person who is speaking on their behalf before the Lord, in order also to hear the word of the Lord from you."

For the most part, Barnes sticks to his preaching plan. He has found that his text, selected as much as a year in advance, has spoken to the need on the few occasions when he has preached on a crisis.

Like Keller, Barnes waits to refer to events such as Columbine and Wedgwood. "There are some pretty heroic stories that emerge in the second wave of media coverage. I think there is more valuable information there for the preacher."

While crises that directly affect the local church must be addressed immediately, others, more often national or world events, can wait until more information is available and the lasting impact of the event has been determined. A real crisis will still merit attention in a few weeks or months. Until then, inclusion in the pastoral prayer will suffice to acknowledge awareness of the congregation's feelings.

Other crises—and many of the incidents generating non-stop news coverage fall in this category—are simply distractions.

Grieving for people you don't know

"I'm surprised by how much that hurts me," my wife said, some months after the death of John Kennedy, Jr.

"That it hurt at all? Or that is still hurts?" I asked.

"Both, I guess. I see their pictures at the magazine stand, and I ache, deeply. Some celebrity deaths you expect to affect you. Diana, certainly." (My wife had stayed up overnight so she would not miss the royals' wedding on television.) "But I didn't expect to feel this one."

I understood her feelings. In our star-eyed culture, we keep electronic vigils by many bedsides, and the deaths of people we've never met become very real to us. Our listeners need help mourning losses both real and imagined. But do tragic, widely reported deaths merit attention from the pulpit?

Some instances should be referenced, but most are distractions from the real issues, according to Argile Smith, preaching professor at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. "What separates them from truly catastrophic events is that they are everyday events that happen to famous people." People are born, live, and die, and except for their fame, most would not make the news. Neither should they make the pulpit.

Still, Smith admits, the emotions of his listeners must be considered. "I had prepared to preach on death and resurrection one Sunday. The night before that sermon, Princess Diana was killed. Because that was what everybody was talking about, I scrubbed my introduction and started with her death. The message wasn't about Diana, but it spoke to some things people were thinking about."

Smith is watchful when invoking the names of the famous. "Be careful not to make value judgments on dead people or speculate on their salvation," he warns. "The preacher can help his congregation with their emotions without expressing opinions about the deceased." In other words, don't say anything you wouldn't say at the celebrity's funeral.

In time, Smith says, the preacher develops an internal mechanism for deciding which events are worth talking about.

That's the way it really is

The danger of preaching to the crisis too frequently is that the temporal rather than the eternal begins to drive the preaching schedule. The preacher becomes reactionary, Chicken Little in the pulpit. On the other hand, ignoring crisis, whether real or perceived, may be seen by our listeners as failure to speak to their needs.

By preaching appropriately when the news intrudes, we can show our listeners that God still cares and that he can still be trusted even in catastrophe's aftermath.

Our goal, always, is to help people view the issues of life and death in the light of Christ. "If this world is going to make sense," Smith says, "it will only be when we see it through the eyes of Jesus."

Eric Reed was associate editor of Leadership Journal.

1. Boutellier told his story to Joseph Jeter, Jr., in Crisis Preaching (Abingdon, 1998).

Recently I risked an unorthodox sermon introduction. I held up a large, green squirt gun and asked for three child volunteers. I said I had a mission for them, but I didn’t say what the mission was. I just handed them the toy.

The first little boy examined the water toy and stared back at me with a puzzled gaze. After I coaxed him to take some action, he squirted his horrified mother sitting near the front.

I reclaimed the toy and announced, “You failed the mission.”

Next I gave it to a bashful little girl. She also hesitated but then squirted me. Confiscation came with added expediency. “You failed,” I decreed.

The look on the face of the third volunteer hinted he had a plan. A freckle-faced fourth grader, he confidently seized the soaker and launched a salvo of unholy water in all directions. I lunged for the toy and told him he too had failed the mission.

Then I explained that the mission had been to squirt Pastor Bill, who was sitting (hiding) off to the side. “Why do you think you failed in your mission?”

“You didn’t tell us what we were supposed to do!” they moaned. “We didn’t know who the target was!”

That was just what I wanted to hear. The message to the congregation: knowing the target is critical to the success of any mission. Especially in ministry.

Preaching through trifocals

Most preachers realize we face three different crowds every Sunday morning. We address mature believers who want meat, young believers who need milk, and seekers who are exploring the gospel. Each group has unique needs. Some individuals will not return if I speak only the language and concerns of another group.

Most pastors feel sure-handed ministering to one or maybe two groups. Some preachers are naturally drawn to non-believers. Other pastors take special delight in teaching young believers the basics of Christian life.

Our biases, whatever they are, may cause us to neglect many of our listeners

I became a Christian as a child, enjoyed a healthy church youth group, and was thoroughly enculturated to church life by seminary. The language of Zion is my native tongue.

My church leaders are also well established in the faith. Together we can subconsciously pull the church’s focus toward people like us. Our biases, whatever they are, may cause us to neglect many of our listeners.

A few years ago we decided to address intentionally all three groups in our Sunday morning services. Our leaders hammered out a profile of each group’s needs, wants, and defining characteristics. Then we set about the stretching business of being an inclusive fellowship.

Are you talking to me?

The most important place to speak to all three groups is in sermon application. As I prepare, I ask myself how to relate the text to the concerns of each group. I keep a checklist.

In one sermon on Joseph, for instance, I focused on how he had been painfully betrayed by his brothers who sold him into slavery, Potiphar’s wife who had him jailed on false charges, and the cupbearer who forgot his promise to plead Joseph’s case before the king. My point: we must forgive the past.

I needed a way to bring the concept alive for all my listeners. At a local health club I found a huge punching bag that the owners were willing to lend me. During the service I set the bag on a chair and asked a couple of the kids to come up and punch it.

“A punching bag is good,” I said, “because it’s tough but soft. It takes hits without retaliating. That punching bag is a lot like Joseph. He was strong and tough, but he also had a soft side. When Joseph became governor of Egypt, he didn’t retaliate against those who had hurt him.”

This I applied to new believers. They had taken some terrible blows in life, I said, and now they were learning to respond in a way radically different from how they had responded before coming to Christ.

Then I said, “Some of you have been Christians for many years. You’ve tried to live like Christ, but recently unfair things have happened to you. Perhaps you worked hard for a corporation, and one day your employer informs you they are eliminating your position. Though you know how Jesus wants you to respond, you’re struggling with bitterness.”

Then I addressed unbelievers. “Who had all the power to retaliate but chose rather to take the hits for our sake?” I then preached Christ and the cross.

After the sermon a couple in their thirties who are new in our church approached me.

“I’m a fireman, and there’s a lot of politics in our firehouse,” the man said. “You can’t say anything you don’t expect to hear repeated or used against you. I feel like a punching bag. What you’re talking about is an attitude I need to have.”

A 12-point inspection

Even though I try to apply the message to each group in every sermon, I don’t always succeed. So I asked my wife, Marina, if she would critique a dry run of my message each week. She is a teacher and an effective communicator.

Marina evaluates my sermon for four qualities important to people in all three groups:

1. Is the sermon interesting?
2. Does the sermon present significant content from the Bible?
3. Does the sermon have practical application?
4. Does the sermon have “heart”? (Does it go beyond mere facts to engage the emotions and the will?)

I’ve encouraged her to be brutally honest. One Friday Marina was quiet through my entire practice run. She usually asks questions or comments as I go. This time she waited until I finished. “Where I am in my Christian life, you didn’t teach me anything about the Bible I didn’t already know,” she said cautiously, “and you didn’t give me anything to do that I’m not already doing.”

Ouch. But I would rather hear that from her on Friday than fail on Sunday.

Marina and I brainstormed what we thought particular mature Christians in our congregation needed to hear from this Scripture. Marina also suggested I add less familiar but related Scriptures to supplement the biblical content.

Previewing another sermon, she sensed my focus on unbelievers was blurry. “You’re slipping into pastor jargon. You’re using religious words without explaining them.”

Marina often asks me to state in concise sentences what significant truth I am offering to each group. This can be time consuming, but it really helps.

A universal language

One key to reaching all three groups at one time is to be visual. Warren Wiersbe says the human mind is not so much a debating hall as it is an art gallery. Most people reason by pictures and analogy. Pictures give them a place to hang the truth. I frequently use object lessons like the squirt gun and the punching bag.

In a recent sermon I held up an old wooden square that can be adjusted to any angle. My dad was a machinist and I inherited his tools. When I’m searching for an illustration, I go to the garage to see which gadget might fit my point.

I loosened the nut and set the square at about a 30-degree angle. “The problem with our world,” I said, “is people have redefined what square is. Some people have decided this is square.” Then I readjusted the nut to a 110-degree angle. “Other people are claiming that this is square.” Then I reset the square to 90 degrees. “God’s Word tells us what square is. It is the only accurate measure of right and wrong.”

When we are visual, we don’t have to be superficial or soft on theology for seekers. We can even use ponderous theological terms if we illustrate them. And the most seasoned saint will appreciate a fresh understanding of the deep truths of Scripture.

Targeting three groups in one sermon or one worship service is not easy, but it can be done. By speaking to all the people all the time, we demonstrate the sufficiency of the gospel in every stage of life. And we are ready to share that truth with whomever happens to be in our services.

David Riemenschneider is pastor ofBloomingdale Church260 Glen Ellyn RoadBloomingdale IL 60108

Copyright © 2000 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Lyle Schaller wrote in The Change Agent: “Anyone seriously interested in planned social change would be well advised to recognize two facts of life. First, despite the claims of many, relatively little is known about how to achieve predictable change. Second, much of what is known will not work.”

That was 27 years ago. He’s still at it—quixotically tilting the windmill of change, and obviously enjoying it, too, in his latest book, Discontinuity and Hope: Radical Change and the Path to the Future (Abingdon, 1999).

Society, history, and church life have changed, not in a predictable, orderly, continuous way, but in rapid, disconcerting, discontinuous ways—more like a quantum leap than a logical next step.

That’s the discontinuity from the title. The church leader averse to change will see this discontinuity as a tidal wave crashing over the church and long for the good old days of simplicity and predictability.

Schaller, on the other hand, experienced enough to be a crusty curmudgeon of yesteryear, instead grabs his surfboard, yells to the rest of us “surf’s up!” and paddles out for the ride of his life on the mammoth wave of change. His knowledge of the wave is encyclopedic, his relish for it contagious, and his analysis optimistic. That’s the hope.

Shall we Schaller?

In a style absolutely characteristic of himself, Schaller writes a book of meticulous, long lists, with branching sublists, and sublists of the sublists. Maybe the book should be delivered poster-style as an elaborate outline—a tree on its side, with limbs and branches, each with bulleted points like clusters of fruit.

One could never accuse Schaller of not being thorough. Where many experts could devise six, eight, even ten characteristics of some phenomenon, Schaller would consider himself an underachiever with any fewer than 44. This causes a labored read, at times clogging the flow of ideas rather than enhancing it. This is not an elegant work to read avidly; rather, it’s a practical, insightful work to read systematically. It’s more a resource work than a piece of literature.

But it should be read!

What’s in those lists?

Schaller argues that “while there was considerable continuity in American Christianity between 1800 and 1960, the past four decades of Christianity in America have been marked by an unprecedented degree of discontinuity.” He cites churches’ current openness to divorced and remarried clergy, the way television has influenced worship, the erosion of longstanding institutional loyalties, and competition among the churches. Then Schaller provides a list of seven secular phenomena that are affecting churches, such things as regions becoming more significant than neighborhoods, and large-scale operations eclipsing small-scale. Next come 18 consequences of a new generation taking over, followed by seven stealth discontinuities that may have been overlooked.

Schaller concludes by looking at change through the eyes of various constituencies, such as ministers, parishioners, denominations, and seminaries. By the time you finish the book, you are swimming in a sea of changing tides, and, depending on how you view change, either as exhilarated as Schaller is or as stressed as I am.

Schaller nuggets

My great delight in Schaller comes from the little nuggets he scatters like birdseed. I remain amazed at how he gathers such an abundant supply of facts and figures, ideas and analyses. He is always worth reading. Here’s just a minor store of the good seed Schaller dispenses:

• On church cooperation: “Intercongregational cooperation in member-oriented ministries and programs (worship, teaching, evangelism, spiritual formation, etc.) is not compatible with numerical growth” (p. 41).
• On the churches most at risk: “Congregations near the top of the endangered ecclesiastical species list are the churches averaging 85 to 200 at worship” (p. 66).
• On how to advertise better: Use a consumer-oriented approach that “usually begins with a question in big bold type … (such as) ‘Need help raising your children?'” (p. 90).
• On people groupings: “The greater the degree of heterogeneity in the larger group, the more likely that individuals will seek to be part of a relatively hom*ogeneous subgroup that serves as a comfortable stability zone.” (p. 95).
• On becoming adult: ” … in 1940, 60 percent of employed adolescents worked in traditional workplaces alongside adults who taught them both work and social skills. … By 1980 that proportion had dropped to 14 percent” (p. 124).
• On memorial services: “By 2005 the number of people who come to the church for the memorial service may be a tiny fraction of those who watch it via the Internet or on their home television screen” (p. 158).
• On which churches will have “an edge” in this increasingly competitive ecclesiastical environment: clearly those churches that proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ with certainty” (p. 190).
• On how much land to buy for a church: “About three times what the most optimistic person on the committee recommended” (p. 125).

In the introduction, Schaller gives potential readers of his book a list of six choices in dealing with discontinuity: (1) to dispute Schaller’s facts, (2) to redefine the consequences, (3) to grow gloomy over it, (4) to see discontinuity as a sign of hope and reconfigure ministry to match it (obviously Schaller’s recommendation), (5) to buy and not read this book, and (6) to merely borrow a copy (which Schaller discourages, for some reason).

I could add a seventh choice: to read only this review and not the book. But that would be a shame, for going more than a year or so without a new Schaller book makes one’s ministry rather listless.

—James D. Berkley is a LEADERSHIP contributing editor and senior associate pastor ofFirst Presbyterian Church1717 Bellevue Way NEBellevue WA 98004jberkley@fpcbellevue.org

The New Tongues

Schaller on interpreting the language of therapy.

By far the most significant consequence in denominational circles of the emergence of the therapeutic society has been the change in the frame of reference and the language. An increasing array of divisive issues, ranging from world missions to abortion to ethnic separation to gender to evangelism to ministries with teenagers to the pedagogical approach of theological schools, are being discussed in therapeutic language rather than New Testament language. Scripture, doctrine, and tradition provide the frame of reference and the language for one side in these discussions, while the other side approaches the issue with a therapeutic frame of reference and language.

If one side presented their arguments in Russian and the other in Portuguese, that would make it easier to recognize (a) the existence of a problem in communication and (b) why the general public tends to ignore the whole debate.

The tendency for many congregations to become bilingual as some leaders rely on the therapeutic language while others prefer the New Testament language is one more reason why it is more difficult to be a parish pastor today than it was in the 1950s (pp. 154-155).

—Lyle Schaller in Discontinuity and Hope

• AquaChurch: Essential Leadership Arts for Piloting Your Church into Today’s Fluid Cultureby Leonard Sweet (Group, 1999)

Big Idea: In the sequel to Soul Tsunami, Sweet takes to the high seas to school church leaders in the skills necessary to survive and thrive. Moving from modernity to postmodernism launches the contemporary church on a sea of uncharted waters. Sailing metaphors offer navigational “arts” to chart the course. Sweet says focus on Christ, center in Scripture, take risks, cast vision, commit to teamwork, and communicate.

Some of his “arts” are less obvious. Leaders must learn to understand tradition, use music wisely, remember the importance of rest, and develop prayerful intuition. One great contribution is his case for using the Internet in advancing the church. The exercises with each chapter are also helpful.

Quote: “Postmodern spirituality, as well as intellectual and artistic endeavors, must come to terms with popular culture. To a culture where ‘any place can be a church, any song a prayer, and any person a priest’ (as one Gen-Xer put it), popular culture becomes even more important as spirituality is self-assembled” (p. 80).

Best Chapter: “Scanning the Horizon” makes the case for the necessity of change. Comprehensive and compelling, I was hooked for the rest of the book!

Buy If: you need skills for postmodern ministry and a better view of the vital role of the Internet in church life.

• High Expectations: The Remarkable Secret for Keeping People in Your Church by Thom S. Rainer (Broadman & Holman, 1999)

Big Idea: People will live up to your expectations of them. Rainer gives a traditional view of church growth, but with a twist. Conventional wisdom says increase the flow of people from the culture into the church. Rainer says grow by closing the back door. He relies on solid research, not theories or programs that work in but a few churches. Bottom line: require more from new members and be intentional about it. The higher the expectation, the more likely they are to stay.

This book offers a fresh take on old strategies: track visitors, begin a new members’ class, develop a strong Sunday school, stay true to your mission. Rainer interviewed many church leaders to prove that demanding churches are more effective. I intend to share this widely among my staff and lay leadership.

Best Chapter: “Lessons from the High Expectation Church” gives 14 insights on moving to greater effectiveness. Rainer sums up his survey of 287 churches by reporting the commonalities in their preaching, teaching, evangelism, and assimilation.

Quote: “The typical church in America today has ‘dumbed down’ the meaning of membership to a point where membership means nothing. The phrase ‘inactive members’ is often used as if it were taken from the pages of Scripture. But in reality the only inactive members we see in the history of the New Testament fellowship are Ananias and Sapphira as they are carried out feet first (see Acts 5:1-11)” (p. 49).

Buy If: your church—especially your Sunday school team—needs help reaching and keeping people.

• Ancient-Future Faith: Lessons from the Early Church for a Postmodern World by Robert Webber (Baker, 1999)

Big Idea: If Sweet’s vehicle to postmodern insight is a ship, Webber’s is a time machine. With an obvious love for writings of the church fathers, Webber weaves the ideals of classical Christianity with postmodern thought. The radical, countercultural faith of the early church is relevant to our age. Webber’s comparison covers Christ, the Church, worship, spirituality, missions and authority. The book is not without the potential for controversy. His thoughts on the authority of Scripture require careful reading. Consider thoughtfully even if you cannot agree with them all. Webber’s convictions about the parallels between ancient and future practices of the faith are worth consideration.

Best Chapter: “A Classical/Postmodern Mission” traces key concepts of both education and evangelism throughout history and applies them to our postmodern culture.

Quote: “In postmodern Christianity the authority of the Bible will be restored, not by more rational arguments, but by returning it to its rightful place in the development of the entire spectrum of Christian thought in the first six centuries of the church and by learning to read it canonically once again.”

Buy If: you enjoy thinking “outside the lines.”

—Ross LokkenCalvary Baptist Church736 West Islay StreetSanta Barbara CA 93101calvary@silcom.com

To order books reviewed in LEADERSHIP, call 1-800-266-5766, dept. 1250.

Copyright © 2000 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Every preacher knows the moment. The music has faded, the congregation is seated and becoming still, the text has been read, the prayer finished, and the amen uttered. Then, for a brief moment, the preacher in silence looks into the faces of the congregation, as they return the gaze. The avalanche of words, which will tumble from pulpit to pew, has yet to begin.

In that sacred, compressed, expectant, momentary silence are many things, and not least this hope: that what is about to occur, especially if the sermon is a good one, will be foolishness from start to finish.

This is what I mean.

The fool’s foundation

Good preaching is foolishness (1 Cor. 1:21) first because of its conviction that God exists. The preacher’s foolish passion describes and depicts that before we human beings dance or weep, construct or deconstruct, self-actualize or empower, will or suffer, God is.

Little could be more audacious in a postmodern world than to assume, as the biblical preacher must, that the universe is not empty and meaningless, that reality is not our own making, that we are not free agents of self-will, and that our language does not constitute the universe.

Without such conviction, and even more, without such divine reality behind it, the preacher should never enter the pulpit. For unless God is, the preacher—well, forget the preacher.

The biblical premise for reality is named in Scripture’s fourth word: “In the beginning God … ” Change that fourth word to biochemistry, to power, to language, to culture, to spirituality, to economics, to sexuality, to intentions, to feelings, or simply eliminate God entirely, and there would be no word to speak to anyone, for there would be no world. In humble confidence, the biblical preacher shatters that pre-sermon silence with a pronouncement of Good News, the Word by which all those present live, move, and have their being.

When the congregation faces the preacher in that momentary silence, they long to know whether their lives truly matter. Bad preaching leaves the impression that the answer is “yes” because the preacher makes it so. Foolish preaching affirms that the answer is “yes” because God has made us so.

We come to worship as human meaning makers. As the preacher and the congregation carry on their daily lives, we discover and craft explanations. We assemble perceptions and construct paradigms. This meaning making is primary, and distinctly human work.

But the anxious longing in our world is whether human meaning is all we have. Is life just us? Contemporary western culture declares that human meaning making is and can be only about us. For, the argument goes, whoever and whatever we are as human beings, that’s all we’ve got.

If preaching can only be about us, the congregation instinctively knows it would be better served by silence than by speech. What we long for, however, is the assurance that somewhere there is much more beyond our meaning making. We know what we make of our lives. The question is whether there is something or Someone who makes anything of us.

What better definition of bad preaching is there than “preaching that occurs when all that is present are human words framing human perceptions.” Foolish preaching, on the other hand, occurs when what is primarily present is the Word, albeit embodied in human language. Such biblical preaching operates under the foolish assertion that human meaning making is never original but only derivative, and that when it occurs wisely it actually reflects God’s signature before it ever bears our own.

So when the preacher dares to speak into the lives of those whose hearts are full or breaking, whose spirits are lifted or dashed, whose minds are at peace or in turmoil, what matters most is the reality of God who sees, knows, and loves them. Foolish preaching speaks because God is.

If revelation is revelation, then the sermon need not die a death of a thousand qualifications

Foolish, fruiful listening

Good preaching is foolishness second because of its conviction that God speaks. The biblical preacher’s first and primary work then must be to listen to God.

Scripture portrays God as the grand orator, whose very being desires self-revelation, whose majesty and imagination speak creation into existence, whose power and creativity are borne through the visible testimony of the natural world, whose love and commitment are proclaimed in the promises of the Covenant, whose mercy and longing are heard in the Exodus, whose perseverance and care are witnessed in the wilderness, whose redeeming love is heard in the law and the prophets.

As significant as all this has been, God speaks most clearly in and through the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ, now present in the Holy Spirit. Here is the one Word the world must hear and by it be saved. To this one true, saving Word, all Scripture, by the power of the Spirit, speaks its witness. No wonder the preacher must first listen.

Bad preaching is mere talk without the fruitfulness of such listening. This explains why preaching never ultimately rises or falls based on technique per se, whatever its elegance and sophistication or its awkwardness and naivete. A crude sign may be harder to read, but what matters is whether it reliably points towards a true destination. The foolish preacher who listens will still, at best, be only a crude sign. What matters is the reality, the Word, to and by which the preacher testifies.

The foolish preacher speaks only because first God is and because God first speaks. Preachers are messengers of the Word Who is from beyond them, Who has been spoken to them, and Who they now pray will speak through them. The wonder of such preaching is that God shows up and actually does speak, even as God has spoken.

Saying all this does not promote the indefensible position that the preacher is merely an empty vessel through which the Word and Spirit are poured out to the congregation. That would be not only historically and culturally blind, but also contradictory to the approach of an incarnational God.

It is the particularities of the preacher that embody the incarnate proclamation so that equally particular people can hear, understand, and embody that Word.

The multi-layered worlds in which preachers and congregations live their lives are always, always, always intrinsic to the pastor’s hearing and proclamation, just as they must be to the hearing and speech of the congregation as well. The Word made flesh speaks into these realities, but in doing so does not become their captive.

Through a semi-clear window

Good preaching is foolishness third because of its conviction that God can be known, if through a glass darkly.

Both preacher and sermon must be shaped by two inextricable realities: revelation makes knowing God possible, but revelation means such knowing of God will be partial. The preacher therefore seeks to share all that can be known about God while acknowledging that God cannot be known wholly nor purely.

The foolish preacher exhibits passionate but humble confidence, boldness mixed with understatement, assurance tinged with agnosticism.

The overly fundamentalist implies or states that the glass is utterly transparent. The overly liberal implies or states that the glass is utterly opaque. The apostle Paul affirms neither is the nature of the case. He says instead, “God can be known. And, God can be known only through a glass darkly now, in contrast to when we will see and know him face to face.” This means that the foolish preacher dares to “preach it!” in the confidence that God exists, speaks, and can be known in Jesus Christ.

If revelation is revelation, then the sermon need not die a death of a thousand qualifications. Revelation has done its work, and therefore, it is possible to see and to know in part what we could not otherwise even have guessed! This delivers the preacher from being merely politic about the life of faith or the nature of God’s love. These are not imaginings but realities revealed!

They are put in the take-home basket of our lives each week and on them pastor and congregation are to be fed and sustained. This Good News has been tested, tried, and found to be the Bread of Life here and there, now and then.

Alongside this, the foolishness of biblical preaching points to God, not to human doctrine as the final touchstone. While the glass makes it possible to make passionate affirmations about the God it reveals, the preacher is nevertheless alert to and not surprised by the darkness of the glass.

Fool’s gold

Good preaching is foolishness fourth because of its conviction that God speaks through preachers. The biblical warrant for this conviction is that God has consistently voiced the Word through human beings whose hearts, minds, souls, and strength are agents of such communication. Scripture is replete with such examples.

In fact, one way some have defined Scripture is God preaching through those witnesses.

Few Sundays pass in which I do not find myself struck dumb by the momentary silence before the sermon. As I look into the faces before me, I am stunned by the foolishness of what I am about to do—again!

All that we have been doing in worship has been shaped by previous moments like this, and what we have now come to hope for is the foolishness of the Gospel. In the foolish trust that because God is, because God speaks, because it is possible to know God, and because God can use preaching, I will stand to preach.

Mark Labberton is pastor ofFirst Presbyterian Church2407 Dana St.Berkeley CA 94704MarkL@fpcberkeley.org

Copyright © 2000 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Carl Sandburg captured well the human condition: “There is an eagle in me that wants to soar, and there is a hippopotamus in me that wants to wallow in the mud.”

That’s a paradox. Seemingly contradictory statements that are nonetheless true. Recently paradox has become more important in preaching.

A new worship attender came to see me. A believer, she vulnerably shared some of the mud in which she was currently mired. Then she blurted out: “I got so frustrated at the church I used to attend. Everything was five easy steps! I need to hear something more than pat answers.”

I am finding more and more people recognize that a steady diet of “how to” preaching has left them spiritually anemic.

What’s the alternative?

For those who aren’t helped by “three easy steps,” a better alternative is to preach the power of paradox.

Paradox is the wild territory within which most ministers live and work. We see unseen things. We conquer by yielding. We find rest under a yoke. We reign by serving. We are made great by becoming small. We are exalted when we are humble. We become wise by being fools for Christ’s sake. We are made free by becoming bondservants. We gain strength when we are weak. We triumph through defeat. We find victory by glorying in our infirmities. We live by dying.

With the passage of time, most preachers clear land, build a homestead, and try to tame this paradoxical wilderness.

We are told that we’re vendors in a spiritual street market clogged with competitors. People pause only a moment before strolling on to the next booth, so we’ve got to grab them with snappy “How to … ” titles. People are looking for answers to make a difference in their lives … yesterday. So we preachers must hit felt needs quickly, cut to the chase, offer “spiritual principles” and “practical handles” that plug directly into people’s pragmatic expectations.

Is any attention still being paid to Baron Von Hugel’s observation: “The deeper we get into reality, the more numerous will be the questions we cannot answer”?

Addressing the person who asks, “How will Christianity improve my life?” C.S. Lewis replies: “Frankly, I find it hard to sympathize with this state of mind. One of the things that distinguishes man from the other animals is that he wants to know things, wants to find out what reality is like, simply for the sake of knowing. When that desire is completely quenched in anyone, I think he has become something less than human.

“Foolish preachers, by always telling you how much Christianity will help you and how good it is for society, have actually led you to forget that Christianity is not a patent medicine. If Christianity is untrue, then no honest man will want to believe it, however helpful it might be; if it is true, every honest man will want to believe it, even if it gives him no help at all.”

Raising questions that might not have easy answers—leaving the security of the homestead to venture deeper into life’s wilderness, beyond the sight lines of reason into the mystery of God—would seem to be the kiss of death to attracting customers.

What preacher in his or her right mind would raise thorny questions when people already have too many burrs under their saddles?

And yet, when pat answers no longer satisfy, paradox, paradoxically, can reach the depths of the soul.

What to do with paradox?

C.S. Lewis goes on to distinguish two kinds of readers. One reader receives from books, while a second does things with books. Of the second reader’s misguided motives, Lewis writes: “We are so busy doing things with the work that we give it too little chance to work on us. Thus increasingly we meet only ourselves.”

When pat answers no longer satisfy, paradox, paradoxically, can reach the depths of the soul

This is the contemporary preacher’s temptation. We are so busy doing things with Scripture (especially things that address the need of the moment) that Scripture has little chance to do its work in us. We come to Scripture faithfully and genuinely, yet increasingly meet not God, but only satisfy our current want.

What about the truths of Scripture that do not come in easily digestible spoon-size bites? What about truths that need to be gnawed on? We find it hard to do things with paradox. Yet paradox is often a window into the deeper mystery of God.

Enlightenment rationalism was no friend of paradox, but postmodern appetite for mystery is insatiable. People pound away at computer terminals all day, visit their aroma therapist to unwind on the way home, and then read The Celestine Prophecy by candlelight.

Do we realize that we Christians sit atop the motherlode of all mystery? A God who is Wholly Other yet graciously reveals Himself to human beings in Jesus Christ is the unsurpassed mystery of the universe!

How are we inviting contemporary people to touch this Mystery, even as we present God as the answer to their felt needs?

Exploring the wild territories of paradox helps us see God less as our personalized AAA map for life (with hazards highlighted), and more as the purpose of the journey.

Tramping through these regions, I’ve identified three distinct types of biblical paradox that open doors to the mystery of God.

Paradox reframes the issue

Ever notice Jesus’ preaching does not have the point by point “fill in the blanks” directness so popular today? Jesus was often intentionally paradoxical.

His open-ended sermons sent listeners away scratching their heads, with dangling loose ends for them to tie together. (How long would most modern preachers last if our key leaders regularly asked, as Jesus’ disciples did, “Tell us, what were you trying to say this morning?”)

Jesus’ use of paradox shakes us by the shoulders to see familiar things from a fresh perspective. This type of paradox, like a good picture frame, doesn’t call attention to itself, but focuses attention on the magnificence of the painting.

When Jesus says “Those who save their lives will lose them, and those who lose their lives for my sake will save them,” our attention is quickly drawn away from the paradox per se, because it reframes all that we have ever thought about hedging our bets, playing it safe, being conservative—in short, “saving” our lives.

We look through this new window where losing becomes saving. What “saving” behaviors might be hindering my spiritual growth? What do I need to lose for Jesus’ sake?

Such use of paradox prods us to ask questions of ourselves. It reveals and yet hides, asserts yet invites reflection.

“The last shall be first, and the first last” not only asserts a truth, but prompts me to ask: am I thinking and acting in ways that make me “first” or “last?”

If we try too hard to explain it, such paradox loses its heuristic value. Snappy applications (“Go home this week and … “) are insufficient when dealing with Jesus’ use of paradox, which is transforming largely because it works below the waterline.

Framing paradox can be preached effectively through story—not story illustrations hung like coathangers on a deductive outline, but a story comprising the bulk of the sermon. Narrative sermons move preaching away from analysis to experience.

Stories draw us in. We suspend judgment and are more open to change. We move from detached observers to involved participant. The story creates a role for us and we try it on for size.

Especially when left open-ended, as many of Jesus’ stories were, narrative sermons offer the opportunity for listeners to put themselves in the story and create their “own” ending. Rather than sitting back to evaluate the preacher’s truth, listeners discover truth for themselves.

In a sermon addressing the paradox of faith and works, I created a sermon-length story about a woman on a hijacked airplane who must decide whether to identify herself as a Christian when passengers are told all non-Christians are free to leave. Tension builds as the terrorists move toward her seat, forcing each passenger into a bizarre rite of denial by spitting on a picture of Jesus before being allowed to exit to safety.

In her mind, the debate continues—how much action/effort/commitment does faith demand?—until the hijacker finally arrives to shove the saliva-pocked face of Jesus in front of her and bark, “What about you?”

Quietly, I asked the congregation, “What about me? What about you?” and sat down. Each was forced to confront the cost of faith and add his own ending.

Paradox that harmonizes

Consider a tuning fork. It delivers a true pitch by two tines vibrating together. Muffle either side, even a little, and the note disappears. Neither tine individually produces the sweet, pure note. Only when both tines vibrate is the correct pitch heard.

Like a tuning fork, harmonious paradoxes declare their truth when two sides of the paradox vibrate in unison. This requires care and honesty. Unlike the tuning fork, which is forged by highly controlled mechanical processes, the paradoxes of Scripture must be forged by the words of highly subjective preachers. Yet despite our biases toward one tine or the other, neither side of the paradox should be muffled, even a little.

Paradox beckons us into Mystery, and offers a wholesome reminder that God is infinitely greater than our ideas about God

The paradox of divine sovereignty/human responsibility offers an excellent example of finely tuned tension. Is my salvation God’s election, or my free response to the gospel message? Does God’s choice of me negate my choice of God? Can two choices (mine and God’s) exist without one inevitably determining the other?

Job and his friends do not face the sovereignty/responsibility tension as an abstract theological debate, but as a painful flesh-and-blood dilemma. Job has lost everything. Who is responsible: Job or God? How can Job accept that God is both all-powerful and perfectly good? Is God transcendently aloof from Job’s pain or somehow personally involved?

Job keeps both tines vibrating: God is both transcendently all-powerful and personally involved. In fact, refusing to mute one tine is what allows Job to argue with God. Who could argue with the impassive God of the Deists?

Ultimately Job realizes no simple solution is possible. The paradox opens the door to a mysterious and unsearchable God. “Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know” (Job 41:3).

Yet living in this paradox has clarified for Job whether his faith is in God, or in what he knows about God. In the end, it is significant that Job cries out, not “I understand” but “I repent” (Job 41:6).

Something similar happened to a woman in our church who tragically lost her middle-aged husband. She began the grief process questioning many of the timeless truths she thought she knew about God. Over time, these questions were not so much answered as shown to be side issues.

Like Job, she realized that her faith could ultimately rest only inGod, not in understanding God. Mystery reveals, even as it obscures. She came to know God better when she acquiesced to God’s mystery.

Something similar happened to Job. At the end of his wrestling with God, Job admits God is unfathomable but also (paradoxically) indicates that he now knows God better than he did before: “I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees thee” (Job 41:5).

Intellectual debate or Job-like personal circ*mstances can devastate believers who have never explored the wilderness beyond easy, five-step answers. Regular exposure to paradox challenges Christians early on to exchange faith about God for faith in God, a God who is trustworthy even if often inscrutable.

What a relief to realize that both tines of the tuning fork are necessary for the admittedly elusive note of truth to be heard!

The two-headed monster on Sesame Street uses exactly this strategy to teach children phonetic pronunciations. One head of the monster says “C … “; the other, ” … AR.” Each head pronounces its syllable with ever-shortening time intervals until the two sounds meld together into a new word: “C … … AR,” “C … AR,” “CAR!”

Sermons using this method follow an inductive path: first showing the inadequacy of either side of the paradox by itself, then heralding the new note they create when held in tension with each other.

For example, in a sermon on God being perfectly just yet also perfectly loving, I bounced listeners’ attention back and forth between the two sides of Mr. Beaver’s description of Aslan in The Chronicles of Narnia: “he isn’t safe … but he’s good.”

Like “C … AR,” judgment and love melded together by the end of the sermon in a way people may not have heard in the beginning.

Paradox that’s two-handled

While the tension of the harmonious paradox draws opposites together to complement one another, a third type of paradox, the “two-handled paradox,” consistently pushes the poles apart.

G.K. Chesterton saw that orthodoxy must exalt extremes: “It has kept them side by side like two strong colors, red and white, like the red and white upon the shield of St. George. It has always had a healthy hatred of pink. It hates that combination of two colors which is the feeble expedient of the philosophers. It hates that evolution of black into white which is tantamount to a dirty gray.”

I often watched my grandfather dig post holes on his farm with an old-fashioned auger. Turning the giant corkscrew, the farmer needed both strength and balance to push on one handle while pulling on the other. Under his practiced hands, every push/pull half turn caused the auger to bite deeper into the hard Nebraska soil.

Nothing is more useless than a one-handled auger! Maximum effect is achieved when you position your hands at the very ends of the handles. Slide your hands toward the middle, and the auger becomes proportionately less effective.

Likewise, we do ourselves no favor by whittling down opposing extremes of a two-handled paradox—for example, God’s transcendence and immanence, separate from the world yet actively engaged in the world. The transcendent but uninvolved clock- maker God of the eighteenth-century Deists, and the New Ager’s immanent, pantheistic God swallowed up within the natural world, both grasp only one handle.

Christian history’s greatest heresies whittled down the handles of paradox: God not fully three or completely one, Jesus Christ not fully divine or completely human. In both the Trinity and Incarnation, theology’s danger has forever been the coalescence of opposites into a dirty gray.

How might the black and white of the two-handled paradox be proclaimed in all its stark clarity, leading us with awe and silence into the presence of the divine mystery? Both sides of the paradox must be maintained in all their contrary distinctiveness. No pink must intrude into the crisp red on white of St. George’s cross.

Different facets of one side of the paradox are counterbalanced by opposing facets of the other side.

Each pull on one handle is balanced by a push on the other. The shifting back and forth adds movement and retains interest.

One approach I have used is a “Paul Harvey” strategy. The first half of the sermon argues only one side of the paradox. Astute listeners begin to wonder: “This isn’t right. What about the other side?” Then “the rest of the story” presents the opposite in equal detail.

I have also used imaginary characters to represent opposite handles of a paradox, taking on different personas for contrary positions.

For instance, in one sermon I played two roles endorsing the opposing views “Jesus is human” and “Jesus is God.” The two characters began their conversation side by side, then I gradually took steps apart as it became increasingly apparent that, for the whole truth to be heard, each position must maintain its distinctive identity.

As I presented evidence for each viewpoint, they gradually separated until I was shuttling 15 feet back and forth across the chancel as I played each role.

Bigger than we imagine

In a pragmatic age, persistent in finding the quickest route to whatever works, we preachers find little to do with paradox. And yet, like unusual stones found in the bottom of a prospector’s pan, we keep discovering biblical paradoxes, rolling them over in our palms, pondering their secrets.

Paradox beckons us into Mystery, and offers a wholesome reminder that God is infinitely greater than our ideas about God.

Richard P. Hansen is pastor ofFirst Presbyterian Church215 N. LocustVisalia CA 93291

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